This has probably been said before but I gotta vent.
So I’ve been taking Mandarin lessons for almost three months and am building up a good foundation. My lessons are one-on-one from a private Taiwanese tutor.
I worked on pronunciation over and over and over with my tutor until she was happy, especially with numbers. Now I’m actually moving on to the how, when, why and past and future tense. Yet almost every time I speak Mandarin to a native speaker, they look at my like I’m from planet Zero.
Today I walked into the post office to get a NT$60 stamp and requested it in Mandarin, and the guy looked at my as if I was speaking Greek. Same goes for whenever I’m out with my Chinese GF. Even if I’m speaking to someone who knows me in passing, such as the 7-Eleven worker. If my GF is with me they totally ignore me and look at her. She’ll say it exactly the way I say it, yet they act as though they can’t understand me.
:fume:
What is with this country? Are most Taiwanese under the impression that nobody can speak Mandarin except them? I have to admit that it was almost the same in S.Korea. As soon as you start speaking their language, their faces go blank.
Is it an ignorance that there are indeed other people in this world who are capable of learning another language? Are most under the impression that they can learn English but we can’t learn Mandarin? I have long become accustomed to being stared at like I’m some walking manikin who actually knows how to eat and pay for things. (I just love it when they stare at me when I’m eating).
But I’m almost ready to give up trying to communicate in their language and just go back to waving my arms around and writing things down. It’s too bad because I really enjoy my lessons and sincerely want to learn conversational Mandarin. But things were a lot easier and much less frustrating when I didn’t know how to speak it and never tried.
Three months isn’t a very long time, especially for a language like Mandarin. How are your tones? I often find that newbie learners of Mandarin have a lot of difficulty with tones, and this can be a major obstacle to understanding. Not saying that this applies to you, just speculation on my part. Anyway, three months is just dipping your toe in the pool. Don’t give up so easily - hang in there for another year or two, and I bet you’ll find your Mandarin is much better received…
This is something I find from newbies and… oldies?
Regardless, I didn’t get past that thingy until after about 2 years of living here. It never really bothered me though, so…
One thing I’ve noticed some people do is use Chinese all the time for everything (that they can/think they can use it for.) This is probably a great strategy for learning, but I think it produces an extra amount of situations where you get blank stares and Huh’s.
What I did in my not-so-fluent day was start with English with everyone I bumped into. If they could hang, good, I used English. If not, I’d get to switch to Chinese and they’d be more attentive with listening.
Something MuchaMan suggested in the way back when (and I used it) is find a “starter” that works for you. Like 請問 (qing3wen4) or 麻煩妳 (ma2fan2ni3) or even a simple 小姐 (xiao3jie3)/先生 (xian1sheng) to start a conversation with so they know you’re coming with some Chinese.
Eventually you figure out the right gestures and language intricacies to have you doing all your stuff in Chinese all the time (like I almost always never do .)
Oh, and it took me the 2 years here added to the 1.5 years or so of class time I had back home. I could speak the whole time of course. It was at or around the 2 year mark that I stopped having problems with people understanding me.
Maybe you’re speaking TO clearly. That can sound funny too .
Even if you keep at it for several years and your Chinese improves quite a bit, if you live in a decent sized city like Taizhong or Taibei, you’ll still get this treatment if you’re with a Taiwanese person. It always annoyed me when I used to live in Taizhong and I’d go to a restaurant with a Taiwanese friend and suddenly I became the Invisible Man. Sometimes, we’d switch languages, she’d order in English and I’d order in Chinese just to throw them for a loop.
On the other hand, I never get that sort of BS now that I live in the countryside.
In my experience, it also seems a problem with the language itself. It seems very error intolerant. If I would pronounce something just slightly different I would get the “Huh” face In example, if I would want to get a translation for a certain word I heard, I would explain even the context I heard it in, I would still get the questionmarks in my co-workers eyes. But if I ask someone here on f.com, and just write a bad version of pinyin, I get the correct translation.
But on the other hand, if some Taiwanese would speak in English to me, and completely ruin the sentence, I am still able to get what this person wants to tell me. Maybe it is just that I am used to living in different countries or talking to people with different accents, I am not sure.
Well, the only way to get our real opinions is to post an .mp3 file of you making some requests, so we can listen and comment! Any free audio file upload sites out there?
[quote=“miltownkid”]
Something MuchaMan suggested in the way back when (and I used it) is find a “starter” that works for you. Like 請問 (qing3wen4) or 麻煩妳 (ma2fan2ni3) or even a simple 小姐 (xiao3jie3)/先生 (xian1sheng) to start a conversation with so they know you’re coming with some Chinese.[/quote]
I think this is excellent advice. Remember, people often only hear what they expect to hear. If they’re expecting to hear English, they won’t understand you, even when you’re speaking Chinese.
I’ve had the same problem in NY. I lived in Latin America for several years–even nearly got deported one time because the immigration officials thought my Spanish was too good for me to be American–but it still took three tries before the cashier at a Queens bodega realized I was speaking her language.
Starting with an intro, like “xiaojie” or “qingwen”, gives their brains a minute to switch over.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but with just three months of Mandarin under your belt, I am nearly 100% confident that most people just can’t understand you. The tones are a problem, but even worse is syntax for most newbies. You know how Taiwanese sound when they babble incoherent Chinglish at you. Well, that’s almost certaily the way you sound in Mandarin at this point. If you keep at it though you should be able to hold a simple conversation in a couple of years.
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As for the the invisible man syndrome, I solved that a few years ago by learning to always take the initiative. I order first, I give directions to taxi drivers, and I actively make eye contact with people to make sure that they know I am talking to them and will not be ignored. It has worked wonders. Don’t let your Taiwanese friends do stuff for you and take charge.
Geez you;re a bastard bob, but I think you might be right.
To the op, it might sound to you like what other people are sounding but it clearly isn’t to them. It takes awhile to get your head around making the sounds (tones included), mimicking what you hear outside the classroom is a good start. It could also be that you have a teacher that is (correctly, some would say) laying it on with the Beijing accent. Taiwan folks are not the best at understanding that.
It takes time, mate! You’ll need about a year with that language exchange partner under your belt before you’ll be understood. Just keep pounding away at it, and the Chinese will come sooner or later.
Wonder, Good for you, putting forth the effort to study Mandarin. Not too many foreigners living in Taiwan choose to do so. I’m sure with formal study, you’ve made honest gains. But, with the utmost respect, don’t overestimate your Mandarin language abilities.
It takes a whole lotta hard work to get to the point where Taiwanese/Chinese respect your speaking ability enough to communicate with you, as opposed to the Taiwanese/Chinese accompaning you at the time of your interaction.
Many Taiwanese can speak English, more now than ever before. I’ve found them to be proud of their spoken English, and really do quite well.
Although there are many good people, there’s always the shmucks, as there is anywhere on our great planet Earth.
I wish you the best of luck in your future studies, and keep up the good work.
Take care, Mark
You have to get your ear used to it. Then you start speaking faster. I remember getting some evil looks when I tried to use what non-Mandarin in the beginning. That was rude of them though. I just dove into it, but I didn’t take lessons. My Mandarin is far, far from good, but I provided myself a really awesome base. I was in Taiwan for 2 years with no lessons. But I lived in Hualien. Maybe easier to learn there then Taipei.
I can get by pretty well without using English or sign language.
I think this is a perfect example of why learning Chinese in China is far superior to learning Chinese here. I started studying Chinese at Nankai University in Tianjin and was a TOTAL beginner. I started with “Xie Xie” and “Ni hao, wo shi mei guo ren”. After 2 weeks I got the courage to venture out on my own and was amazed at how I was able to haggle and have simple conversations with people in Mandarin. Granted, communication was very limited, but everyday people would often try to talk to me and wouldn’t give up even when I said “ting bu dong” several times. They’d keep rambling in Chinese until I got something that I could understand.
There is absolutely no reason the OP needs to wait 2 years in order to use the Mandarin that he is learning now. Many Taiwanese people are very aggressive about trying to speak English with foreigners. If you really want to improve you have to be more motivated and aggressive than they are. Refuse to speak English and if the Post office clerk or Starbucks guy tries to use English just say “ting bu dong” and keep going with Chinese. Jia you!
3 months? C’mon. How long were you in Korea? You can get some basic things down here pretty quick (I’m in Korea), but the grammar is messed up with a bunch of different rules and ways to say things. No tones here, but… Fuck, how long were you in Korea? I learned Korean pretty fast, but there are no tones. Going from Korean to Mandarin is different. Korean is just addding and changing things. Mandarin takes an ear more.
I think this is a perfect example of why learning Chinese in China is far superior to learning Chinese here. I started studying Chinese at Nankai University in Tianjin and was a TOTAL beginner. I started with “Xie Xie” and “Ni hao, wo shi mei guo ren”. After 2 weeks I got the courage to venture out on my own and was amazed at how I was able to haggle and have simple conversations with people in Mandarin. Granted, communication was very limited, but everyday people would often try to talk to me and wouldn’t give up even when I said “ting bu dong” several times. They’d keep rambling in Chinese until I got something that I could understand.
There is absolutely no reason the OP needs to wait 2 years in order to use the Mandarin that he is learning now. Many Taiwanese people are very aggressive about trying to speak English with foreigners. If you really want to improve you have to be more motivated and aggressive than they are. Refuse to speak English and if the Post office clerk or Starbucks guy tries to use English just say “ting bu dong” and keep going with Chinese. Jia you![/quote]
I dunno, I’d tend to agree with the “couple of years” assessment. Yeah, I was able to communicate like Tarzan after about 6 months (Ni shi Palanka, Wo shi Gubo!), but after an equivalent period of learning German I was able to hold extended conversations about various topics. My feeling is that Chinese requires 3X the time investment to reach a given level of fluency that you’d need for an Indo-European language.
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On further reflection, I think it makes a big difference whether one is trying to learn the writing system. Most students I know of traditionally learn characters along with the spoken language. If one were to go into an intensive program that focused only on speaking, I could see how advanced conversation might be attainable within several months.
The Mandarin spoken in China is a beautiful, pure and strong sounding language. The Mandarin spoken in Taiwan has been kicked around and stomped on a bit. Thus; even more challenging.
I studied Beijing Mandarin for two years, prior to coming to Taiwan. I didn’t know what was being said to me when I successfully attempted to buy a pencil at a store located on the grounds of Shi-Da University, fresh off the plane.
You are here, you should study here. There’s always something better somewhere else, they say.
Study hard, learn alot and make the most of your life here in Taiwan.
PS Ni mama shi dai-fu ma?
Wonder, yes, stay here and study hard. But don’t believe it if people tell you it should take 2 years in order for you to have simple conversations in Mandarin. Come on guys, he was trying to buy a stamp at the post office for crap sake. It doesn’t take 3 months of one-on-one lessons to be able to do that!
Wonder, if you are really frustrated about this particular experience, then do your best to learn from your mistakes. Repeat the post office scenario with your teacher and ask her where you went wrong. Remember that learning a language is a process and you are bound to have misunderstandings. The important thing is to try and find out what went wrong and go from there.
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In example, if I would want to get a translation for a certain word I heard, I would explain even the context I heard it in, I would still get the questionmarks in my co-workers eyes. But if I ask someone here on 
Any free audio file upload sites out there?
