My Realization: 7 Years in the Making

I had a realization today, one that I have been waiting for for the entire 6 or 7 years that I have been learning Chinese. I finally realized why I love learning Chinese. I have a good answer! It is one that might be a little difficult to understand if you don't know Chinese, but I will do the best I can to help you. And the reason that I love Chinese has to do with how you speak the language.

Take English for example. I can say a sentence like "I love the weather" or "The weather is marvelous." You have no idea what my attitude is when I am saying this, or how I feel about what I am saying. I could be sad, I could be happy, I could be ambivalent. And these words, when you say them, have no particular meaning in and of themselves: they make no description of the meaning, they are simply words put together to make a sentence, and the sentence is the thing that has the meaning, not the words themselves. But it is not the same with Chinese. Not by a long shot.

For every Chinese character, sure, there is an English translation, but there is also so much more. For every character, there is a meaning that can only be explained to you in Chinese. There is a feeling, a tone to every character, and small specifics as to the use of most characters. Each one also has a feeling that goes along with it. So when you say a sentence in Chinese, the wording matters. Not only are you conveying the actual words that you want to say, but you are also conveying the meaning. You are sending emotions to another person, and therefore you are connecting on a level that you can't in English. There are sentences you can say a million different ways, all depending on the feeling you want to send to someone.

The characters are the same. You aren't just writing A or B or C, you are drawing a picture of what you want to say. You don't see people writing English in beautiful flowing script. But every character is actually a picture, a description. For example, the character for "safe" is literally a woman in a house. The character for "society" is God and earth. So even just writing a typical, easy sentence, you are drawing story, and sharing a little bit of yourself with someone. You are showing them one of your talents, and they are showing you one of theirs back.

This is why I love Chinese. Because when you communicate, you aren't just speaking words, you are showing people some of your feelings and thoughts and hopes. The words you use, and the grammar that you use with it, all is an extension of what you are actually thinking. And it is that story, that connection, that I am obsessed with. There is always so much more going on with Chinese than what you can see on the surface, and getting underneath the surface to the real meaning of the characters is what I have been striving for for nearly 7 years now. That is why I love Chinese. That is what I have been working for. And there is no way, in one life time, that I can ever really understand all of the nuances of Chinese, but I am going to dedicate my life to trying.