I have discovered in my years in China that almost every Chinese person can recognize and write the Western alphabet. However, since they rarely write the alphabet, their writing is very standardized. In America I can tell the difference between people's handwriting easily, but here it is much harder. It all looks much the same. The more we write the letters of the alphabet, the more we leave our own fingerprint all over them. In a way they become our own.
The reverse thing happens when it comes to Chinese characters. I write my characters very standard and the Chinese people write them with a more individualized style.
Needless to say this presents a challenge when reading. The Chinese people struggle to read my letters and I struggle to read their characters. This has provided for many entertaining mistakes in writing. When I try to read characters, I almost give up before I start. Out of the thousands of Chinese characters I can read and recognize about 150 and I struggle to keep straight. For me it isn't so much a problem of recognizing the stylistic characters but rather knowing what they are in the first place.
The Chinese people don't have to make this excuse when writing the alphabet though. There are only 26 letters to learn and many of them learned them in grade school. They may not be able to read the words, but they can surely write them down. However, we reach a problem when they see that a foreigners letters aren't very standardized. To a Chinese eye, they never know what my "6" is. It doesn't look right. Every single person asks what it is. My "K" looks like an "R" to them. And on it goes.
There is hope though. I don't usually write things down for the Chinese people...we usually just talk...something I am thankfully getting a little better at each week. However, sometimes they ask me to write my name down and then we have problems.
The first year I was in China, I got a tax receipt with the name Amy Reller on it. When I told someone, they said it didn't matter. That same year, I applied for a card to Metro (similar to the American Sam's Club or Costco). My card again said Amy Reller. I started trying to form better K's after that. But today....today I got the best name mistake ever.
This morning I rode with my poor cat into town to get him a rabies shot (my cat is officially legally vaccinated). After some miming and a call to my fabulous Chinese teacher for translation help, they started filling out a vaccination record. I already had a record for another shot he had been given the week before so they just copied the information I had written then. The cat was given his shot and we went on our merry way. On the way home while riding in a taxi, I pulled out the record to look at it. Within 3 seconds I was laughing out loud. My name was spelled wrong, but this time I wasn't Amy Reller. This time I was Amy Killer. I'm still laughing. I love living in China and I'm so glad it's not always me making the ridiculous mistakes.
The reverse thing happens when it comes to Chinese characters. I write my characters very standard and the Chinese people write them with a more individualized style.
Needless to say this presents a challenge when reading. The Chinese people struggle to read my letters and I struggle to read their characters. This has provided for many entertaining mistakes in writing. When I try to read characters, I almost give up before I start. Out of the thousands of Chinese characters I can read and recognize about 150 and I struggle to keep straight. For me it isn't so much a problem of recognizing the stylistic characters but rather knowing what they are in the first place.
The Chinese people don't have to make this excuse when writing the alphabet though. There are only 26 letters to learn and many of them learned them in grade school. They may not be able to read the words, but they can surely write them down. However, we reach a problem when they see that a foreigners letters aren't very standardized. To a Chinese eye, they never know what my "6" is. It doesn't look right. Every single person asks what it is. My "K" looks like an "R" to them. And on it goes.
There is hope though. I don't usually write things down for the Chinese people...we usually just talk...something I am thankfully getting a little better at each week. However, sometimes they ask me to write my name down and then we have problems.
The first year I was in China, I got a tax receipt with the name Amy Reller on it. When I told someone, they said it didn't matter. That same year, I applied for a card to Metro (similar to the American Sam's Club or Costco). My card again said Amy Reller. I started trying to form better K's after that. But today....today I got the best name mistake ever.
This morning I rode with my poor cat into town to get him a rabies shot (my cat is officially legally vaccinated). After some miming and a call to my fabulous Chinese teacher for translation help, they started filling out a vaccination record. I already had a record for another shot he had been given the week before so they just copied the information I had written then. The cat was given his shot and we went on our merry way. On the way home while riding in a taxi, I pulled out the record to look at it. Within 3 seconds I was laughing out loud. My name was spelled wrong, but this time I wasn't Amy Reller. This time I was Amy Killer. I'm still laughing. I love living in China and I'm so glad it's not always me making the ridiculous mistakes.
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