My Journey to Study Abroad in China - My Views on Cultural Diversity

2023-12-07

My name is LEONG SONG WEN YEE CHRISTINE, and my Chinese name is Liang Yingyu. I come from Venezuela. But in fact, I am a descendant of Chinese people - my parents come from Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province. More than 30 years ago, they immigrated to Venezuela and settled there, and as someone born in Venezuela, I spent my elementary to high school years here. In Venezuela, my friends and I usually communicate in Spanish, but at home, my parents have always encouraged me to communicate in Chinese because they believe that since I have Chinese ancestry, I need to learn to speak Chinese. However, due to the lack of systematic learning, my understanding of Chinese has not been deep enough, only staying at the level of speaking, and I cannot read or write Chinese characters. Once, I followed my parents back to China to visit relatives and friends in my hometown. When everyone was chatting freely and sharing family relationships, I found that I could only barely keep up with the rhythm of my friends and family, understanding their expressions in a "slow and half beat" manner. My lack of proficiency in Chinese prevented me from further communicating with my loved ones. Since then, I have made up my mind that when I grow up, I will definitely go to China and learn Chinese systematically and seriously. In 2020, I finally secured the opportunity to study abroad in Guangdong, China, taking a new step forward. During my study abroad trip, I discovered many cultural differences between the two countries. These differences initially left me at a loss, but I gradually realized that they not only filled my study abroad life with surprises and fun, but also brought me a lot of deep and meaningful thinking. The challenge of Paper Cuttings handmade language learning with Chinese characteristics is that the official language of Venezuela is Spanish, and the official language of China is Chinese - two languages that differ greatly in form, structure and cultural background. These differences have brought me many difficulties and challenges in the process of learning Chinese. For example, in Spanish, there are sexual numbers (masculine, feminine, plural), as well as complex verb tenses that use words as the basic unit and have clear word boundaries. Chinese, on the other hand, is based on "characters" and reflects changes in sexual numbers through the use of modifiers. There is no single word "tense". Therefore, the understanding of Chinese must be examined in specific contexts, such as in "he bought many books" and "he only bought one book", where "book" as a noun itself does not change, but due to different modifiers, the meaning of the sentence also undergoes certain changes. This difference in form and structure has caused me a lot of awkward situations when using Chinese. In addition, there are many differences in pronunciation between Chinese and Spanish. In Chinese, each syllable is pronounced with the same level of clarity, without any distinction of stress; However, in Spanish, the different emphasis positions during pronunciation not only change the meaning of words, but also affect the overall feeling of sentences. At the same time, the pronunciation of Chinese is much more complex than I imagined: the pronunciation of initial and final consonants, the rise and fall of tones, and the division of syllables are all areas that I need to constantly pay attention to. Due to my initial difficulty in learning Chinese with flat and raised tongue sounds, I often joke about myself

Edit:Hou Wenzhe    Responsible editor:WeiZe

Source:Outlook New Era

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