Long story short, my in-laws put me in some kind of ‘Chinese for Foreigners’ class. It’s a night class at a local guoxiaoxue.
Everything’s in Chinese; the child textbooks, the yappy old ladies that speak Hakka every time the laoshi walks out to wash the chalk off his hands… I guess the only thing that isn’t Chinese is laoshi’s Chinglish Google Translator app. It’s been roughly a year since I started sitting in this class (the chairs hurt my behind; they are way hard for someone with little natural cushioning). Memorization isn’t a problem (tones, characters, vocabulary), but I am really hurting for syntax, grammar, etc. I look at the lessons, look up every work on my dictionary app, and then have to go home and Google translate the phrases. And then I have to ask my husband to make sense of some Chinglish here and there.
My husband and I speak English at home, because I can’t say much beyond “Maomi didi pao di yi, keyi wo yao bingqilin” so I end up acting like I have no-mouth disease when my father-in-law lays down the law that no one can speak English. Am I just retarded for not being able to speak much of any Chinese after being there for a year?
My motivation is swirling in the sewers. I’ve been done with the hours for my ARC a very long time ago, so I’ve been asking my husband to let me take classes at NTU or at least let me pick up some kind of non-child-oriented English → Chinese textbooks somewhere.
Married? “Owned” sounds a lot closer to the mark. Your husband must be some sort of total GOD if he’s enough for you to tolerate that kind of crap! [/quote]
He works, and I don’t… so seeing as how it’s his money that is paying for everything, I give him a lot of leeway. But I make sure he isn’t running around filthy, naked, and starving, so he puts up with my nagging, I think.
How about those crash courses for learning Chinese? MLC and Taipei Public Library runs free courses time to time for foreigners. Check out their websites.
Married? “Owned” sounds a lot closer to the mark. Your husband must be some sort of total GOD if he’s enough for you to tolerate that kind of crap! [/quote]
He works, and I don’t… so seeing as how it’s his money that is paying for everything, I give him a lot of leeway. But I make sure he isn’t running around filthy, naked, and starving, so he puts up with my nagging, I think.[/quote]
It was the in-laws I was talking about, not your husband. It sounds like they basically own you, even more than the usual Taiwanese living-with-the-inlaws situation. He won’t even let you and your husband TALK to each other in front of him?
Yes, go to NTU. Their courses aren’t bad, and not too expensive. Gov’t-run courses are usually just for show (“see how good we are to provide those freeloading foreigners with Chinese education!”) and aren’t intended to actually teach you anything. For that, you need to go to a proper school.
As for F-i-L … I would be inclined to tell him that if he doesn’t want to listen to you speaking English, he can leave the room. You don’t have to put up with ill-mannered bullies just because you’re in Taiwan. Can you imagine an American parent berating his daughter’s Chinese bf for speaking Chinese?
EDIT: and incidentally, questioning your own intelligence is a good sign that someone in your life is not behaving as they should towards you.
Sandman: There’s no yelling or stinky-face going on, but when I surpass a certain threshold of English, and he says NO ENGLISH!, everyone else instantly converts to Mandarin, so then I sit there completely silent, trying to pick out words and phrases I know, or try to memorize the sound of a word people seem to be repeating so that I can look it up later.
My father-in-law and his generation (who remember fleeing with the KMT) are all very well-educated (my stepmother-in-law is about to wrap up some masters level program in Nanjing, as I recall), VERY self-made, but very rigid in certain traditions and behaviour. Naturally they love comparing the target of conversation to everyone else. “So-and-so’s wife was speaking Chinese in only three months!” (it wasn’t true in the slightest but there’s still the feeling of being a wet poop).
So, I don’t know. They’re not making me go on death hikes, inquiring every day about kids, or running white gloved fingers all over the apartment, but what kind of expectation should I have for listening/reading/writing proficiency?
[quote=“sandman”][quote=“finley”]Can you imagine an American parent berating his daughter’s Chinese bf for speaking Chinese?
[/quote]
I cannot. More to the point, I cannot even imagine a Taiwanese parent doing so. Just seems totally beyond the pale, even by local standards.[/quote]
And that’s the point, Sandman. That’s a Chinese FiL, not a Taiwanese.
I nearly got stuck in that trap once. Chinese right wing bastards suck more than most.
You’re living with the in-laws? That’s damn near saintly devotion. Many Taiwanese women will refuse to marry to avoid this. They’d rather stay single! When your FIL declares NO ENGLISH, he’s defacto insulting you by cutting you off. He knows you can’t talk, can’t communicate, and if your husband allows that–well it should be a problem, IMO. I realize there are differences in culture, but mutual respect and decency towards others DOES translate!
Insist that if you are expected to just sit quietly every time your FIL gets tired of hearing English being spoken, then you are entitled to some REAL Chinese lessons with professional teachers. PM Ironlady. She’s excellent!
So … not very educated then. The hyperbole reminds me of this:
Seriously, don’t be intimidated just because they’ve got this bit of paper and that qualification. Yeah, it’s a bit embarrassing when you can’t hold a conversation in someone’s native language, but you can be reasonably fluent in ~18 months if you attend a proper school. If you’re not working at the moment, take the opportunity.
Exactly. If he’s been in Taiwan that long, then he should have learned some manners by now. This isn’t bloody China in 1933 anymore. And it sounds to me as if their enrolling you in a bargain-basement class (when, reading between the lines, they’re pretty loaded) is just another not-so-subtle way of putting you down.
We actually don’t live with them. My stepmother-in-law originally got rid of the apt she and my FIL were sharing, and rented out a new(er) 4bed/2bath apt close to where they all work. They were only there maybe… one of four months? I respect her space and the fact that she was paying the rent, but we’re not 20 years old. Besides, her OCD and my OCD don’t match up. There was realistically no reason for me to be stressed out, but I was. How scared I am of them, I think you guys are definitely picking up on that; but in reality, they probably aren’t that scary to a person of more… recognizably ‘white’, IDGAF kind of American. I mean, I’m American too, but my whole family is Japanese. I grew up with a completely different ballgame of criticism and expectations.
So now I share this wonderful apartment in Sanxia with just my husband and our stupid little Penis Rabbit. I have taken a look at the fee schedules for ‘international’ students, and… well… it’s way less expensive than I thought it would be, for a national university. Perhaps I was just an idiot for sitting in that guoxiaoxue for more than 75 hours?
There we go, guys. Was it that difficult? [/quote]
The derp class I’m currently attending is at Tucheng elementary. I definitely don’t recommend it, or the 30-45 minute bus ride I take to get there.
I actually just got off the phone with my husband. Maybe I was too mean to him. I ASKED if I could please drop the kiddie courses and take an adult class at NTU, because the tuition is cheaper than the courses he took at UCSD. He asked me to wait another semester and see how the course material pans out, or see if I can get pushed ahead to a higher level.
I then got… loud… and said I was tired of talking about the tall, green tree leaves under the hen kaixin Guowang Taiyang and xiao niao really loves to chir chongzi. I know I got irrationally angry but, I can only take so much. There is so much more to be gained from Mandarin than rote memorization and IQ depletion. And I can’t stand that silent-farting oldie in class who keeps staring at me and the British foreigner, who has, by the way, learned early on to give up on learning anything useful in that class.
You could try simply enrolling at NTU for a degree course. They’re very keen to get more foreigners enrolled because it boosts their international rankings, so there are some bursaries available, and admission is pretty much a foregone conclusion. A year of Chinese tuition is then compulsory.
You’re not anything approaching an idiot to be unable to acquire Mandarin from that kind of class.
My view on this subject are well-known. If you haven’t slept through them already, they’re all over the Learning Chinese forum. There IS a better way to go about teaching Chinese to non-Chinese.
When your husband goes over to see his in-laws just stay home. He can tell them you are practicing Chinese. That will impress them AND keep them from causing you any undue harrassment. I can also understand the father with his, “No English.” He could either be ashamed and disgraced that he can’t follow a conversation in his own house (which does make his a bit of an ass, but his motivation is comprehendible), or he wants to make sure that you properly integrate, either for the relationship or for your happiness or so that he can build a better relationship with you. Or maybe the people around him are wondering when you will be able to speak Chinese. He might be facing external pressures that others can’t see.
It’s not all about pig ignorant doorknob fuckers trying to subjugate whites, as some would have you believe.
Was it that difficult? 