Deborah Fallows: Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language

From Booklist: Fallows manages to take the relatively dry subject of translation and create a warm and witty memoir. Dwelling less on her own feelings then on the intricacies of language mastery, she shares experiences after she and her husband moved to China that taught her just how complex Mandarin can be. Such as the fact that there are 400 syllables in Mandarin as opposed to 10 times that number in English, making tone crucial in conversation. Fallows makes all this fascinating by writing in a thoroughly engaging manner that not only invites readers into her experiences, but also delights them with her discoveries. There is confusion with a Cantonese cab driver, the manicurist who envisioned “almost perfect happiness,” and the employee at Taco Bell who thought Fallows wanted to hug him (she was inquiring about takeout). From observations about maps, naming children, and the struggle over one language for a nation where over 300 million speak something other than Mandarin, Fallows takes readers on a ride through Chinese culture that is as entertaining as it is informative.





From Time Magazine: Deborah Fallows and her husband, the Atlantic's James Fallows, are no strangers to life in a foreign country. Over the course of their careers they've upped sticks and moved to foreign lands, from Africa to Southeast Asia. But even their many years as expatriates could not have prepared them for what they would experience throughout their three years living in a country as overwhelming and chaotic as China. In her book, Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language, Fallows, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard University, details the struggles and triumphs she had while learning one of the world's most difficult languages. She spoke to TIME about what her study of Mandarin taught her about life in China, the country's dizzying transformation and the value of learning languages.





From The New York Times: [Deborah Fallows] spent three years living in China with her husband, the journalist James Fallows. Since she’s a linguist by training, her method of getting under the skin of the country was to immerse herself in its language. In “Dreaming in Chinese,” she uses key phrases and concepts to unlock aspects of the society that interested or surprised her, casting light along the way on many idiosyncrasies of the Chinese view of the world. Fallows doesn’t arrive with many preconceptions. Instead, she takes the Chinese as they see and present themselves. And she soon discovers that what the Chinese think is important isn’t always what we think is important. One thing they’re interested in is ensuring good luck. This explains why the Beijing Olympics began on Aug. 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m. Eight, ba, rhymes with fa, “as in fa cai, which means ‘to become wealthy,’ ” making it a very auspicious number. And even though Aug. 8 was well into the rainy season, it didn’t rain.

How Language is Changing from KERA's Think Podcast

Syndicated description:

[2010-12-20 13:00:00] From the archives: How is language changing and what do we lose when a language disappears forever? In July we talked with linguist and author David Crystal. His latest work is "A Little Book of Language" (Yale, 2010).

Download the podcast here. Other books by David Crystal: How Language Works, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, Words Words Words, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language

Global English: Finance from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Leslie Dunton-Downer, author of The English is Coming!: How One Language is Sweeping the World, joins us again to explore some of the words and phrases from other languages picked up by the world's current lingua franca.

Listen to the podcast here. See also: Kompakt & Visuell Oper, Essential Shakespeare Handbook

Why Do We Procrastinate? from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

Why put off until tomorrow what you can postpone until next week? It’s the motto of many a procrastinator and something that most of us have said at one point or another. And what’s the big deal? Is procrastination such a bad thing? Don’t some of us actually work better under pressure Chrisoula Andreou and Mark White don’t think so. They’re the co-editors of a new book called “The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination.” They explain why we procrastinate, and whether it’s actually good for anything.

You can catch the WNYC program here, in its entirety.