You speak enough mandarin to get by, and your crush can say about 5 words in English.
How do you date without doing a language exchange? Any advice??
:help: :help: :help: :help: :help:
Depends what you mean by date. 
ha. the traditional sense: meet somewhere, so something with your clothes on and probably in a public space…
[quote=“ichbinjenny”]You speak enough Mandarin to get by, and your crush can say about 5 words in English.
How do you date without doing a language exchange? Any advice??
:help: :help: :help: :help: :help:[/quote]
And more importantly, how do you have a crush in the first place if you can barely communicate? 
I guess you could use body language? A lot of it?? 
Work through it. Learn patience; learn to listen to each other.
That’s how the Pixie and I started out, save that I knew no Mandarin whatsoever. For us, it turned out to be a real asset.
My first date with my wife was at McDonalds (classy, eh? ). She didn’t know enough English to order the meal. Through classes, reading, and talking with me, her proficiency now is pretty good (and much better than my non-existent Mandarin). If there is a strong attraction and both people in the relationship are patient, I think the relationship can overcome any language obstacles.
When I first met my spouse, seven years ago, her English was almost non-existent. As soon as it became apparent that we were going to be an item, we decided that we should improve her English, at least until it was as good as my Mandarin. I often said things to her twice - once in naturally-spoken English (not slowed down or over-enunciated), and again in Mandarin. We also watched DVDs together. Movies are ok, but TV shows are better, because they’re more dialogue-driven. One of the first shows we watched together was “Friends” which isn’t that great a show, but because we started watching it together, it became “our” show. It was funny when after a couple of seasons, V started picking up “Friendisms”: “Could you be any more difficult?” “I am so not going to cook for you tonight.”
Now her English is much better than my Mandarin, but we still speak English to each other. I noticed that we switch to Mandarin a lot more when we’re outside Taiwan - I guess we like having our “private” language! 
You could date without doing a language exchange, but I wouldn’t recommend it. By which I mean, you should teach each other your native tongues while dating, so that your ability to communicate improves over time, because good communication is important to a relationship. And if you don’t want to teach each other, then at least one or both of you should be studying the other’s language, preferrably intensively, for the same reason. That’s my two bits, anyway.
You could date without doing a language exchange, but I wouldn’t recommend it.[/quote]
Doesn’t the language exchange come first? 
Isn’t it just a polite way of saying a date with possible romantic overtones?
How do you say, “Ouch, you’re on my hair!” in mandarin?
I always found that when trying to get into some girl’s pants – oops, sorry, I meant “dating” – that simply speaking English slower and slower, and louder and louder, while employing plenty of eye-rolls, did the trick. Of course, I never actually got a shag, but still…
How do you say, “Ouch, you’re on my hair!” in Japanese?
EEEEH! EEEEEH! EEEEEEEH!
I thought it was “bukkake,” or does that mean “oops, you got somethig on my hair”?
HG
It’s just one of those useful expressions that’s usually not in your phrase book. It’s right up there with “How do you flush this thing?”
You could date without doing a language exchange, but I wouldn’t recommend it. By which I mean, you should teach each other your native tongues while dating, so that your ability to communicate improves over time, because good communication is important to a relationship. And if you don’t want to teach each other, then at least one or both of you should be studying the other’s language, preferrably intensively, for the same reason. That’s my two bits, anyway.[/quote]
Thanks, all. I guess it should begin as a language exchange, since it would be the easiest way to meet in different places and really get to know each other. Really, I love the fact that my crush doesn’t speak English, aside from generic words like “apartment” and “apple” and “coffee.” (Haha, before all you funny guys get to it: yeah, a good opening line could be “My apartment, coffee and apples – good eat!”)
Thanks for the supportive advice. Your ‘success’ stories are helpful. :yay: