Like many good stories, this one starts when a boy meets a girl. She is from Taiwan. I am from the United States. We fall in love.
Despite her Taiwanese roots, her English is very good. She earned her undergraduate degree in English. I did not earn a degree in the study of any foreign language, much less Chinese. I am your typical ignorant monolingual American. I understand a bit of Spanish, but that's only because I heard it all the time when I was growing up. Some of it just seeped into me like sunlight. The speech center of my brain has a well-developed tan, but I'll never pass for a native.
In an effort toward fairness; for my own enrichment; and to develop a better understanding of the world's most common language, I decided to learn Mandarin Chinese. As if that wasn't enough, I am also attempting to learn Traditional Chinese characters. I know, Simplified is more modern and common. However, my girlfriend is Taiwanese. If I desire to remain in her good graces, I'd better learn right.
This website is a record of my experience. I'm not buying expensive language software. I'm not signing up for some kind of course. I have and will continue to purchase a book here and there. I'm a big fan of the iPhone and continue to look at new apps being developed for language education. I have a native speaker to practice with, even if she does laugh everytime I try to say something in Mandarin. Maybe my experiences will be helpful to other language students – and perhaps other students can contribute to my self-designed course of study.
About the student/author
I am a graphic designer by way of web development. As a result, I have a professional interest in designing websites and learning web publishing technologies. I have undertaken several web projects as a way of becoming familiar (or proficient) with new development tools, and this website is another such project. I probably didn't need to develop this website using Joomla, but it seemed like a good way to learn.