On the phone, Zhan Fangmei told us her class would be held in Building 5. Anyone on campus could tell us where it was if we said it in Chinese; however, my Chinese is not always unreliable. Joe, who is studying, doesn't trust himself to speak yet.
Via the Internet, Fangmei sent me the Pinyin-- the Romanized version of the Chinese: di wu jiao xue lou. Problem is, I don't always get the tones right, so I may not be understood. So I also asked Fangmei to send me the characters so I could show the address to people on campus:
第五教学楼
Had I been at home, I would simply have printed out the message, and anyone who read Chinese could have helped me. But I don't have a printer here. So I had to copy the address by hand. An artistic person would have no trouble. I, however, am not artistic. My Chinese instruction has stressed oral communication; but I know a bit about writing characters. There's a particular in which one must make the marks in order to get the right shape.
So... I copied. My Chinese writing is large, painful, and childlike. But it WAS understood, and we got where we needed to go.
Above: Joe in front of Building 5.
4 comments:
Does 第五教学楼 translate to building 5? I would think that only 2 pictographs should be needed for that.
I think it translates as something like "Instructional building 5."
第五(diwu)means the fifth,教学(jiaoxue)means teaching, and 楼(lou)means building.Putting together, it is The Fifth Teaching Building（第五教学楼）
Actually In China，we used to name the building like this,from "第一" to“第N”，maybe it is the easiest way to distinguish them.
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