My Chinese not so good

Nathan is still studying Chinese like crazy.  I still get a huge kick hearing Chinese coming out of his blonde head.  As for me... not so much.  I do know how to say, "I'm sorry, my Chinese is not so good." in Mandarin.  And it's only thanks to this song.  (Do you think the Chinese would be more forgiving, charmed even, if I were to sing it?) 

I really need to learn how to say "I'm sorry, my Chinese is non-existent." 

The State Dept is kind enough to let me learn Chinese through Rosetta Stone but with adjusting to having 3 kids and all, I just haven't had a chance.  And to be honest, I found that with what little I did study, Chinese didn't come to me easily.  It's just one of those languages where you need to make it your full time job to learn, I guess.  Maybe it's just me.  I took Spanish in high school and college and I still remember a good deal of it.  I guess I'm just better suited to Romance languages?  I can still sing the past tense verbs song to the tune of the Banana Boat song.

I've heard mixed things from friends in China though... some say knowing Chinese is a must.  But some say you can squeak by with a lot of charades and Google translate. Hoping for the latter.

Pinyin

Nathan and I are very excited to start learning Chinese.  I won't lie, though.  We are also intimidated and a bit nervous.  It's like the hardest language in the world, right?  Nathan doesn't start language training at FSI until July but we are trying to get a head start taking a peek at Pinyin.  Pinyin is the official system of writing out the Chinese script into Latin (English, ABCs) script. It's useful for knowing how to pronounce Chinese, since it's not a phonetic language.  Spanish and Korean are soooo easy in this respect.  I taught Tron how to read and write in Korean in one night, no joke.

We found this little gem on Youtube and had a date night yesterday reciting it along with the video.  I had to keep reminding myself that I will not be speaking Chinese in a little kid's shouting voice...

 

The fact that it takes 6 minutes to learn all the sounds in Chinese Pinyin (in song, anyway) should tell you something about this language.  For those of you who are familiar with Pinyin, any tips would be greatly appreciated!!