not yet 30 physically, but around 70 mentally haha.
it really depends on the situation. I have been taught not to bother other ppl, and I like peace and quiet. I can have long talks, but it depends on the situation. I hate random ppl approaching out of the blue and started a conversation with me… WHO R U? DO I KNOW U? that’s just weird, you need a reason to talk to me, that’s how we do in northern Italy, but even in the south talking randomly to someone at the wrong time is frown upon.
that’s a situation, if alone at a bar/pub and I see someone next to me and I reckon from some pointers that we might have something to talk about, I might (very respectfully) start to throw a few words, but that’s a situation, for sure not out on the streets or at a restaurant with the servers.
Sounds like they can’t understand you. Your tones or pronunciation are likely the issue.
Find a new tutor and ask them what the problem is. It’s possible your current tutor is letting you get away with poor pronunciation and/or tones because they’re familiar with foreigner-accented Chinese and they can guess what you’re trying to say from context. Strangers don’t have that luxury.
I don’t think that’s the problem. For example, I was in a taxi this morning. The driver wanted to speak English. Fine. He was rather chatty. Eventually I brought this topic up. I told him people don’t seem to understand my Mandarin. He said ok, say something in Mandarin. I said, “today the weather is too hot”. He said, “that’s perfect. I understand you very well.”
I recognize that it probably wasn’t perfect and that he was being polite, but the fact remains that he understood me easily.
Maybe the people u r talking to are just happened to be the ones who don’t understand you? Like bad luck maybe
It happens to me often that most people would understand my broken Chinese easily and then there would be that one person who just never get the sentence I am saying no matter how slow I speak or how many times I repeat
People just don’t speak as in open their mouth as much these days including taxi drivers , who used to be incredibly talkative, but many will be willing and even happy to speak you just gotta push it more.
I should remind myself to do this and chat with the taxi drivers more, they often have some interesting backgrounds and they can give you some local colour.
Taiwanese can be super talkative and loud when within groups such as in restaurants so that is great but also a challenge for foreigners to parse what people are saying and be able to participate in the ‘conversation’ , which sometimes is more like people shouting over each other lol.
Very deliberately say ni hao, wo yao, qing wen yi Xia…qing wen yi Xia is a good way to get them to listen to you.
Give them a moment to process and get over their shyness or fear of talking to obvious looking foreigners. Also some women are more cautious around intimidating looking men (some Foreigners can be quite big after all as well as being men). Just try to be smiley and give them a second or two.
Some will still reply in English but you can ignore if you want to or not .
I have the opposite problem in Japan. I speak parrot Japanese and one of the first things I learned to say was “I don’t speak Japanese.”
Now whenever I say it nine of ten times the Japanese speaker starts rattling off to me in Japanese. I asked my translator why and she said, “because you say it so well they think you must be able to speak Japanese.”
The fact remains nothing. If people don’t understand your Chinese it’s only because you speak it badly. Sure the odd local will have cognitive dissonance if you speak to them in Chinese but if your general expérience is people don’t understand you that’s only for one reason.
You should record those sentences, the weather is hot, can i see the menu etc.
Then we can probably give you some help.
I mean i’m guessing its the pronunciation.
Things are pretty specific anyway, you need to say it a certain way or people just go into computer says no mode. Had this convo a million times with my gfs dad.
compliments yes, criticism not really, lots of condescence for sure, like no foreigner can actually learn Chinese as “it’s so difficult”. It’s not the easiest language around for sure, but you are not more intelligent than me, you happened just to be born into it whilst I have to learn it. Most of the times they don’t mean it though, it is just their custom and also reinforced by many lazy asses “expats” living for long time here without any level of Chinese language since “I am a foreigner from the West, not going to lower myself down to learn the language of my host country, but u better speak my country’s language when you go there u ungrateful bastard”.
for Mandarin.