Learning Chinese

I've been taking lessons again, and its going good. Better than any other attempt I've made. Its clicking a little easier this time; maybe the neccessity of it is increasing my concentration, or my desire, or maybe because I've my longer exposure. I know a lot more that I think I do. Sometimes it's really exciting. Like today, we did animals because Gemma is learning animals and so I want to be able to teach her. The exciting thing is that in Chinese all you have to do to change a big animal to a baby animal is add one word; xiao (which means small). So you have cow, small cow, pig, small pig, cat, small cat, etc, instead of cow, calf, pig, piglet, cat, kitten, etc... So that was cool.

The frustrating part is the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. It will still take months for me to use all this vocab in real situations and to get to the point where I can figure out what to say in time to say it someone. Now instead of having 1 sentence conversations with people I can have two sentences. But then I still get lost; conversations spread like branches of a tree and although I my know what to do when someone says, "________", there are 10 other things they could say instead. But I will NOT give up. In fact, I am gong to type up my vocab right now for your viewing pleasure.

From memory (without looking at my notes)
ma/horse
ya zi/duck
niu/cow
jiu/pig
ji/chicken
mu ji/ mama chicken
gong ji/rooster

Hao Shi Duo /costco
ding hao/wellcome
Jia Le Fu/Carrefour

Lao ban zai bu zai/Is the manager here?
Wo zhi shi kan yi kan/I'm just looking

OK, just going to copy out of my book now for practice.
ping guo/apple
ba le/guave
pu tao/grapes
xiang jiao/banana
xiang gua/cantaloupe
ning men/lemon
man gui/mango
mu gua/papaya
bai xiang guo/passionfruit
feng li/pineapple
cao mei/strawberry
Ju zi/tangerine
xi gua/watermelon

I knew most of the fruits already, which surprised me. Now veggies:
gao li cai (cabbage)
dou ya/sprouts
hua ye cai/broccoli (hua means flower, ye means grandpa, like in Kai Lan, ye ye. SO brocolii is flower grandpa)
hua cai is cauliflour.
yu mi/corn
si ji dou/green bean
cong/green onion
qing jiao/green pepper
yang cong/onion
ma ling shu/potato
bo cai/spinich
fan qie/tomato

another cool thing about Chinese and animals is that there is only one word to add to any animal to make it the meat product. No beef, pork, poultry in Chinese, only the word ro which means meat. Niu ro = cow meat = beef. Ma ro = horse meat (to which Annabelle my teacher laughs and says, not in Taiwan, only Japan! ha ha)

mian bao/bread
quin mai mian bao/whole wheat bread
Ni yao mai she me? What do you want to buy?
Wo yao mai shui guo. I want to buy fruit.

ling quian/ change (small money)

Ni yao mai ji ge? How many do you want to buy?

nong chang/farm

dong wu/animals
dong wi yuan/zoo (animal place)
chong wu/pet
ke ai xiao dong wu/cute little animals (I kid you not, this is apparently a way to categorize animals in Chinese!!)

OK< enough. But that actually does help me a lot! Maybe more Chinese blogging in the future?