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By the way, just because you learned Spanish easily does not mean that either Mandarin or Cantonese will be easy for you. Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects are tonal, which means that you have to master more than the actual words and grammar.
If you say a syllable with a rising tone, it will mean something totally different from that syllable said with a falling tone. People often joke about the fact that, if you say "ma" in one way, it means "mother", but if you say it in a different way, it means "horse". So if you don't want to call your nice new Chinese mother-in-law a horse, you'd better say the word with the right tones. English and most Western languages are not tonal, and Americans often have great difficulty hearing and repeating the tones of Chinese, certain other Asian languages, and certain African languages, among others. I remember that, while taking a linguistics course once, we had an exam proctor who entered the room, said his name, and asked each of us to repeat it. When the first person did so, he put his hands up to his face and pretended to be shocked. He told her that she had just said an extremely dirty word. He was from an African country, and the language of his tribal group was tonal. Even though she repeated the actual syllables of his name correctly, she used the wrong tones.
As linguistics students, we learned a valuable lesson from the proctor -- that even we, who knew a lot about languages, could really mess up when confronted with a tonal language, because our native language, and most of the languages we studied in school, are not tonal.
Mandarin is usually considered to have five distinct tones. Cantonese is traditionally considered to have nine tones, but the version spoken in Hong Kong has six, while the version spoken in Guangzhou is often said to have seven tones. All in all, Chinese is extremely difficult for a Westerner to learn. If you are preparing to travel to adopt in a year or so, you probably won't have enough time to learn the language well enough to converse or transact business in China, unless you enroll in a total immersion course. However, you may be able to learn enough to read a sign, as both Mandarin and Cantonese are written with the same characters, and to use a few polite phrases.
Of course, politics enters even subjects like the written language. If you want to learn Chinese characters in the U.S., you will want to study with a teacher who teaches Simplified Chinese, which is the official form of writing in mainland China. People in Taiwan, and in some other Chinese-speaking areas, use Traditional Chinese, which has some differences. If you decide to send your child to a Chinese school in the U.S., for weekend instruction, you may find that some of the schools emphasize Traditional Chinese writing, while others emphasize Simplified Chinese, and that debates over which a given school will use can get a bit heated and political. When the subject comes up, politely excuse yourself and go elsewhere! The people will not just be talking about language, but about the whole history of tension between China and Taiwan.
Sharon
On your adoption trip, however, you probably can get by without knowing any version of Chinese. You will have a guide to get you to your appointments and take you sightseeing. Also, remember that Hong Kong was under British rule for 100 years, and was returned to China in 1997, so you will find many people who understand English there. On the mainland, you may also find people who speak English in Westernized cities like Guangzhou and Beijing. And if you have a good guide, he/she can help you understand what your new child is saying, and convey your responses to the child.
Even if you know some Chinese, remember that there's a big difference between the version of Chinese you learned in school and the way Chinese children speak. It's basically similar to what happens in English. Adults may learn the word "bowel movement", in terms of how they should explain a health issue to a doctor, but a little child may refer to the same subject as "poo-poo". Also, remember that the speech of a young child, or a child who has had a problem like cleft palate, may not be clear. While you might understand the speech of an American toddler, knowing that it is common for American young children to substitute "w" for "r" (as in "wose" for "rose") or "s" for "sh" (as in "Saron" instead of "Sharon"), you probably won't know the most common pronunciation problems that Chinese children tend to have.)