I have learned English for 11 years, but I know few English idioms (习惯用语). When I went to study in America last year, I had trouble communicating with Americans at times.

One day, I asked my roommate Kevin, “Shall we play soccer tomorrow?” He answered, “Let’s play it by ear.” I was so puzzled. “Ear can play soccer?” He smiled and explained, “It means let’s see. The weather report says tomorrow is rainy.”

Last October, I was waiting for bus in a station. Beside me sat a young man. When he knew I was a Chinese, he asked me about the Great Wall. I told him, “The Great Wall is more than 20,000 kilometers long.” The man said, “You don’t say.” I was surprised, “There must be something wrong with him.” I thought. Later, I knew he meant “Really?”

I was once invited to my classmate’s home. His mother said to me, “Break your ice, please.” I wondered, “Where is the ice?” Later my classmate told me she meant I could make myself relaxed in their home.

From then on, I realized English idioms had special meanings. It was wrong to understand them word by word.

When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car.

Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find a good place to live. I suggested that they should stay at “bed and breakfast” houses, because this kind of places can give a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

“We didn’t stay at ‘bed and breakfast’ houses,” they said, “because we found that most families were away on holiday.” I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought “VACANCIES” meant “holidays”, because the Spanish word for “holidays” is “vacations”. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said “VACANCIES”, which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said “NO VACANCIES”, because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. Actually, this means “no free rooms”. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word “DIVERSION” means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word “DIVERSION” on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris when the waiter was going to offer me some more coffee, I said “Thank you” in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise, the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that “Thank you” in French means “No, thank you.”

Learning Chinese is a challenging but good experience as it gives you the opportunity to communicate with more than a billion people.

Foreigners think Chinese is a mysterious and difficult language because it is very different from the Roman alphabet （罗马字母）. In fact, Chinese is not much more difficult than learning any other language. One reason is that Chinese does not require memorizing the kind of complex tenses（时态） like European languages.

Although it is certainly not easy for foreigners, in my experience you can learn Chinese fast. You will certainly find differences between the language in textbooks and people’s everyday speech. One example of this is the difference between language on the street and written Chinese. It produces new phrases and vocabulary. In real life nowadays, people often use short, less conversational phrases （词组） to communicate with each other. China has many provinces and their dialects are different. After you learn and understand the Beijing dialect, you may find it is hard to understand Shanghai dialect.

The language continues developing. So it is still not easy for learners, no matter how well they learn from textbooks.

I hope that one day more Chinese courses are able to connect with “real” spoken Chinese and the way in which Chinese people speak daily. It will help foreign learners to help bridge the gap between learners and native （本土的） speakers.