Hi, I’m a newbie in every sense. I’ve had a go at Living Language Essential Chinese, and deciphered some signs on engrishfunny.com. I’m planning to visit Taipei in about a month.
My understanding is I don’t really need to know the language to get around, but I think it both courteous and worth my while to make at least a token effort. I’ve got to set priorities, though. I’d like some informed feedback on this:
The spoken language seems manageable to me if I just focus on it enough; the written language is a major pain. Will I really need it? Just how many of the translations are as bad as on engrishfunny? Right now I’m focusing almost exclusively on spoken Mandarin. It would be cool to be able to converse a bit. Those chicken scratchings, though, just don’t seem like an effective use of my time.
Once I’ve got the hang of spoken Mandarin, I’m thinking spoken Taiwanese next. Eventually, I’d like to stay with a host family for a couple of months and help them learn English. This first trip is kind of exploratory.
[quote=“rowland”]Hi, I’m a newbie in every sense. I’ve had a go at Living Language Essential Chinese, and deciphered some signs on engrishfunny.com. I’m planning to visit Taipei in about a month.
My understanding is I don’t really need to know the language to get around, but I think it both courteous and worth my while to make at least a token effort. I’ve got to set priorities, though. I’d like some informed feedback on this:
The spoken language seems manageable to me if I just focus on it enough; the written language is a major pain. Will I really need it? Just how many of the translations are as bad as on engrishfunny? Right now I’m focusing almost exclusively on spoken Mandarin. It would be cool to be able to converse a bit. Those chicken scratchings, though, just don’t seem like an effective use of my time.
Once I’ve got the hang of spoken Mandarin, I’m thinking spoken Taiwanese next. Eventually, I’d like to stay with a host family for a couple of months and help them learn English. This first trip is kind of exploratory.
Thoughts?[/quote]
Chinese writing is a lot more logical than many people think. Yes there are some things you have to memorize, but it is hardly chicken scratchings. It might even help you to get better, but I don’t think you need to read to chat to people. Taiwanese might be another monster. Some of my friends don’t speak it well and they were born here!