Lately I’ve been involved in some international exchange work, and one issue I’ve come across is that most Taiwanese don’t believe that foreigners in Taiwan are willing to speak or learn Chinese.
In my personal experience, I have several dozen friends from Anglo countries(not of Chinese/Taiwanese descent) and we all speak at least conversational Mandarin, with some being very proficient(near-native). Even for the English Teachers I am friends with, for whom the incentive to learn Chinese is lowest, most of them have done at least a few semesters of Chinese language school and consider learning Chinese a main draw in coming to Taiwan in the first place.
Chinese is a major global language that’s extremely popular right now, even high schools in the USA are teaching it.
I live in Taipei and I often see other foreigners doing their dealings in Chinese (bank, stores, etc). Even for the ones who aren’t completely proficient, they’ll almost always give it a go, even if they end up speaking a Chinese-English mishmash (“我要extend我的ARC”)
The only time I see foreigners NOT speaking Chinese, is when it is a middle aged foreign man with a Taiwanese woman, in which case I assume they met and married overseas and are just visiting Taiwan on vacation (struck up a conversation with one such pair once while waiting in line and that was the case), even in that case the man was able to express 一個雞排 in Mandarin despite never having lived in Taiwan!
Why then, do Taiwanese feel so strongly that foreigners are not interested in Chinese? Are there lots of non-Chinese speaking foreigners I’m just not running into?
Has there ever been a survey done on this? It’s one thing for me to say “But foreigners do want to learn Chinese”, it’d be another thing if I had some statistic to back it up.
Or the middle aged foreign man may have come to Taiwan long before, and been making slow progress in Chinese, that then kind of came to a halt once he married a Taiwanese woman who began to take care of communication for him.
Oh, and being strategically unable to understand in-laws does have its perks.
Not that I’m talking about anyone I know or anything.
I chalk it up to whatever ideas make people exclaim “Oh, you can use chopsticks!”, or “But foreigners don’t like spicy food!”
Another possibility is that many Taiwanese people have their main interactions with foreigners in language schools, and in those places they don’t hear “us” speaking Chinese - and so assume we can’t. My Chinese is pretty bad, but it’s still significantly better than my students think it is.
And yeah, I’d say a rather embarrassing percentage of the longterm foreigners here have low Chinese skills. I was mildly surprised in Tokyo a couple of months ago, when it seemed that I heard far more foreigners speaking “impressive” Japanese than I hear foreigners speaking “impressive” Chinese here. On the other hand, since I don’t speak Japanese at all, my threshold for what constitutes impressive is probably significantly lower there than it is here.
I speak very little Chinese, I am trying to fix this with a couple of classes a week but it is a very hard place to learn as when out and about in Taipei most people I interact with speak better English than I do mandarin.
In fact some look so shocked when I try to speak mandarin that I think that there shock is the only thing stoping us communicating.
I speak Chinese but many situations I know I’ll get better service if I speak English (how screwed up is that?). Also you have a lot of people trying to practice their English with you. Maybe foreigners should pick up their game but its not exactly like situation is the same as Taiwanese learning English in the U.K. or U.S.
Thanks for the replies everyone, these are really helpful.
Lostinasia: What do you do if you need to do something which requires Chinese but your wife is not there? Or for example, in restaurants, it would take forever to translate the entire menu in most cases, so how do you order?
I had a friend visiting from the States and we worked out a system where I would read each headline to him (Noodles, Rice, Beverages, etc) and then he would pick the headline that interested him and then I would read everything below it (so if he chose Rice, it might be : Pork chop with rice, Mapo tofu with rice, Chicken cutlet with rice, etc). It took a while though.
On the Brink: Can you give me an example of a case where you received better service for speaking English?
A lot of it is simply Taiwanese wanting to focus on speaking English. But yeah it still surprises my colleagues that I can speak Chinese even though I have lived here 14 years.
What’s surprising about that?
Meetings at hotels, mid-to-high end restaurants, airport lounges. My staff know this too as whenever they get resistance from someone they will have me call to ask the same request but in English. I don’t mean everywhere just certain situations.
So few Westerners stay here “long-term” the incentive is low to learn Chinese. Taiwanese people are super accommodating to non-Chinese speakers, so if you don’t mind missing out on some of the “local” activities/eats, there’s really no push to learn the language if you expect to stay here only for 1-2 years.
Of course, many people expect only 1-2 years and end up staying 20.
Suddenly so many people want to learn Chinese in the west, because they think China is the place to be … wrong! Asia is the place to be 10-20 years from now and not all of Asia speaks Chinese. Many companies already relocate to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia … so why not teach/learn any of those languages. Did you ever consider that Chinese for some is way too difficult to master and that English is still widely spoken and preferred in business.
And to honest, to go through daily life in Taiwan, you don’t need Chinese because most places be it businesses or government have people proficient in English to provide a good service.
Just learn the characters for chicken, cow, pig, fish, vegetable, noodle, rice, soup, bean and you’ll be fine ordering food.
Yeah that’s me. I had a broken conversation about business, economy and bad English teaching yesterday. After 30 minutes I got up and thought. Shit, that was nearly all in Chinese.
The problem for me is tones. I am lax with them, so only about 50 per cent of ppl understand me. I do my best, but I learnt with friends who can understand my mushmouth Mandarin.
I pretty speak as good as Borat. I don’t know how to say -my sister is a prostitute-, yet. But I can learn.
Imagine chatting for half an hour about Taiwanese stubborness, the stagnant economy, and bad teaching practices, and the guy is answering back intelligently so I know he can follow everything. And I am even calling him out on his insular bullshit.Then you go round the corner to order a Chicken soup and the lady looks at you like you’re from Mars. Qing gei wo Ji rou tang… She was standing right over the vat of the exact soup I wanted. I felt like a right c**t. Ha!
Just another year or two of study and I’ll be more or less trilingual.
I majored in Chinese in college. The first year, we had a ton of students from other departments – paticularly business and economics – who said they want to learn Chinese to help in future business endeavors. None of them made it past the first 1.5 years and gave up being able only to buy fruit. It’s a steep mountain to climb, and many people think it’s an easy route up. Without interest and dedication in learning for learning’s sake, it may well be impossible to achieve fluency in Chinese.
(I started learning over 10 years ago back in LA, and it’s only in the past 2-3 years that I feel my writing skills have begun approaching a native level. Still much more work to be done, though.)
I dunno, there are tons of things that are very self explanatory about this language. The months, the days, the economy of style and the common sense way of naming things.
5 words a day and you can get there. There’s no time limit. I’m only a few years in. I’m way better than the pishhead English teechers, and way worse than the serious students. I’m in a strange no mans land.
The trick is getting to that Pre-Intermediate level where you can learn in the street, and then you can get better from there.
One ask Benny a day and who knows?
“Chinese people all want to practice their English.” is no excuse.
You speak in English, and ask them the odd phrase or word in Mandarin:
Chinese person: The Taiwanese economy has stagnated recently.
Me: How do you say ‘economy’ in Chinese?
That’s how I get round dual level language exchanges.
I’m happy to hear you’re making progress. My point was just that it takes a long, long time to reach a level of fluency. Getting conversational is a fairly straightforward businesses, but you start “topping off” at some point and feel like there’s no way to make more progress. From there it’s a long, grueling climb that I have yet to complete despite having been doing it for probably 5-6 years at this point.
I understand the emotional peaks and troughs of long haul learning. I try to work through the false waves of euphoria and depression and just enjoy the slog. But I think you said that at the start. I bet the I Ching’s a good read in Chinese.
HHC, don’t give up. After you go over the top (gain enough proficiency) its all downhill.
But do remember that regular conversation is not “textbook”.
Your example you gave, “please give me chicken soup” ( Qing gei wo Ji rou tang ) is NOT how it is said in real life.
You would be saying “one bowl of chicken soup” Not even with a “please”. NOBODY at a night market except students learning mando will say “please give me chicken soup”.
You are better off saying “eh Taow kay , yee wan chee rou tang”
(sorry i dont pinyin)
p.s. There are a lot nuances in the Taiwanese language, as there are in english and other languages. The choice of wording and how it is delivered establishes the boundary of the relationship between you and who you are speaking to.
IN the above example, you go to a stall selling chicken soup and you establish and get the owners attention with a Eh , Taow key (Taow key is taiwanese for bossman). Then you assert your status as being (slightly) above because you are a customer by not being overly polite, with a “one bowl of chicken soup”. NO “please” there.
If you wanted to be more polite, you could add “pai twoh” at the end of chicken soup.
With a very short and curt delivery of “pai twoh” , still asserting your dominance as a customer but giving that proper signal that you are dealing with the proprietor.
I’m sure I said yi wan. My gf is always calling me out on that. But I need to knuckle down. Thanks for the deep linguistic tips.
I don’t speak the language well, but I think Taiwan is a master finishing school for subtle communication. I learn something new about dealing with people nearly every time I go to Familymart. These people are nano sensitive to micro cues.
I can’t help it. I grew up in England. I have to say please all the time. If an Englishman gets knocked down by a bus he apologizes to the bus.
Could we start a thread where we spoke in Pinyin? Would that be of use to anyone else, or a total waste of time?
Anyway, I’m not talking about the number of foreigners who can recite Tang poetry, write a grad school thesis or do other high level activities. I mean foreigners living in Taiwan who can order food (I would also accept the grammatically-correct-yet-awkward “Please give me one chicken soup” described), use a bank, or have a normal conversation about sports or family or weather. Surely that is most of us?
Or the middle aged foreign man may have come to Taiwan long before, and been making slow progress in Chinese, that then kind of came to a halt once he married a Taiwanese woman who began to take care of communication for him.
