Hello!
I'm still alive! Kinda hard to believe, right? It's weird to think about the past four weeks have probably flown by for most of you, but it has certainly crawled for me. The amount of material and growth we do here is huge each day, and makes each day feel like 2-3 days of learning.
Before the oldest generation left, they told us that week four was when everything in the language would start to click, and I've definitely found that to be the case. Each of our lessons takes a little less preparation (down to 1 hour instead of 3), and I'm understanding about 80% of what the teachers say in class (because they use really simple language). The strides we as a district have made in 4 short weeks are nothing short of miraculous. I'm amazed every day at what I've already learned.
Here are some more cool things about Chinese.
-Word order is a tricky thing. In English, we kinda mix around words in a sentence however we want, and no matter how weird, we as a culture try to pull meaning out of it. Not the case with Chinese. If you say "I like to every Monday with you write letters." in exactly that order (in Chinese of course) then the Chinese people won't try to pull meaning out of it. They just won't understand it in the slightest.
-"Can" doesn't translate directly to Chinese. There are three different ways to express an ability to do something. There's "hui" which means a learned ability, "neng" which means physical ability, and "keyi" which means permissive ability. So you know how you always asked "Can I go outside?" and you got the sarcastic response "I don't know, CAN you?"? That doesn't happen in Chinese. It's great. (Of course, Taiwanese people overuse the "keyi" verb to mean all three of them, so maybe it does apply.)
-To ask a question in Chinese, you can just say a statement and put a "ma" on the end, and POOF it's a question. You can also ask "ke bu keyi" (bu is negation) which is asking "can you or can you not." That also makes it a question. Apparantly, Taiwan is internationalized enough that saying "Okay" is perfectly alright and understood. By extension, asking someone if they are "o bu o kay" also works, which just sounds silly. We've been told by one of our teachers that if we actually use that in one of our lessons, he will disown us and send us to Spanish speaking.
-The word for the number four (si, fourth tone) and the word for death (si, third tone) sound almost the same, so apparantly in Taiwan there are no fourth floors, just like there are no thirteenth floors in the states.
-For most words, the verb and the noun are just the same word. So "bangzhu" means to help and also means help. Take that every Latin-based language :P
-I have new favorite phrases! "Keneng" means possibly, which is fun to answer questions with. You can also say "Zhen de ma??" which roughly equates to asking Really??, which can be used sarcastically and often, to great effect.
The MTC choir here is getting really awesome. When we practiced yesterday, they expanded the choir. We had about 1500 people in the choir for the first time in preparation for Tuesday, when we'll be having the first ever MTC devotional in the Marriott center. We learned a moderately-difficult three page four-part piece in an hour. It was pretty cool. We're all getting excited for the worldwide broadcast on the 23rd. Be sure to watch it! Good luck finding me in the 2000+ person choir.
I also put my name in as a "more experienced singer" for a small piece choir that is doing something we don't know yet. We'll see what happens.
Yesterday, in Sacrament meeting, me and three others from my district sang "Nearer, My God to Thee" a capella. It was cool because we practiced for less than 30 minutes total, and it sounded pretty good. I love being surrounded by talented people.!
So I have a pen that I bought during my first week here that is almost out of ink. That wouldn't be exciting for anyone else, but I've never had a pen long enough to run it out of ink. I always lose it long before that happens. It's silly how excited I am about it. That's going to be a great day.
I didn't get to writing everybody back who wrote me last week, and I probably won't be able to get to all of them today, but I'm trying! I'll send as many letters as I can today! Thanks for sending them!
I'll see you next week!
Elder Hyrum Richardson
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