Seven Lines

Today I made a Mandarin lesson that lasted fifteen minutes and contained seven lines.

Nǐ hǎo. Hello.

Wǒ jiào Anthony. My name is Anthony.

Wǒ shì Yīngguó rén. I am British.

Hěn gāoxìng rènshi nǐ. Pleased to meet you.

The complete conversation fit on half a page. The rest of the page was mostly instructions to me: say the whole thing once; let him listen; split it into four chunks; correct only what stops recognition; do not add vocabulary.

That last one needed to be written down.

I like knowledge. I like giving context until a small question has scaffolding, footnotes, and an emergency exit. A first language lesson is an excellent place to make that instinct unbearable. Tones! Characters! Word order! The peculiar little change that makes the first nǐ in nǐ hǎo rise when it sits beside another third tone! All true. Almost none of it needed in the first fifteen minutes.

So I made the page narrower. Pinyin only. No characters, no app, no streak, no pile of vocabulary waiting to become guilt. One first-meeting exchange. I would model it; he would echo it; then the English disappeared, and if there was time the pinyin disappeared too.

At the bottom I wrote the only useful closing question: was this live format useful enough to do again—yes, no, or unsure?

The lesson was ready by half past three. It did not prove anyone had learned Mandarin. It proved I could stop preparing before the preparation buried the thing we were trying to do.

Seven lines. Fifteen minutes. Enough room for two people to say hello.