I decided to try and read a Mandarin Phrasebook that I bought in Beijing for my book this week. It’s short (less than 300 pages) and written pretty informally, so I expected it to be an easy read. I was completely wrong. It took me about two weeks to read the phrasebook, and I was plugging away at it constantly. Reading any reference book cover-to-cover is hard, but a phrasebook is espcially hard, because I’m working on my language skills the whole time. I had to spend 30 minutes reading ‘X-Rated Shots’ (a tiny gag gift I got a while back) last weekend so that I could stay on schedule. This was a pretty rough book to read.
Not to say it didn’t have an upside: my Chinese dramatically improved. Just reading phrases every day made me think about how I would say the phrase in Chinese, or how I would translate the Chinese back to English. Comparing my way with the book’s way was really eye-opening. It’s fun to think about all the different ways you can say something, and it’s a lot of fun to do that in another language.
All told, I don’t have a lot to say about this book. My Chinese improved, but it was a rough ride. I’m just glad I finished it.
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