Mental blocks against round-eyed people?

What’s up. I was studying Japanese, which is a sinographic-based language; but I, like many foreigners with " round eyes", face a " mental block" by the locals in accepting us speaking the language. I speak it decently, and can read and write kanji(sinographs) well; but 80% of the time, I get replies in English, as in " this stupid foreiger can’t possibly be speaking our language, the hardest in the world". Thus, this is the famous " nihongo" myth. I have no resistance with elderly people, they don’t give a damn if you don’t know a word of " nihongo" , they’ll speak to you in Japanese.

 There is also unease and suspicion with a foreigner( again, the ones with east asian faces don't get that much) that is fluent in Japanese; because you cannot be " fooled" or get bullied easily.  Anyhow, I've gotten tired of Japanese ethnocentricity, It is still stucked in the Tokugawa Era, when the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki, even after been trading there for more than 200 years, were forbidden to learn Japanese, that's how I feel.

   I want to know if in Taiwan they also have that same ethnocentric attitude, if is just a Japanese thing, or a across the board " sinographic-based language thing".  When a round-eye goes to a restaurant with an East Asian face friend that doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and the round-eye is the one doing all the talking to the waiter, does the waiter look at the East Asian face and ignores you???

   If you speak " broken Chinese"  , will they tell you sarcastically that you're so " excellent", and get patted on the head like a pet figuratevly, but when you're really fluent, you get told " your chinese is bad" or simply " lets talk in English".  Your proficiecy gets frowned on because you don't fit a stereotype??

    Are Chinese as thick as Japanese when it comes to believe that round-eyed people can learn to read and write Chinese characters?  can people please shed some light on this issue?

thankyou.

Here in Taiwan, Taiwanese people seem perfectly happy speaking to me in Mandarin. In Taipei, especially, I almost never have to do the whole ‘You’re Chinese is so good’ routine. If I go somewhere like Taipei 101, people will speak English to me, but as soon as I answer in Mandarin, they’ll almost always switch along with me.

When I first came, I remember feeling frustrated for the first couple of years because people would want to speak English when I wanted to speak Mandarin. I now think it’s simply because my Mandarin was awful and it was easier for people to communicate in English with me.

Posters on this board sometimes complain about people being unwilling to speak Mandarin to them, so YMMV.

Another factor is that English is much less popular in Taiwan than it was 15 years. Hop young Taiwanese are learning Korean or Italian these days.

By all accounts, Taiwanese people are much less ethnocentric than the Japanese. Of course there are still a few people who can’t help dividing the world into us and them, but I meet less and less. I may be more skilled at sussing out who those folks are and avoiding them as well.

People wil absolutely love you if you make the effort to learn in the smallest amount of Taiwanese.

China is a whole different story.

Having lived in both places and being able to speak both languages I feel that Japan is far worse than Taiwan in this regard, but it’s still there.

Waiting staff talking to your asian looking friend in dpite of my tellling them that she doesn’t speak Chinese/Japanese- but I do.

Having conversations in Chinese/Japanese about how foreigners couldn’t possibly learn the language.

People back- translating every word I say in chinese/Japanese back into English.

Getting a round of applause for saying hello in the foreign language.

and a long list of others…they have all happened in both countries but in Japan (hokkaido, I might add) it was something I dealt with everyday, but here in Taipei it happens far less frequently.

One good thing is that you don’t get the old ''we japanese are a uniquer race, we eat with our eyes, and we are the only place in the world to have four distinct seasons- springu sammaa, aka, ando wintaa"

[quote=“Feiren”]
Another factor is that English is much less popular in Taiwan than it was 15 years. Hip young Taiwanese are learning Korean or Italian these days.

.[/quote]

Who is learning Korean or ITALIAN? Who told you this, feiren? What percentage? You must be joking. Explain.

sometimes, however proper intonation and volume will get them looking at you again :wink: the visual prop that i’m reading the menu usually helps me here :wink:

Maybe the former, but not the latter. the face-English thing does exist for the semi-fluent but the Taiwanese won’t carry it that far.

the Chinese also take perverse satisfaction in the complexity of their written language, and for good reason :slight_smile: for one thing it is perversely complex :slight_smile: for another the great majority of foreigners I have met here have not learned much or any. if you have learned you will often meet with surprise but not of any objectionable sort.

There are definitely some people too stupid to realize that foreigners are capable of learning Chinese. Thankfully they seem to be the minority.

[quote]When a round-eye goes to a restaurant with an East Asian face friend that doesn’t speak a word of Chinese, and the round-eye is the one doing all the talking to the waiter, does the waiter look at the East Asian face and ignores you???
[/quote]

At restaurants, the waiters have never even tried to talk to me. They just look at my girlfriend and ask her everything. Maybe they are just shy. :idunno:

Tetsuo, maybe this is true in Taipei but it is not true in the smaller cities.

What frustrates me is when people say something to me in Chinese, and when I indicate to them that I understand them perfectly (by saying “hao” and/or nodding my head and/or whatever), they repeat it in Chinese, then say it in English. That frustrates me to no end!

E.g.
A: “Zao yidian hui lai.”
Me: “Hao.”
A: “Zao yidian hui lai. Come… back… early.”

I find most people are surprised and relieved they can speak with me in Chinese rather than English. Sometimes people even check to make sure they’re not speaking too fast and that I’ve understood everything, which is really nice.

Sure, sometimes people talk about me in Chinese right in front of me, assuming I don’t understand. If they are being sneaky, they might use Taiwanese instead. But this is easily rectified :wink: Eh! Phai se la! Goa thia u!

A lot of people I meet assume that because I speak Chinese, I can also read it. When I’ve had trouble understanding something on paper, people have often offered to read it for me, so that I can listen.

Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

It happens frequently that people would practice their English even if they understand my Chinese. Whenever that happens I will do my best to help them lose face by not understand their English or translating what they just said to Chinese. The next time I see them, if they are still willing to talk with me, it will be in Chinese only. I had this guy at the 7-11 who would only speak to me in broken English including incorrect sums at times, so one day when he said the total I stared at him for a sec and then looked at the monitor to check the amount. Oh man was he annoyed. Worked like a charm, now it’s just Chinese.

Thankyou for the inputs folks. I’ve thought about several factors that might have made Taiwan more tolerant than Japan on this issue, is because in Taiwan, many people have emmigrated to the U.S, Canada,and other Western countries far more than Japan. Japan is the 2nd largest economy, Taiwan is number 14( I think…), so in Japan people dont’ really need to immigrate, and less weight of foreign ideas come in from the returnees. In Japan, even returnees( kikokushijo) are treated like gaijin( outsiders). That makes Japan a very closed society, despite its huge business tentacles around the world.

Another thing is that these East Asian languages are not imperial languages, like English, Spanish. So people on this side of the world find it strange somebody with ( exototic face) is speaking a " one-spot" language. My native language is Spanish and I don’t feel any unease when a Japanese or Chinese person speaks it. Maybe if it is only in Spain and Spain doesn’t accept any immigrants ( like Japan does). Then people there would feel strange that an East Asian face( very exotic ) is speaking.

...but it is not just this lack of " imperial language" status, is just the perceive " difficluty".    Japanese might think " yeah, Polish is a " one-spot" language like Japanese, It is not spread over 18 countries like Spanish is, but still, it has between 25-30 letters, any mokey can learn that ! but our unique Japanese has 3 different writing systems,and the kanji system alone has over 2000 chinese characters for basic literacy, so it is impossible that some Polish, Italian, Canadian,any round-eye, is going to be capable of handling it"

 I know that this is the overall mentality in Japan regarding us round-eyes using Japanese, specially, the written language.  For them, is like you discovering how to read Egyptian hyeroglyphs. Most Japanese and Chinese migh feel " blessed"that their languages are deemed " impenetrable" by the " round-eye" intruders.    

In Japan is " God bless kanji" , to keep gaijin(eternal outsider) from discovering our honne( absolute truth) and have them as the kawaii( cute) pet, to practice English, Spanish, Dutch,etc on. Chinese already know kanji, all they have to do is to convert to Japanese readings, so the Chinese in Japan are always " suspicious" and not seen as the " dumb, 25-30 letters illiterate roud-eyed pets". I hope Taiwan doesn’t get this extremely ethnocentric erratic mentality.

What’s funny is that “non round eyes”, as you put it, that are born “abroad” do not master this magical realm of complexity. Even overseas chinese that come to Taiwan don’t handle it that well, just like those of use with round eyes. The other thing is that, well, I dunno about Japanese but plenty of Taiwanese can’t spell correctly for the live of them. Not to mention pronounciation or such.

I live in Taipei and look like Santa Claus and it seems to me that most people expect me to be able to speak Mandarin. I think that after awhile something happens to your face. Some subtle change that only Chinese people can see. Most of the time I drift around this place like a ghost but when I talk to people it is in Mandarin and nobody seems suprised.

I kind of rate cultures on how accomodating they are to a person learning their language. The worst is French in my opinion. Japanese are not much better. Spanish people are wonderful, but Chinese are the best in this respect. They won’t correct you (my only serious complaint) but they will try very hard and very patiently to understand the absolute rot that comes out of your mouth as a beginner. On that score at least I will give Taiwanese a big :notworthy:

Nobody seems to expect me to be able to read Chinese characters which is a fortunate because I hate the bloody things.

I had a Taiwanese-American friend who started styding French in HS said when he has visited France, everybody is willing to speak French to him at any time. Only in Germany did he have issues with people wanting to speak English.

Must have been my breath.

I didn’t have any problems in Germany. People would only switch to English if I was translating something for my mum, which was really nice because it saved me having to repeat everything and stopped Mum from feeling left out.

I’m going to France in a couple of weeks, so I hope I won’t get too many withering looks for butchering their language. Guess I’ll just have to try to be thick-skinned and remember to brush my teeth! :slight_smile:

I was just at a “restaurant” near my house where I frequently chat with the lao ban. This time there was a woman there as well, a friend of his perhaps. Now, lao ban asks me what I’d like to eat and I reply to which he haos me and goes on his way. The woman then repeats everything he said, but in English, to which I reply in Chinese that I’ve already answered lao ban. Of course, what followes is that she serves me the food with every greeting she knows in English even if they didn’t make any sense (yes, this evil evil polite woman :slight_smile: ). Laoban then asks me something about the TV to which I reply. Followes a translation for me, naturally. etc.
Then, I’m heading over for coffee at a recently opened pcafe, the lady there thankfully doesn’t chat to me in English. I order but she doesn’t look at me, she looks at a man sitting nearby. He repeats everything I’m saying. Mind you they are speaking Mandarin and not Taiwanese. So, like. I dunno.

That’s when you need to ask the nice lady, in perfect Mandarin, “Oh, sorry, were you speaking English? I really have to improve my English, but I never studied it much. After all, in [insert name of your pretend adopted native land here] we speak [insert name of appropriate foreign language here].”

At least that’s the way that saves the lady’s face while hopefully shutting off the English floodgates. I don’t mind if they can actually speak English but to get the “random words and phrases” output can be really annoying.

When I lived in Kaohsiung for a year and half (1999-2000) I was just learning Chinese, but few people spoke English so they were happy to speak to me, though too quickly, so I generally couldn’t.

Then I was a student in Taipei (student/illegal tutor) for a year (2002-2003) and I wanted to kill people on a daily basis because they were always speaking “English” to me. At least they thought it was English. They just about ran away when they found out I could speak Chinese.

Now I am in China, and everyone speaks Chinese to me as if I was Chinese (a Chinese with naturally blond hair?). I love it (linguistically, not otherwise). Just wish people in Henan didn’t speak so sloppily; it’s a bad influence on me. I was just in Xi’an for a few days and everybody there spoke the most standard Mandarin. It was great to listen to.

Chinese people will make fun of your Chinese sometimes. This is especially true if you are having a discussion and you disagree with somone (which I think is quite inexcusable, a cheapshot). Whatever deficits my Chinese has (plenty) I have written letters to people and businesses in Chinese and they were generally genuinely surprised when my face walked through the door or my voice answered the phone. But if they already know I am not Chinese, some people have been really quite vicious. Then there’s the ever popular back-handed compliment, “It’s so nice you are learning Chinese, despite your poor ability.”

What was the question?

Yesterday at the hosp, I pull out my little number from the machine, register, and go and bang on the door (the one with the notice that says please wait for your number to be called and don’t knock). I hand over my IC ka in proclamation of my arrival.

I say to the nurse in reasonably fluent Chinese, “They asked me at the desk to do a urine sample, but I haven’t done one because I have a catheter in”. She nods. Then, also in Chinese, “Can I sit and wait here because my wife’s parking the car and I want her to go in with me”. She nods, and says in English, “Do I need use English speak to you?”

:unamused: