Communicating While in Asia

Frankly, it's not that easy

We have all learnt languages. When it comes to using them, can we breeze through or do we have a lot of difficulty?

Without going into cultural differences, we can all prepare before a trip to Asia, even though it's been years since we've studied the language.

Learning a language is also a considerable investment of your time and money. You want to practise speaking and not end up with all the other tourists.

Even though a lot of different dialects are spoken, you should be able to get through using the official languages. With Chinese, learning to read and write is important as words are written using the same characters regardless of the dialect/language. Even Vietnamese was once written using Chinese characters.

When e-mailing or writing letters in Chinese, you also have to get used to formal phrasing. Or maybe, I'm not so subtle and they are being very polite.

The Parts of a Letter

Letters in Mandarin Chinese

A letter should have the date, your address, a salutation, a message, a close and your signature. This is a sample letter :

2010年 11月 6日

LIN MengPing

Blk 1 Ghim Moh Road #09-23

Singapore 270001

张美美小姐

ABC公司

77 Robinson Road #05-01

Singapore 068896

张主任:

申请表格

今天，我从报上看到贵局的征聘启事，

很感兴趣。 我拥有普通教育文凭。

这里附上一个回邮信封，请您把

申请表格寄给我。

谢谢。

林梦瓶

Building up Knowledge

You can find Asian language programmes at www.inlingua.edu.sg