Way back last summer, I guess it was, I made mention of going back to school for one class after many years away from the books. That class is nearing its end in about 6 weeks and while I'm probably sitting on an 85 plus average it has been somewhat useful in my new life. Since last August I've been studying Mandarin Chinese - symbols and Pinyan (which is the phonetic way of spelling the character sounds of simplified Chinese. I've found it rather easy to learn the symbols and convert such to Pinyan and from there to English. From English to Pinyan though is a bit more difficult. In the course of this study I learned that not only is genealogy from the Scandinavian countries a bear, so too can the Chinese. There is of course father and mother but after that even with siblings it becomes a bear. There are words for older sister, older brother, younger sister and younger brother. Words that a Chinese person would know exactly which relative you are speaking of as each has its own particular word. In English we are not that imaginative. We have parents, siblings (brother or sister), cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. In Chinese there are at least 18 words for relatives on the father's side plus another 18 words on the mother's side! My new daughter gets a kick out of my pronouncing Chinese words, corrects it and rewrites symbols that don't meet her approval. The Chinese I do have has helped when pictures, pointing or English don't quite get the point across. As my daughter starts her 3rd week of school we wonder where our conversation will go next as she is also taking Spanish, which will be her 4th language after 2 dialects of Chinese and English. Soon I hope to be back in the swing of things as we go through this major reorganization of our lives. Tim

It sounsd like your all learning some new things :) 4 languages....I have enough trouble with 1 :) John -----Original Message----- From: nychenan-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:nychenan-bounces@rootsweb.com]On Behalf Of Tim Stowell Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:51 AM To: nychenan@rootsweb.com; nymadiso@rootsweb.com; nycortla@rootsweb.com Subject: [NYCHENAN] old dogs new tricks Way back last summer, I guess it was, I made mention of going back to school for one class after many years away from the books. That class is nearing its end in about 6 weeks and while I'm probably sitting on an 85 plus average it has been somewhat useful in my new life. Since last August I've been studying Mandarin Chinese - symbols and Pinyan (which is the phonetic way of spelling the character sounds of simplified Chinese. I've found it rather easy to learn the symbols and convert such to Pinyan and from there to English. From English to Pinyan though is a bit more difficult. In the course of this study I learned that not only is genealogy from the Scandinavian countries a bear, so too can the Chinese. There is of course father and mother but after that even with siblings it becomes a bear. There are words for older sister, older brother, younger sister and younger brother. Words that a Chinese person would know exactly which relative you are speaking of as each has its own particular word. In English we are not that imaginative. We have parents, siblings (brother or sister), cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. In Chinese there are at least 18 words for relatives on the father's side plus another 18 words on the mother's side! My new daughter gets a kick out of my pronouncing Chinese words, corrects it and rewrites symbols that don't meet her approval. The Chinese I do have has helped when pictures, pointing or English don't quite get the point across. As my daughter starts her 3rd week of school we wonder where our conversation will go next as she is also taking Spanish, which will be her 4th language after 2 dialects of Chinese and English. Soon I hope to be back in the swing of things as we go through this major reorganization of our lives. Tim ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NYCHENAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message