Make that Chinese. I mean it’s like close, right?

Among the many perks I’ve written about here in the place of
employment, not sure if I threw out there pretty generous paying for
classes bene. Not only that, they are so into edjumacation, they even
arrange some shit for the whole place allowing lazy shits, such as I,
to just wait until a class falls within walking distance.

A little while ago, they sent out an email saying if they could get
five or more folks interested, someone from a neighborhood language
institute would come by and teach Mandarin on the premises. Since the
beau, with whom I am co-habitating (I guess as opposed to the vast
number of beaux with whom I do not live), anyway M., speaks many
Chinese dialects and was schooled in the royal Mandarin tongue, I
signed up.

The first class was last night in a conference room about 10 feet from
my desk. I have never felt more awkwardly white and incapable of
learning from outside my Celtic encampment in my life. There’s all
this shit about tonality, and I am pretty much tone deaf.

I’m feeling a bit better about it after spotting this weblog:=20
http://wantingseed.com/weblog/2003/09/15/tonally_challenged.php (I’ll
make a proper link when I’m not posting by mail.)

If I ever get the opportunity to travel to Asia with M., I think I’ll
have to practice being a sweet, submissive type o’ gal who lets the
man do all the talking.

All I can say is them Chinese sure sound all different than anything
I’ve ever heard.

(Actually, part of my problem is with the probably arrogant,
undoubtedly white linguist dude who years ago worked out the
transliteration scheme to romanize the spelling out of characters,
called Pinyin. What the fuck, dude? How did you get Q to mean the
"ch" sound?