Poll: What is the main language spoken with your partner?

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

What is the main language spoken with your Taiwanese spouse or partner, chinese or english?

  • English
  • Chinese
  • A balanced mixture of english and chinese

0 voters

Hi all,

I am curious to see how many people on the forum have a same situation as myself. I met my partner in Australia during her studies and naturally spoke to her in english. Now we are living in Taiwan, I’ve found we are still speaking english as the main source of our communication at home. Is this the same for others?

Please take the poll to see what result we get or comments about this.

2

We mainly speak Mandarin. Chinese is a written language. Your poll also excludes the possibility that some people might speak Taiwanese.

I would think it would be perfectly natural for you to keep speaking the language you started out with together. Anyway, you don’t want to learn Mandarin from your partner–you’ll most likely end up speaking your own private language (and one that may be highly feminized at that).

3

Scream,mumble and harumph!

4

[quote=“jdsmith”]Scream,mumble and harrumph![/quote]Same as the above with some jive, Texican and HillBilly/Scottish and gibberish.

5

Sentences begin in English and end in Chinese. And vice-versa.

I put ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ endings on Chinese verbs. My wife delights in the Chinglish I point out and exploits it.

I’ve screwed up my wife’s Chinese and she’s degraded up my English (or maybe it’s just living here that’s done that…or is it the beer?)

I would like to finish off my Chinese, and my wife her English, but we’re lazy and content with our sloppy communication. :smiley:

6

We speak mostly Mandarin at home, except when I’m tired or in a bad mood…oh wait, I guess we speak mostly English at home.

7

Speaking: Almost 100% Chinese

MSN’n and such: 50/50 Chinese*/English

  • I use simplified Characters which seems to drive my Islander friends/SO nuts so they tell me to use Engrish :slight_smile:
8

same here

9

Yeah, and this poll also excludes the possibility that some people might speak Hakka. Or Atayal. Or Puyuma.

Anyhow, if your Taiwanese is so good that your SO code-switches to speak Taiwanese with you, all the more power to you.

10

Chinese only so far. When will he finally start learning MY language??

11

Started out just English…then I got bored not knowing what was being said when we were around her friends…so I started picking up chinese.

We now have a rule:

3 days a week I om only allowed to use Chinese - no English.

It is working magic for my Mandarin abilities. :smiley:

12

“Hey…我問妳一個question, 妳跟dentist約機點的appointment? 我剛看了我的schedule好像下午的meeting被cancel掉了. 如果改成早一點的你認為O不OK…”

or something to that effect is how my missus and I communicate… We both know all the the English/Chinese words that we interchange, it’s not due to linguistic incompetance, it’s just a bizarre combination of words that “work better” in Chinese than English of vice versa… That said I am making a conscious effort to keep it one or the other these days… :blush:

13

[quote=“plasmatron”]“Hey…我問妳一個question, 妳跟dentist約機點的appointment? 我剛看了我的schedule好像下午的meeting被cancel掉了. 如果改成早一點的你認為O不OK…”[/quote]:roflmao: Your wife does that too? :roflmao: Cracks me up.
I also tend to try not to encourage her in this by speaking either Mandarin or English and keeping them distinct. I do more Mandarin is the normal flow of things, but switch to English when in a bad mood, and for arguments. Sure, using my native tongue is an unfair advantage for me, but so is being female for her. :smiling_imp:

14

[quote=“blacksheep”]Hi all,

I am curious to see how many people on the forum have a same situation as myself. I met my partner in Australia during her studies and naturally spoke to her in English. Now we are living in Taiwan, I’ve found we are still speaking English as the main source of our communication at home. Is this the same for others?

Please take the poll to see what result we get or comments about this.[/quote]

My girlfriend speaks both english and mandarin better then me (and even spanish). She insists that we speak only in English cuz thats the language shes most comfortable in. Shes a foreign educated Taiwanese girl.

15

The language of LUUUUURVE, baby, the language of LUUUURVE!
Or English, mostly.

16

[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“plasmatron”]“Hey…我問妳一個question, 妳跟dentist約機點的appointment? 我剛看了我的schedule好像下午的meeting被cancel掉了. 如果改成早一點的你認為O不OK…”[/quote]:roflmao: Your wife does that too? :roflmao: Cracks me up.
I also tend to try not to encourage her in this by speaking either Mandarin or English and keeping them distinct. I do more Mandarin is the normal flow of things, but switch to English when in a bad mood, and for arguments. Sure, using my native tongue is an unfair advantage for me, but so is being female for her. :smiling_imp:[/quote]

I love it when Taiwanese talk like this cause all the English words get stretched out and it gives you time to think. Plus it’s cute when girls do it.

17

Ditto. :howyoudoin:

18

Jive? :laughing: Did you use “Airplane” as a training tool?

19

[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“plasmatron”]“Hey…我問妳一個question, 妳跟dentist約機點的appointment? 我剛看了我的schedule好像下午的meeting被cancel掉了. 如果改成早一點的你認為O不OK…”[/quote]:roflmao: Your wife does that too? :roflmao: Cracks me up.
I also tend to try not to encourage her in this by speaking either Mandarin or English and keeping them distinct. I do more Mandarin is the normal flow of things, but switch to English when in a bad mood, and for arguments. Sure, using my native tongue is an unfair advantage for me, but so is being female for her. :smiling_imp:[/quote]

We do that too…but when I hear people do it on the street or work, it sound so pretentious. :stuck_out_tongue: When things get ugly in our house its Mandarin.

20

My wife used to hang around with Hong Kong friends when studying in Australia. She now speaks fluent english, mandarin, hakka and cantonese and I’ve only got english and a struggling mandarin.