I have never found this to be the case. It seems wherever I go in Taiwan the vast majority of people communicate with me in Mandarin without even attempting to speak English.[/quote]
I find exactly the same thing. The vast majority of times, locals automatically speak Chinese to me.
I find for the most part Taiwanese will speak Chinese to me, but there is for sure a small segment of the population that will only speak English. No matter how much better my Chinese is to their English they’ll only speak Chinese to me. My Taiwanese friends tell me its because they believe if they speak English to a foreigner their education level will be perceived to be higher.
Makes a lot of sense. I think I can actually sense that in certain situations. There’s one guy at the local bakery who will run over when he sees me and arrogantly spouts off a few jumbled sentences (starting with: “Take away!!” Translation - is this to go?). Despite the fact that I try speaking Chinese he insists on continuing in English. I think in his mind, relying on Chinese is a failure in his mind and would reflect poorly on his reputation for his coworkers to see him “dishonored”. In any case it’s clear that he’s not really excited about speaking the language so much as having a shot at showing off.
Basically in my daily encounters I get one of the following scenarios:
60% of the time - When I approach this type will look extremely nervous as they think they are about to get exposed on their 10 years of English schooling which has been all but forgotten. As soon as I start speaking Chinese it’s an obvious relief and they’re more than happy to continue using Mandarin.
20% - This type when approached assumes I can’t speak Chinese because I’m white and will start off with very broken English. If I can see in their faces that they are genuinely excited for the opportunity to show off their English, I’ll go with it and let them have their moment. If they look nervous, I’ll come back with Chinese and usually that’s that, they realize their assumption was wrong and it’s not a big issue.
The final, and most annoying 20% are those who love to have a pissing match so to speak. If right away their English blows my Chinese out of the water, of course I’ll go with English as it’s only fair. Often, however, the opposite is true yet they insist on trying to keep taking the conversation back into English. I’ve found the best thing to do in this situation is compliment them on how amazing their English is - in Chinese. Usually they take that as their victory and then drop the whole battle… Most of the time all they are looking for is a huge ego-boost anyway, they aren’t looking to learn anything. They want to know they their English is already amazing.
edit I thought of one guy I came across a week or so ago. He spoke Chinese with me for quite a while and told me he had stayed in the states for a few months. At that point I asked him if he spoke English and we talked in English for a while. He held back at first out of respect for the fact that I had come to his country to learn his language, and I think that was a very classy way to handle things. Unfortunately this is a rather rare occurrence.
I know it’s not the same situation, but if I were back in America and a native Mandarin speaker were there to learn English, and could speak to me rather well, I would feel like a total horse’s ass constantly trying to switch back to Chinese to show them how great my Chinese was. It’s actually disrespectful in my opinion. Especially if I were doing it to show off to people standing around me…
Not keeping a score card is good too.
I still don’t understand Chinese.
Haha I wouldn’t call it “keeping a score”. Some people are more sensitive to these things than others, and then you have hyper-sensitive mofo’s like me. I can’t help it. 
I have never found this to be the case. It seems wherever I go in Taiwan the vast majority of people communicate with me in Mandarin without even attempting to speak English.
Also regarding your point about Taiwanese using Mandarin to speak with Thai and Japanese people. These people speak English only as a second language, if at all, then it makes sense for them to communicate in Mandarin. As a general observation people that come to Taiwan from other countries that are not native English speakers or don’t have a high level of English proficiency generally make much faster and better progress in learning Mandarin.[/quote]
It’s not a matter of English/Chinese proficiency only. I think it’s often the more white you are the more they seem to want to speak Chinese to you. Reference my friend from Poland for example who works in many buxibans here. Some of it is from buxiban teachers who only speak English. Mostly they just want to practice and push it on you. I speak quite good Chinese now but it’s still a daily struggle wading through all the crap english I get in shops and restaurants and co-workers. You have to bull in with your Chinese first (it’s particularly prevalent in Taipei, outside Taipei I guess it’s not really such an issue). Many of them in the professional field come back from UK/USA and want to practice to keep their proficiency and don’t care about your feelings. You just got to throw the Chinese back at them or ignore them or accept this annoying fact if you want to get on with whatever you should be doing. Anyway as my friend said Taiwanese make terrible teachers, they just don’t understand how to do that. Some industries use English regularly so they feel more natural about using it and think that’s fine because they talk with foreigners overseas all the time.
It’s a very annoying characteristic of Taiwanese it must be said. Many Taiwanese are not used to thinking in any shape or form about other people, they just don’t give a crap about helping your Chinese, it’s all the factors of ignorance, selfishness and lack of worldly understanding combined , plus having the image in their heads that white people can’t possibly speak Chinese.
I quite like it when Chinese insist on speaking Chinese to my Thai missus, who doesn’t speak a word, and insist on speaking to me in crap English. Seriously, I’m all smiles.
HG
WTF? Either find another teacher or… wait, you’re not talking about teachers, are you? You’re talking about average Joes just trying make it through the day, aren’t you?
WTF? Either find another teacher or… wait, you’re not talking about teachers, are you? You’re talking about average Joes just trying make it through the day, aren’t you?[/quote]
Yep. Can you imagine Taiwanese visitors to the UK cursing the bloke in the newsagents or the binmen for not helping him/her with their English? I’m willing to bet that they couldn’t be arsed or be equipped to deal with hard grammar questions.
WTF? Either find another teacher or… wait, you’re not talking about teachers, are you? You’re talking about average Joes just trying make it through the day, aren’t you?[/quote]
Yep. Can you imagine Taiwanese visitors to the UK cursing the bloke in the newsagents or the binmen for not helping him/her with their English? I’m willing to bet that they couldn’t be arsed or be equipped to deal with hard grammar questions.[/quote]
As with so many situations in life, this calls for a spoof version of ‘When I’m cleanin’ windows’ by George Formby.
WTF? Either find another teacher or… wait, you’re not talking about teachers, are you? You’re talking about average Joes just trying make it through the day, aren’t you?[/quote]
No, I’m not that’s the problem. I’m talking about all those ‘highly educated’ people who come back from a year or two stint overseas and want to practice English but somehow never think that a foreigner could do with a little bit of direction with your their Chinese every now and then. Anyway Taipei is really a bad place to learn Chinese. Taipei people are very busy and work oriented and as one poster said you need to find some layabouts to play cards and drink beer with…I had friends like that and they hardly ever bothered speaking English to me when they discovered I could understand Chinese.
I find it difficult to get certain people to speak Mandarin with me … my landlord uses Taiwanese as a strategy to bypass me and talk directly with my wife about the repairs he’s not going to make.
So they think you’re a dick because you won’t speak English with them, while you think they’re dicks because they won’t speak Chinese with you.
So it all balances out, really.
Personally, if I were to bother studying at the old Chinee, I’d simply pay someone to teach me and supplement that with a language exchange deal or something. I sure as hell would not be relying on workmates, colleagues, business partners, taxi drivers, etc. to help me out of the goodness of their hearts. The whole concept of such an idea strikes me as simply odd.
Yes yes… it must be because you’re white ? :loco:
As an ABC, I have had my fair share of experiences running into Taiwanese people who will use the one or two English words that they do know for the entire conversation once they realize that I am a foreigner… (I have a Hong Kong sounding accent, unfortunately). Some just think it’s cool to speak English… of course, this is frustrating… I think most of this type either don’t realize or are ignorant - some think just because you fail to understand one word you don’t know how to speak or understand any Chinese at all. I came across this more when I first got here, much less now that my Chinese has improved (or at least, I’d like to think so :p)
Also, as mentioned earlier, you can tell if someone is Japanese immediately… so, I can see how Taiwanese may be more prone to use just only Chinese with Japanese since many Japanese aren’t that great with English either, but most that do come here are students/workers/business learning the language anyway. That is one likely reason…
Sandy, I’m not sure if you’re the right person to be giving out advice on learning Chinese.
Sandy, I’m not sure if you’re the right person to be giving out advice on learning Chinese.[/quote]
I know everything about everything. Nothing strange about that. I have wisdom, you see?
I’m interested, though – what part of my opinion do you disagree with?
Okay, I had another little encounter today that really pissed me off and I think I’ve finally pinpointed why.
So today I’m in a store looking at my options and there’s a girl talking really loudly about which one she thinks is the best. Seeing an opportunity to talk with her about why she thinks it’s the best, I ask her 你覺得這個是最好的, 是不是? (So you think this one’s the best is that right?) And she comes back at me… of course… in fucking English.
First of all, there’s the whole “oh look, a white person! That means they speak English!” thing which, since 99.9% of us internationally traveling whities do speak English, let’s let that one slide (although it still indicates a degree of ignorance if you ask me - funny thing, white people have other languages too!).
Beyond that, I came to Taiwan to study Chinese, we’re IN Taiwan RIGHT NOW, I approach you in YOUR f*ing language which I took years to learn, and you’re going to flip the conversation on me to show-off how great your English is? What a joke. I know, I know, it’s just the pat your back culture here. Maybe I’m too naive but I fail to believe anyone in any culture wouldn’t see how utterly disrespectful and ignorant this is.
I imagine a scenario in the states where someone who looks Chinese walks up to me and speaks fluent English. What a horse’s ass I would be to reply in Chinese for an ego boost.
I need some kind of tactic here… I’ve thought about the following options:
As I’ve seen mentioned before, throw out a “天阿你英文怎麼這麼好! 真的很厲害阿” and hope the ego-boost is adequate.
Pretend I don’t understand English, because I’m a insert nationality.
Keep asking what the person is saying as if I don’t understand their English. (hehehe 
)
Say something like, “oh sorry, I assumed you spoke Chinese haha. Are you Japanese?” Followed by their response, “Oh, no I do speak Chinese.” and ten seconds of awkward silence…
GRRRRRRRRRRRRR :fume:
*Let me add that this isn’t about an expectation of being taught by everyone I meet on the street. I certainly don’t expect anyone to tell me where my speaking mistakes are or teach me in any other way.
Damn, man! Think yourself lucky. If I go up and start talking to strange women in whatever language, I consider myself lucky if they don’t back away and threaten to call the cops.
[quote=“necroflux”]Okay, I had another little encounter today that really pissed me off and I think I’ve finally pinpointed why.
~snipped to save space~
*Let me add that this isn’t about an expectation of being taught by everyone I meet on the street. I certainly don’t expect anyone to tell me where my speaking mistakes are or teach me in any other way.[/quote]
I sometimes find that Taiwanese will be expecting you to be speaking English, and if you just come out with a random sentence in Chinese, especially to someone who’s not expecting it, it doesn’t immediately compute to them that you’ve spoken Chinese. They assume they heard you speak English. It’s not always rudeness when they then answer in English, especially as the vast majority of foreigners don’t speak Chinese well, if at all.