Taxi

I sent M. off on Sunday morning at the airport. I got into a taxi to go home and said my address in Chinese.
"You speak Chinese?"
The taxi driver asked.
"Uh. No, I only know a couple of words here and there."
"You speak English?"
"Um, yes."
"You speak what else?"
"Korean. I'm Korean."
"Why don't you learn Chinese? You live in Hong Kong."
"Well, I think it's really difficult to learn Chinese. You have all this intonation stuff to deal with. And then I have to learn all the characters and stuff, you know?"
"English has intonation. It's all the same. Like learning chemistry. You memorise everything and then you use it. Like math. You memorise tangents and equations. You learn Chinese from the beginning like nursery school. I learn English from beginning like this - A, B, C, D - you know? Then you move on to words. So I said 'a pen' and then 'a man'. Then you move on to sentences. So I said 'a pen and a man'. I learn Spanish that way - A, B, C, D - you know? So I can order food and tell direction in Spanish. You can learn Chinese."
"Hm, yes. I suppose I could start taking lessons."
"You can learn one new word a day. How long have you been in Hong Kong?"
"Seven months."
"See, you could have learned over two hundred words! You talk every day and you learn! Me, I can't speak English. So I talk every day - once a customer is in the taxi I open the chatterbox, you know?"

The new Chinese word for today is do jo-i. It means talkative.