I am called a banana because I am yellow on the outside but white on the inside. That means I am a Chinese but I cannot write or read Chinese. But I am not a pure banana, I can at least speak my mother tongue, which is Cantonese and some Mandarin.
So, since I am having a lot of free time in the office, I have started online Mandarin classes. Well, I can speak some Mandarin and thanks to Cantonese, I can relate Cantonese to Mandarin and thanks to POL (people's own language) classes that I took when I was in Standard 3, that I know how to read and write some Chinese words, very very limited though.
So, now I am learning to write Chinese online free of charge with the proper strokes. It's quite easy to pick up as I already know some basic Chinese, like the han yi pin yin.
I wanted to learn Korean and Hindi too, but I thought better to start with Chinese since I need it at work, now that I have to deal with Shanghai. So, it's good, I feel I am using my time to good use and my left brain (or was it right brain) more.
Now, back to my title, why I love Google Translate is because of my limited Chinese, the most instant way to know what it means is by using Google Translate. I use it to translate some Chinese documents and although the translation is funny, it's understandable. I am also translating some Chinese website using the translate this tab. It is really useful.
I am enjoying my new writing classes too. I hope I can communicate with Tenglin more and understand Chinese documents better.
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