[quote=“Erhu”]
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. [/quote]
This is good advice - practice dealing with a specific situation in Mandarin, go out and try it, and then at your next session with your tutor practice again - now knowing what went wrong and what was understood.
Also keep in mind that your tutor is used to the way you speak and may be able to understand you where others couldn’t. Often when I was practicing with my tutor, he’d tell me that I was perfectly clear and saying things correctly - and when I’d go out to talk to the locals, they wouldn’t understand. I’d tell my tutuor - yeah, YOU understood me; now pretend to be an illiterate taxi driver who’s scared of foreigners and can barely speak Mandarin himself.
I don’t know why there’s such a big focus on the time it takes to learn Mandarin (or any language, or anything for that matter.) Everyone is different, every situation is different, etc.
I’ve met the I’m-coming-here-to-study-Chinese-and-go-to-the-University-and-that’s-my-life people. Some of those guys are reading and speaking after 6 months of hardcore study (though often times, I still think they sound ass.)
I’ve met the I’m-a-language-savant-and-never-took-a-single-class-and-my-Chinese-RULED-after-3-months people. Though often times, their Chinese does NOT rule. They can read, but at almost a K2 level. They can often times coverse quite fluently, but because they never had classes (and don’t want any) their tones are ASS, and no one has the heart to tell them (if someone did, they wouldn’t listen anyway.)
That reminds me, people’s tones definitely do NOT need to be perfect to be understood (I know you met at least one “fleunt” dude with ASS tones.)
On top of that, some people just don’t have the time to dedicate 2-4 hours of Chinese study a day for three months (or even a week.) That changes things quite a bit. Some people ONLY study with their language partner and never alone, that changes things. Some people talk a lot of shite about how good their language abilities are and they aren’t, that changes the perception of things too.
Just take your time. Study as much as you can/would like to and it’ll come.
I studied about 6 hours a day for 8 months straight (by myself) when I first arrived (I think it must have been a culture shock thing.) I was mainly interested in characters so my speaking slagged behind (where your focus is changes things.)
It takes a while to get to a point when you don’t care how good other people’s Mandarin is, how long it took them, etc. I don’t know if other people got this way, but I use to look at other foreigners and think “Is his/her Chinese better than mine? I wonder how long they’ve been studying?” etc.
It’s just going to take time. How much time? Depends on you. I think I must have started my Chinese quest like 7 or 8 years ago. I’m still not happy with my level, but I’ve enjoyed myself the whole time. That’s probably the most important part.
Oh, and set some goals for yourself. Not time based ones, but what are you studying for? So you can order food at Mc Donalds? So you can go to the University?
Oh, and one more thing. Not everyone has that I-need-to-speak-Chinese-everywhere attitude about learning. I didn’t. One time after practicing my food ordering dialog with a friend (I was getting 排骨飯) I had brain freeze and ordered 屁股飯 (trials and tribulations of a kindergarten teacher .) I didn’t try ordering food from there for a few weeks and went back to point/grunting/“speaking” back at Mc Donalds after that.
[/me snapping because it’s 7:30 and there are no other posts to post in]
Well first off, let me say it’s nice to get objective (and subjective ), feedback, because your hearts are all in the right place. I’ll certainly be reporting back more in the future.
Okay, so three months isn’t that long? Good. Fine. I totally accept that. Just wondering about a time-line with refrence to some manistream acceptance. I was also wondering about the “starter” phrase, to let someone know I will be trying to communicate in Mandarin. Something like: Can you speak English, or, how are you?, or, what’s this? or , How much is this?
I will also try the tip about starting in English and switching to Mandarin afterward. My tones are okay, but not the greatest. I am acutely aware of my beginner status so I am not arrogant about speaking Mandarin.
The confusing this is, people at my school talk to me in Mandarin and English, and some of my students understand me every time. But it’s a way different story on the mean streets.
Error intolerant is an apt phrase indeed. Don’t worry folks, I am certainly in this for the long haul and will not give up just because of a bad day!
Actually my ex once strangely uttered all too loudly while on the back of the bike surrounded by scoot commuters . . . “I know what you want, you want to eat lao ban niang’s jiba.” (我想到了,你想吃老闆娘的 jiba!) To which I answered, “I’ve truly never ever eaten the old boss woman’s jiba in all my life,” to the amusement of quite a few nearby.
I see foriegners who seem to speak better Mandarin than me all the time and then I realize they are probably talking about something to do with their business. Maybe the guy exports zippers or something and there are fifteen different words in Mandarin for zipper style. I don’t even know how to say zipper, or button for that matter, but I’m working on aesthetic sensibility and critical judgement because I actually want to actually use those words. None of us will ever be native speakers of Chinese. There will always be huge holes in our knowledge base. Why pretend otherwise?
Just FYI, la1lian4 (pull chain) for zipper, and kou4zi for a button (of clothing; not to be confused with an4niu3, a push-button (electro-mechanical)).
I think most Taiwanese call them both kou4zi, in typical muddy-thinking fashion, as they say. As a result, I’ve never learned the difference in Chinese; my Taiwanese GF can’t think of it and I can’t find it in my ECD, either! You might try yi1ban1de kou4zi or niu3kou4 for button; versus ka1jin4qu4de kou4zi for snaps. :s
For inquiring minds (and this may not be widely understood, mind you, but it seems to be “the term” in case you ever get the desire to, say, export clothing fasteners) here are a few options courtesy of Google:
Personally the “zimu Kou” option appeals to me the most, but “An Kou” has the most “Google credibility”. I have no idea about acceptability in Taiwan (never had to talk about snaps, as it happens.)
Ahhh you see therein lies just the pickle. It takes a life time to learn a language and most of us are headed into the last half of the only one we get. It behooves us to learn the things we will really need. In the OP’s case that includes such illustrious phrases as “Dui bu qi. Wo de zhongwen bu hao.” “Chin shuo bi jiao men” “Zai yi ci” “Ting bu dong” “Dui bu qi. Ting bu dong” “Eh?” “Zhende xiaojia wo zhende ting bu dong. Zhende.” “Ni juede wo hen hao kan o hehehe” “Xie xie” “Ni shuo yingwen ma” “Bu hui?” “Mei guanxi. Women zai Taiwan oh hehehe!” “Wo xiang nin de ying wen hen hao!” “Qing bangzhu wo. Wo yao qu zhege difung” “Wo bu zhidao zhenme jiang national palace museum” “Yong zhongwen zhenme jiang museum?” “Gu gong?” “Zhende ma? goo gong? Hao qiguai hehehe” “Hao, xie xie ni o hehehe”… Continue using and expanding on such until your ears bleed and your teeth fall out and maybe, just maybe, it’ll all become as instinctive as it needs to be to be actually useful.
I spent 4 years studying Mandarin at university level (one of those years was spent on the mainland) and I still get that blank look from taxi drivers and shopkeepers. I’ve been told many times by others here that my pronunciation is standard and yet I still run into these obstacles. In one case, it may be that the taxi driver was speaking in Taiwanese and didn’t understand Mandarin (I guess this is possible) so he probably just didn’t understand what I was saying.
Nevertheless, I find it very frustrating that I had zero problems with Chinese on the mainland while here I get treated as if I didn’t understand a word. Not to mention the Taiwanese pronunciation of Mandarin is not standard at all…they keep throwing me with the xi/si/shi problem (they seem to pronunce it all as ‘see’). :s
I’ve pretty much given up on speaking Mandarin these days. People only tend to ask my partner (who speaks no Mandarin) the questions and some people will blatantly ignore me when I speak in Mandarin…I’ve had taxi drivers that have ignored me and then got annoyed at us when my partner’s struggled to explain where to go. I sometimes wish I hadn’t spent the time and money trying to learn the language and just get by with badly-pronunced xiexie’s and ni hao’s.
Clearly, you just don’t understand Taiwanese culture.
Along those lines, my spouse tells me that she and her co-workers were playing a form of charades one evening, and the husband of one of the other girls was supposed to convey the name of a country through gestures. For the first syllable, he kept on pointing outside at the road, and it gradually dawned on them that he meant the syllable “Lu”. But what country begins with “Lu”? :s
Why, “Lu-Ben”, of course! . . . which is the Taiwan Guoyu way of saying Japan (i.e., Ri-Ben).
On the other hand, who’s to say that the Taiwanese way of speaking isn’t “correct”? I’m not about to go up to a bunch of Australians and berate them for not speaking like they come from the American Midwest. This whole idea of a “correct” way to speak a language rather goes against modern linguistics principles, does it not?
You just need to up your 台灣國語 skills is all. I wouldn’t recommend latching on to any “right” way of speaking the language. A when in Rome kind of thing. If I ever decided to spend any large amount of time in 大陸 I would be like “好兒, 給我一點兒. 你要去那兒? 兒兒兒兒兒兒… AAAAARRRRRRR”
If you’re going to be here for a while, maybe take up a little Taiwanese. It might be hard to believe, but I think a little Taiwanese will help your Manadarin (here.) Throwing a little Taiwanese in your dialog will also help get some people’s interest. Foreigners that speak Mandarin are a dime a dozen, but Taiwanese speaking foreigners (even if it’s just a little) is a lot more rare.
I speak very very verrrry little madarin. My Fiancee has been teaching me over time both mandarin and Taiwanese.
For me, Taiwanese is a much MUCH easier language to pronounce correctly. At least enough for native folk to understand me. She even says that my Taiwanese is easier to understand than my Mandarin attempts. She was shocked and said that for most, taiwanese is harder and has more tones??? Really???
Hang in there. Three months in not really long enough to develop the necessary muscle memory your tongue, lips, and throat need to accurately reproduce sounds in Mandadrin. If you keep practicing and don’t allow these sorts of experiences to discourage you, you’ll eventually get it down.
It could be worse–I recall several ocassions when I was learning to speak Mandarin where the person hearing me speak would simply burst out laughing (e.g. I once referred to the Jian Guo “raised bridge” as the Jian Guo “orgasm”).
Yes, there are many Taiwanese folks who are downright shocked to learn that a bignose can speak fluent Mandarin, and with good reason, wouldn’t you say? And yes, sometimes they will assume that you’re still speaking English to them, particularly if your tones or pronunciation are a bit off. I don’t think it’s intended to be aggressive or condescending. It can actually be stressful and confusing for them. They are often doing the best they can.
Don’t get too fixated on the frustrations you experience–it does you no good, will only slow you down. Nobody likes to feel ignorant or unappreciated, I know. I always took these sorts of experiences as a challenge to hone my Mandarin skills to the point where I could rip off a complex sentence on a variety of topics without skipping a beat in the conversation. Some days I succeed, some days I don’t. That’s the way it goes.
[quote=“derek1978”]I speak very very verrrry little madarin. My Fiancee has been teaching me over time both Mandarin and Taiwanese.
For me, Taiwanese is a much MUCH easier language to pronounce correctly. At least enough for native folk to understand me. She even says that my Taiwanese is easier to understand than my Mandarin attempts. She was shocked and said that for most, Taiwanese is harder and has more tones??? Really???[/quote]
Yeah, right. This [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/pronunciation-of-boy-and-girl-in-taiwanese/10123/6 on Taiwanese pronunciation[/url] may make you see things differently. Dragons lie here.
.) I didn’t try ordering food from there for a few weeks and went back to point/grunting/“speaking” back at Mc Donalds after that.
), feedback, because your hearts are all in the right place. I’ll certainly be reporting back more in the future.
You might try yi1ban1de kou4zi or niu3kou4 for button; versus ka1jin4qu4de kou4zi for snaps. :s
