Since Doolies is studying Judaism, I agreed to study Mandarin Chinese. I don’t have a good history with languages. My mother, born in Argentina, speaks fluent Spanish. (I’ve relayed these anecdotes before, but I enjoy reminding my mother of them often.) When we were young, my mother spoke Spanish to my grandmother in front of my sisters and me. She used Spanish similar to the way parents use spelling in front of young children, e.g., “we need to go to the T-O-Y S-T-O-R-E later.” While young children usually figure out the spelling before long, we didn’t learn much Spanish. It is said that the best time to learn language is when you’re young and your brain is very mushy and malleable. I always tease my mother about not teaching us Spanish, vowing that (if and) when I have children, she will not be allowed to speak to them in English (that last part isn’t part of the teasing—our kids, if and when we have them, will be at least tri-lingual (English, Chinese, Spanish, and maybe Hebrew), to make up for all my language problems).

I spent six years in junior high school and high school studying Spanish. I like to tell people that I ended up learning one Spanish word for each year of study. While that is an exaggeration (albeit, a small one), I was not a good student. Learning language when you’re older requires study, and since I didn’t know how or want to study as a child (I got by on my dashing good looks), I was a terrible language student. This was also the reason I didn’t do well on the SAT. English, like Spanish, requires study. Thankfully, during college and especially graduate school, I learned to enjoy studying, and shortly after, writing.

I remember the first time I realized that there was an art and study to language. I was a junior or senior at Binghamton University and enrolled in a high-level philosophy course with Professor Weiss. He was a short man with amazingly short arms (you always remember the important details). While I majored in philosophy and received good grades, because of my distaste for studying, I was never a standout philosophy student. Professor Weiss required us to hand in papers on each week’s reading and on larger concepts (unlike high school, I was very good about turning in assignments in college—my first step toward becoming a better studier). Besides grading us on our philosophical understanding, he also marked up the writing for grammar and style. I’m sure other teachers and professor had done this before, but seeing those markups on the papers and asking questions after class (something I almost never did, except to argue for grades—yes, I was disgusting) about the markups (now that I think on it, I probably asked those questions because I was arguing for a grade), I caught my first glimpse into the structure of writing. Writing is very similar to computer programming: while very structured with many rules, you don’t just apply the rules. There is style and a great many best ways to accomplish anything. Additionally (and this is my favorite part of both writing and programming), there’s a “test” at the end, where you know rather quickly if the program works or the writing makes sense (or is moving or a good story or interesting writing). While checking your answers for programming is easier than checking for writing, the concept is the same.

As an embarrassing aside, I asked Professor Weiss to advise me on an honors philosophy paper when I was a senior. I don’t know if I ever intended to write that paper, but a few months into the semester—more exactly, after he wrote me a recommendation for graduate school—I dropped the honors class and never spoke to him again.

These initial English lessons followed me to graduate school, where I delved headfirst into the study of English, finding books (first Wright Right (I couldn’t find the right book in Amazon), and then Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style) and beginning my now decade-long love with the mechanics of writing. (The storytelling is an entirely different barrel of pandas.)

That brings me to what I wanted to write about today (finally), my beginning lessons on Chinese using The Rosetta Stone’s introductory (read: free) lessons. The lessons were not what I expected. They are taught with multiple choice questions, using a combination of listening, reading (either traditional or transliterated—I know there’s a more official term for that), watching (photos or videos), and speaking (using the microphone) for each segment. You receive a rewarding ding and smiley face or checkmark for each correct question, and level up (i.e., move on to the next segment) when you feel you’ve learned enough.

I did have more to say about this process, but Doolies is prodding me for breakfast and movie (and, besides, as usual, I’ve lost the energy to continue—I’m pathetic). I’m flying back to Seattle late tonight, so we have the entire day to go about town, a town, by the way, which is deluged with rain, raising the interesting question of why I even bothered to leave Seattle.