Also T’s. Water = wor ah.
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Seems like the right way to teach. Probably imagine that you might plan to use the language with the 1.3 billion mandarin speakers not in Taiwan at some time as well.
I try to expose myself to as much mainland Chinese as possible through youtube or whatever. Otherwise cant really say I understand mandarin
How many words are that different anyway?
Really not that many
馬鈴薯 and 土豆 that kind of thing
Some different pronounciation
Similar differences between standard UK and US English
No it isnt, its confusing. The better way would be to teach you what you need to to live in Taiwan. Or china, if you are studying there.
Then after you have that down you can pick up mainland chinese if you so please. But for me personally i wont bother with that.
I got used to speaking and hearing mainland Chinese Mandarin over the last few decades, as most Mandarin speakers I knew were from China. It was a difficult adjustment moving to Taiwan. Couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying for the first month or two.
Probably should have watched more Taiwanese shows before moving…
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Bit unreasonable tbh if you are going to a class. Think most students would expect at sometime to interact with mainland Chinese
‘We call this an Elevator and in British English they call it a lift’
FIFY.
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Except such people don’t exist in Taiwan lol.
Of course they do. I’ve met so many people who told me they speak Japanese and can barely string a sentence together. One of them even had a degree in Japanese.
Well you probably met very weird people. Most people would admit that their English/Japanese is bad.
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I find the biggest differences are cultural though and the logic of using the language. Taiwanese are just much more indirect and contextual.
Also some stuff in Taiwan seemed to me as a foreigner to be grammatically wrong(according to how was taught)
你要不要喝咖啡
我還好
Or using 沒關係 to say you dont want to do something
That’s not wrong. It’s like asking someone if they need a refill and you respond I’m good thanks. Meaning no.
Who says that?
Or 先不用
Huh? Not yet? But you want some later?
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Maybe this is a Taipei thing. People are constantly overstating their foreign language skills.
Well they dont use it that way in China. It sounds like you arent answering the question. Or it sounded like at the time, no im used to it.
Or they actaully understand a lot but they can’t converse very well. That’s very common.
我明天晚上會跟Sarah 一起去喝一杯。你想跟我們一起去嗎？
我沒關係
Nah, poor listening skills too.
That’s true, but I expected that. What I didn’t expect was the lack of annunciation of each word and tone, and the sometimes robotic yet other times sing-song pitch when they speak.
When a store clerk in Taiwan says 歡迎光臨 to me, they sound like they’re singing instead of speaking, but when they say everything else, they sound like robots. 
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I don’t think this is wrong either. It’s like responding I don’t mind (that you guys go without me).