Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Dreaming in Chinese
    Unavailable
    Dreaming in Chinese
    Unavailable
    Dreaming in Chinese
    Ebook165 pages2 hours

    Dreaming in Chinese

    By Deborah Fellows

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Why can't the Chinese say "I love you"? Can you wear pyjamas on the streets of Shanghai? Why is it so difficult to hear Chinese tones? In this charming, original book, Harvard linguist Deborah Fallows draws on her three years of living and working in China to provide the answers to these puzzles and many more. Using her own struggles and triumphs with the study of Mandarin as a guide, Fallows manages to describe the workings of the language in a way that is both intelligible and entertaining. Her anecdotes and stories illustrate how Westerners have to think in a fundamentally different way to survive in China. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in China, be they first time tourists, seasoned business people, or just the idly curious. Accessible and revelatory, it will help you discover this extraordinary nation for yourself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShort Books Ltd
    Release dateApr 15, 2010
    ISBN9781907595370
    Unavailable
    Dreaming in Chinese

    Related to Dreaming in Chinese

    Related ebooks

    Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How Chia-Lun Chang Found Power in Poetry

      Mar 23, 2023

      "Are we crazy, officially? Who can tell us if we are sick or not?" The post How Chia-Lun Chang Found Power in Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      By Jessie Tu

      Dec 4, 2019

      My mother and I were born in the same country, though we don’t speak the same language. We migrated to Australia from Taiwan when I was four years old, and though we only spoke Mandarin at home, my vocabulary never expanded beyond that of a four-year

      5 min read

    • Article

      Spitting in the Face of Empire: The Millions Interviews Nisi Shawl

      Oct 2, 2017

      I think of speculative fiction as basically taking care of all of our needs when it comes to imagining ourselves, imagining ourselves doing better, imagining ourselves in the future, imagining ourselves in the past. The post Spitting in the Face of

      8 min read

    • Article

      Kanishk Tharoor on Writing Outside of Western Traditions

      Mar 16, 2017

      For years I knew Kanishk Tharoor primarily as the author of thoughtful essays about history, in the broadest sense: not just what happened in the past but also how humans have explored the past, made sense of the past, contested the past. So when I s

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fighting to Write Between Two Languages

      Apr 4, 2018

      1. Growing up, I developed my Spanish as a form of discipline. Spanish belonged at home, and English belonged at school. Only when my sister and I spoke did our bilingual conversation find itself walking in trepidation across the bridge we had built

      7 min read

    • Article

      Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding

      Jun 18, 2018

      This interview first appeared in Chinese at the Shanghai Review of Books on June 3, 2018. I spent my first Iowan winter day at home reading Tinkers, the 2010 Pulitzer Fiction Prize winner. Outside, snow began to fall. I poured myself a cup of hot tea

      19 min read

    • Article

      Broadening the Bookshelves

      Sep 24, 2022

      Broadening the Bookshelves
      6 min read

    • Article

      Adeel Akhtar

      Mar 25, 2024

      Adeel Akhtar
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cecily Wong On The Thrill Of Nostalgia

      Aug 22, 2022

      Like love, like ambition, nostalgia persists beyond logic, beyond our control. The post Cecily Wong on the Thrill of Nostalgia appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Broadening The Bookshelves

      Dec 31, 2022

      Broadening The Bookshelves
      4 min read

    • Article

      Arrivals and Departures

      Mar 4, 2024

      Arrivals and Departures
      6 min read

    • Article

      Xiaolu Guo: ‘It Would Be Tacky To Ask: Can You Forgive Me For Writing This?’

      Apr 8, 2023

      Chinese-British author and film-maker Xiaolu Guo left China two decades ago to live in London. A writer of novels and memoirs, she has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize and won the US National Book Critics Circle award in 2017. Her work explores

      4 min read

    • Article

      Louis Theroux

      Feb 21, 2022

      Louis Theroux
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tenets Of Native American Literature

      Dec 18, 2021

      I make my first mistake with Professor Michaelsun Knapp, who teaches at Riverside City College and California State University, San Bernardino, about three-quarters of the way through our time together. We’re talking about where Native American liter

      5 min read

    • Article

      The ‘Foreign Lei Feng’

      Jul 13, 2023

      Many friends have asked me why I participate in so many volunteer activities and whether I get tired, given volunteering is a rather laborious undertaking. My answer is always: “I am tired, no doubt about that, but the more I volunteer to do, the mor

      4 min read

    • Article

      Jon Snow

      Mar 6, 2023

      Jon Snow
      5 min read

    • Article

      Exploring The Boundaries

      Oct 2, 2018

      I have been babysitting my student’s two-year-old boy for the last three hours, while my student and his wife go out for the night. The boy is bubbly. He has the habit of bouncing on his toes when he is excited, and he is excited about everything. He

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Original Philosophy of Flow

      Jun 3, 2020

      We have stopped. A pandemic encircles the world. Many of us are either partially or entirely isolated, keeping our distances. The planes are mostly grounded, the non-essential stores are closed. The hospitals are filled with people who are sick and d

      3 min read

    Reviews for Dreaming in Chinese

    3.5/5

    128 ratings40 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Deborah Fallows writes a simple and sentimental book correlating the Chinese language and her experience with it to her views of the culture itself, as a foreigner who lived there for three years.

      It is part travel memoir, linguistic essay, and Chinese cultural blog.

      What's impressive is not necessarily the book itself or its writing---it's that the author was able to conquer learning and using one of the most difficult languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, to learn, write, speak, and understand. And she does so with humble respect, quiet confidence, and affection.

      This book is a motivational piece to one who might consider tackling the language or backpacking to China for more than a week. Its cultural implications are as honest and politically correct as a foreigner can be, who attempts to integrate him or herself into the culture itself.

      It's a soft introduction to the ebb and flow of the life lived in Shanghai and Beijing and a kind discourse on learning a foreign language---its frustrations and its joys.

    • 3/5
      Anecdotally written -- it almost reminded me of blog posts, although I don't know that it started out as a blog. Interesting, but slight. Recommended if you are interested in China or Chinese. If you know a lot about languages or linguistics you are likely to be disappointed, as it does not explore the Chinese language in much depth.
    • 3/5
      This was a good, quick read (I read the whole book in one sitting on a bus to New York), but it's definitely not my favorite of the expats in China genre. I found myself wishing that Fallows had either gone there more with the language (more research and nitty-gritty on the Chinese language, rather than just anecdotes), or had included more personal experiences. By splitting the difference between the two, I felt like the book was lacking a little something.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting book from my perspective because I am a native speaker of mandarin Chinese, so the approach that Deborah Fallows takes: approaching the Chinese culture through the initial attempts to learn the Chinese language was a very good one. After a while though the inadequacies of the English language to deal with the nuance heavy Chinese became very pronounced. The sounding guides that Fallows put in the book was of no help, I resorted to reading the Chinese characters to understand her intention. The other part of the book, understanding the Chinese people and the culture was actually quite charming. Fallows and her husband refrained from the usual condescending approach of many westerners, they actually sought to learn from the people without too many preconceived notion. The stories she told were informative and in many ways quite representative of daily life in China. The book is pretty much devoid of controversy, just some nice story telling.
    • 4/5
      I found this slim book thoroughly enjoyable. Linguist Deborah Fallows proves an amiable American guide to Chinese culture through her thoughtful engagement with its official language, Mandarin.
    • 4/5
      Short but interesting memoir of the author's attempts to learn Chinese after she and her husband moved to China. She talks about some of the areas of cultural difference by relating them to the differences between Chinese and English. I feel like I actually understand the concept of tones in a language now (not that they'd be easy to learn to use if I tried learning Mandarin though)
    • 5/5
      I didn't expect to be chuckling and laughing out loud reading this book on language and linguistics. Deborah Fallows writes about the three years she spent in China, diligently learning more about Mandarin and other Chinese languages and about the culture - linguistic and otherwise. Misunderstandings because of pronunciation problems put her in amusing situations, such as when she asked for takeout in Chinese at a restaurant but mistakenly told the waiter she wanted a big hug. A brief overview of the history of Chinese language, oral and written, past and present, given in an easy and down to earth way for the general reader.
    • 3/5
      Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love and Language was sent to me by the publisher through the GoodReads First Reads program. I looked into the book a bit before I got started, and learned that it was written by Deborah Fallows, who is a Harvard graduate with a PhD in linguistics - though you'd never know it from reading this.The book was written in a quasi-diary format, and each chapter focused on a different language concept. Tone, diction, dialects, etc. I am a person who's generally very interested in languages and I certainly learned a few things from this book. The author discusses her experiences in moving to Shanghai and learning the language, and many of the things that came up were quite unusual and made me think.However, this book lacked the depth that I hoped a linguist could bring to it. Each tidbit was just that; a brief glossing over of a much larger issue. Learning a language is such a rich experience, and it's about more than just communicating with people - it's about understanding their culture as well. Mrs. Fallows does touch on this, but I really fell that with her background she could have provided more insight. As it's written, this book could have been written by anyone who's moved to a foreign country.I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who wants a deep understanding of the way that language affects culture, or the way it's formed by culture. I also wouldn't recommend it for someone who just wants a light, breezy read - though it is that, it's also a bit dry at points. Overall, I'll give it 3/5 stars but I do believe it has a very specific, small audience.
    • 3/5
      Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows follows the author as she tries to learn and understand a language, culture and people. Her experiences are both frustrating, confusing and fascinating. The book is less about her personal experiences and more about the history of the language and how it defines the Chinese people. Sometimes the grammar lessons could be a little dry and confusing but ultimately, it is a fascinating look at this ancient language. It was a little hard to follow her train of thought sometimes as she jumped from subject to subject as she eventually came back around to her original point. I occasionally had to go back and read the lead-in paragraphs to remind myself where the chapter was heading. It is hard to relate to the author since the book was so literal and I susequently never really connected with her or her experience. According to her author's bio, she has worked in research and has a PhD in linguistics and this clinical approach to writing shows. Her process of breaking down an incredibly complex language was interesting and easy to understand. Interspersed within the grammar lessons are stories about the culture and history of the Chinese people.
    • 4/5
      Lovers of language and cultural immersion will find this an enjoyable read. Those linguists with a real facility for acquiring new languages are to be envied above all others. The cultural mis-steps and misunderstandings on the way as Fallows meanders her way into Chinese life are a real pleasure. When you begin not just to speak a language not your own, but to think and dream in it, then you have arrived. When the day came that she bawled out a cabbie in Chinese for cheating her, then she knew she had made it and you will too.
    • 4/5
      The author uses the learning of the Chinese language and its nuances as her primary entry into understanding Chinese society. I found it quite enlightening and that it added to my picture gleaned from other sources. It also helped me understand in a general sort of way how the Mandarin spoken and written language works. It's well written and is easily read.
    • 4/5
      What a fun book. I've never had the opportunity (yet!) to travel to China. When I do I will try to learn at least a few phrases. Fallows doesn't offer much hope, yet in a perverse way, she does.I did NOT win this book from EarlyReviewers, but realized I can order those books that sound intriguing from my public library. I look forward to an interesting future!
    • 4/5
      This book will be of interest to English-speaking students of Chinese, and more generally to people like me who have never visited but are eager to learn as much as possible about modern China. That said, the book tries with only mixed success to be two different things: an accessible discussion of how Mandarin Chinese works as a language, and how its differences from English shape differences in Chinese and American worldviews; and a memoir about daily life as an expatriate in China. Perhaps another author could meld these successfully, but I doubt it. The portions focusing on the language were the most effective and exciting; in particular, I appreciated chapter 10, which discusses the relationship between Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, and various dialects; and chapter 3, about language play in Chinese (including a 92 word poem composed of a single syllable repeated over and over with a different meaning each time). The chapters with personal stories were more often lost on me, in part because many of the stories didn't deliver a punchline; several wrapped up in midstream and left me rereading to see if I'd missed something. I imagine they would carry more weight if I knew the author personally; she comes across as a person it would be a pleasure to know.
    • 3/5
      I really loved a lot of the examples and snippets I learned from this book! The 92-shi story that other reviewers have mentioned, the wordplay examples, the doubled verbs, the orphans' names, &c. The book delivered on its promise with those, and overall I found it to be a light, enjoyable read.Still, I rolled my eyes to learn that the author has trouble with the way Mandarin associates the word for up with prior in time, and the word for down with later in time. She wrote about having trouble remembering "this (to us) arbitrary system. Out teacher seemed surprised that we had so much trouble, baffled that we didn't find it normal that place and time were melded into a single word, which was the way her world worked."As a native American English speaker, I'm baffled as well! Has the author never pushed back a meeting or moved up an appointment, told a friend that her destination is 5 minutes away, or had a deadline coming up?That one quibble aside, this really was a charming collection of anecdotes and linguistic quirks, and I'd cheerfully recommend it as such.
    • 2/5
      As an introduction to the Chinese language, I found it rather weak. It is much more a travelogue plus the author's musings on the language than to be of any use to anyone who might want to know more about the language. The only chapter that interested me was chapter 10, about dialects, although all factual information can be found in much more detail on the Internet.As a factual introduction, I would still suggest, for example, About Chinese by Richard Newnham, or a book I have recently read, which tells you all about the experience of learning Mandarin, Keeping my Mandarin alive. Lee Kuan Yew's language learning experience by Chua Chee Lay.
    • 4/5
      I wish I could write a book like this, exploring the foreign cultures I have lived in through their languages, so I'm grateful that Deborah Fallows has written such a graceful, perceptive account of her explorations of the Chinese people and the Chinese language. This is a warm, elegant book.
    • 3/5
      If you love learning languages and think that the best way to learn about people and culture is through language, you will love this little book. It's basically a language learner's diary. The chapters cover topics like dialects, tones, different Chinese words and expressions. Despite the fact that the author is a linguist, this is not a book that focuses specifically on linguistics. It simply attempts to show how culture is reflected in language and vice versa. I think if you are learning Chinese and finding it quite difficult, this book will be quite encouraging. The author herself says that it is quite challenging for her, particularly the visual part of it, i.e. writing and reading. Despite this, she obviously enjoys learning the language. It's a very quick read, and I found it quite entertaining. I thought the chapter endings were rather abrupt and at times sort of awkward, like the type of endings you find in school essays, but overall a very enjoyable read, particularly if you are interested in language learning or thinking about learning Mandarin.
    • 4/5
      Learning a language is difficult, and Chinese is one of the most difficult. When Deborah and her husband moved to China, she attempted to learn the language and to fit in with her environment. She makes the journey funny, sympathetic and demystifying and exposes the hidden joys of the Chinese people. This is not a novel to read just to be reading a book but for someone who likes and even loves languages the book will take you on an adventure you would not have gone on without Deborah's excellent guidance. I did not come away knowing the language, but did come away with a better understanding of the language and the people. I highly recommend this book .
    • 3/5
      I can see how this would be exciting and interesting for a multiculturalist looking to get a quick picture of modern China and its language, but for someone who's lived in China, this book comes across as a fellow naif posing as an expert and presenting her thoughts and experiences as particularly illustrative. But maybe I'm just jealous that she's the one with the book contract.
    • 4/5
      A well-written, accessible account of one American woman's experience of learning Chinese in China and of what it taught her about Chinese people. As someone also learning Chinese, I found it has given me a useful perspective on the task and some encouragement on how to go forward into the dark forest that the language can seem to be. The author's background in linguistics provides some weight to her observations which are nevertheless contained in an easily digested, entertaining introduction to certain aspects of the Chinese language and what it tells us about the Chinese people.
    • 5/5
      I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Deborah is married to James Fallows, whom I've heard a number of times on NPR. Regardless of the connection, Dreaming in Chinese deserves acclaim in its own right. Each chapter highlights a feature, idiom, idiosyncrasy or eccentricity within the Chinese language and how that surfaces within the greater culture. Like Japanese, Chinese is a very visual language, and one that overwhelms as much as it reveals. Having spent four years in Japan learning Japanese, I can relate to Ms. Fallows' frustrations, successes and failures. I noticed interesting similarities between her language and cultural experiences and my own--although the spoken languages differ significantly (linguistically unalike), each uses the Chinese characters (kanji) as their predominate form of writing. Unlike Fallows, however, I found learning all aspects of Japanese a pleasant and relatively satisfying challenge--perhaps because of the lack of tonal differentials in Japanese that she clearly, and somewhat painfully, highlights in several parts of the book.Fallows writes both an informative and entertaining narrative that reads quickly without lacking depth or intrigue. It is a book I plan to share with my writing group as an inspiration for writing about our own experiences about Asia.
    • 4/5
      This book was a lot of fun. I didn't know much about Chinese going into the book. I like that the book teaches about China's culture through its language. I found it good light entertainment, the kind of book to leave in the bathroom. What I got out of this book was that I will never try to learn Chinese if I don't have to!
    • 4/5
      By coincidence, I received this book while I was tutoring a couple in basic/survival Chinese before they relocated to Beijing for a new job. Right away, I recommended it to them and they purchased it (immediately after its release to the public) to read on iPad. Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows (spouse of James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly) is a light, readable semi-diary of her encounters with the difficulties and pleasures of learning Chinese and living in Shanghai and Beijing. Her explanations are clear and concise, making such a vast subject as the Chinese language accessible and fathomable to beginning students. For deeper insight, John deFrancis's The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy is a must for serious students.
    • 4/5
      Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love and Language is a nonfiction work that gives a brief yet comprehensive look at Deborah Fallows life while in China and the way that the language of tongue, body and soul influenced her and others.The way the the book flows reminds me somewhat of a book that one might read in a college course on Chinese(Mandarin) or the Chinese Lifestyle. It's very informational but at the same time it's simple, smooth flowing, and easy to understand. Fallows incorporated in pictures, charts, maps, footnotes,a nifty little Mandarin pronunciation guide and helpful internet links which help the reader to understand the way things work and how they might connect to lifestyles. I enjoyed reading about someone else's look into a language that isn't originally their own as well as the helpful and enjoyable stories she included as well. I really liked the characters at the beginning of each chapter that kind of summed it all up, to me that kind of made it easier to jump into the next chapter. To me this was a fun and short read.There were some small editing mistakes but nothing that distracted from the story. I won this through the First Reads program on GoodReads.
    • 4/5
      When you dream in the language of another country, you know you have reached your destination of assimilation into a different culture. Dreaming In Chinese describes the journey that Ms. Fallows embarked on when she and her husband agreed to live in China. A book on language could easily become tedious, but this one came alive with the personal stories that give the reader a genuine understanding of China and its people.Learning a new language can be daunting. Fallows doesn't make it sound easy, but it does seem like a worthwhile undertaking that has many rewards. This book gives a glimpse into a fascinating world where west can meet east.I read this book to learn a few Chinese phrases to "impress" the Chinese visitors that I come in contact with occasionally. More meaningful than memorizing a few rote words was the greater appreciation I obtained for a new way of looking at a part of the world unfamiliar to me. This book is recommended for anyone interested in expanding their horizons to become part of our shrinking global community.
    • 3/5
      This book was less a memoir than a series of inter-related essays. Regardless, I enjoyed it and found it a really interesting read. I would have preferred if the book had a little more about the author's time in China (in the tradition of familiar essays - more of the "familiar" in addition to the scholarly). But I thought it was an interesting way of learning about the Chinese culture.
    • 4/5
      Dreaming in Chinese is a the story of how learning the Chinese language gives one a glimpse in the the Chinese way of life. It is written in a very straightforward style but is not without charm. Fallows can back the rather whimsical look at one of the world's hardest languages for western language learners with the poignant knowledge of a trained linguist. Her stories, which might seem to be light on content, are actually quick revealing and she chose each chapter's focus well as taken together, they do a decent job illustrating several key points of the Chinese mindset.While language learners and linguists will enjoy the book, it might seem to others that the book is somewhat shallow. The author's life abroad, while a definite challenge, can come off sounding rather privileged. Learning a language is not easy and Fallows doesn't portray it as such, but she constantly references their travels and multiple homes which can make the trials of learning Mandarin seem like a luxury rather than a necessity. As another reviewer mentioned, her presentation of Chinese varies and the lack of consistency can be disruptive to the flow of the text as well as the whole of book. If possible, the Chinese should be presented with the character, pinyin, and translation.The book is very readable, mostly enjoyable, and well thought out.
    • 4/5
      This book is about an American woman living in China and trying to learn Chinese. I very much enjoyed the author's stories of trying to manage life in such a difficult language. She does an excellent job of tying aspects of the language to the culture, and to cultural differences between Chinese speakers and English speakers. For example, one of the essays is about the use of pronouns--the reasons why Chinese does not use many pronouns and how that affects (or is effected by) the Chinese approach to self. She obviously approached language-learning in a thoughtful way, and she is a good, clear writer. This is a short book, and I wasn't ready for it to be over!
    • 5/5
      "Dreaming in Chinese" is Deborah Fallows' memoir of living and traveling in China for three years and her struggle to learn to speak and understand Mandarin Chinese. Fallows is no stranger to language-learning, being a professional linguist with a doctorate degree in the field, but Chinese is one of the world's most difficult languages for Westerners to learn. There are all kinds of oddities about Chinese (oddities to non-native speakers, of course) that make it uniquely difficult to learn for those not raised with it from birth or from a very early age -- starting with the fact that the Chinese language is actually many different languages and dialects. Mandarin is China's official language, but there are also Cantonese, Shanghainese, Wu, and scores of others. Most are as different from each other as German is from English. Chinese also has a very small stock of syllables -- about 400, as opposed to 4,000 in English -- from which all Chinese words are built. The result, as you might guess, is literally countless homonyms -- words built from syllables that sound alike but have different meanings. Since the number of syllables Chinese has to work with is so small, each syllable can have dozens of different meanings. Chinese also uses tones to convey meaning, so that the same syllable spoken with a falling tone, or a rising tone, or a falling-then-rising tone, can mean very different things. The result, not surprisingly, is endless opportunities for confusion and misunderstanding, even after years of studying the language. Fallows knew from the get-go that mastering the tones, grammar, and syllabic structure of Mandarin would not be easy. What she did not realize when she started out, and only began to understand over many months and years of living in Shanghai and Beijing, was the intensity of the connection between the Chinese language and the Chinese people. What she discovered was that the quirks and peculiarities of Chinese grammar, word usage, and tonal pronunciation were windows into the Chinese soul.Fallows' informal, conversational writing style and her sense of humor make this book an enormous pleasure to read. As her understanding of Mandarin grows and deepens, so does her appreciation for Chinese culture and history, and just for the sheer wondrous complexity of what it means to be Chinese.
    • 5/5
      Chinese may be the most difficult language for a Westerner to learn, Deborah Fallows writes in a clever book of essays about how Chinese culture is reflected through its language. Fallows loves languages and linguistics, and when she and her husband are sent to live in China for three years, she uses her time there to study Mandarin. The way she deals with this subject is not only fascinating, but it really does allow us great insights into China and her people. She writes about what seems to westerners to be Chinese rudeness but is really thier way of being polite. She spends generous time with the subject of the difficultly of understanding the tones of Chinese language, and how her inability to articulate tones would often lead her into humorous situations. She discusses gendered pronouns and how Chinese have difficulty with that concept. She writes of the multitude of Chinese languages and how they are all tied together by the characters: people who cannot understand each other's language across China can read the same characters. She has another essay on the development and complexity of Chinese characters. I marvel at the brilliant discoveries one can make about a culture when examining the intricacies of language. I feel like this primer would have served me well just before I went to China this past spring. My husband, who is a language maven, is next in line to read this. Anyone who is interested in language and how it is revelatory would love this collection.