Lìzi, Lǐzǐ, Lízǐ

I think the entire country of China is designed to mess with foreigners.

I've been studying Chinese for about one year, but my listening skills are really horrible. I can't understand 99% of what's going on around me, and that last remaining percent is usually like "I" or "you" or "Hello?" Not very indicative of what people want from me.

Even when I understand the context of the situation, like telling a taxi driver where I want to go, I can say what I want, but can't understand what they're saying. I got used to listening to a Beijing accent, but the Shanghai accent is different, and I have a hard time distinguishing an "S" from an "SH," a "Z" from a "J," and a "UAN" from an "ENG." I end up getting whole syllables wrong and still can't tell the difference even after people correct me two or three times.

The local Shanghai dialect is another layer. I can sometimes recognize when people are using Shanghai-hua because I don't even understand the sounds they're using, but I'm still never sure (I'm having a hard enough time with Mandarin sounds). It's like this all over the country, I'm told. You get used to one region, but then are totally thrown off if you go to another.

So in my mind I can tell the difference between the three words in the title for chestnut 栗子, plum 李子, and pear 梨子(or rather, "Korean pear"). But listening to people say the words totally throws me off, because I can't distinguish the tones people use.

I've always known learning Chinese would be hard. But between tones, pronunciation differences, local dialects, Chinese characters, and messy handwriting styles conspiring against me, I never realized it would also be so opaque.