Taiwan website (Turton) and speaking the language

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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Mod note: split from [url=Just got here on Friday, AAAAHHHH! *freaking out* thread[/url].

[quote=“Isaac”]Hi Robert, you might want to take a look at Michael Turton’s website, it offers some sound advices on living in Taiwan. Below is a link to the section about finding accomodations and housing. Cheers.

http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/housing.html[/quote]

That web site is hilarious! I went to the Learning Chinese section…
http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/chinese.html
It starts off innocent enough… but then it just twists into that h0nkey ANGST that I have T0TALLY been through…
Yes, I would agree with him that you can be happier here if you don’t speak Chinese and just behave like a 乖乖 little foreigner guy, Mr. Sir, and go to Starbucks and order a ‘Cappucino’ for your girlfriend/translator with your big dumb smile…

Actually, I’ve gotten really good at that big dumb smile (but I still speak Chinese with it)

Yes, ignorance is bliss… but the melancholy is part of the intellectual and the intellectual is part of the vanity and the vanity is part of a whole other bliss…

And there are people who live here and never learn the language, but… the language isn’t the only thing here that there is to learn. There are all sorts of rides at this amusement park. The ‘Learn Chinese’ ride is a big ass emotional roller coaster. Recently, I’ve been going to Forumosa games club for some ‘Scrabble’ merry-go-round action. Nice change.

2

“Another problem with speaking excellent Chinese is that you will be exposed to all sorts of interactions you might otherwise have avoided.”

This is sarcasm, right? It’s hard to believe anyone could honestly hold such a view.

This thread sort of brings back the feelings I had when I first arrived. I say sort of because I had a great time and really enjoyed myself during those first few years. And for most of the years following, actually. I’d guess that Taiwan’s a lot easier these days for a foreigner to arrive in than it used to be.

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The guy is half right AND deranged. Quite a feat.

4

Michael Turton may be a godless commie who wants the feds to confiscate my cache of weapons (and my camo undies) hidden up in a secret location in the Central Ranges, but he still has the best website on Teaching English in Taiwan. It’s easy to pick a few things out from his website and disagree with them, but coming up with a better website is a rather different matter. He’s obviously spent a lot of time on it with no thought of finiancial return. If anyone knows of a better website, please let us know.

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[quote=“Poagao”]“Another problem with speaking excellent Chinese is that you will be exposed to all sorts of interactions you might otherwise have avoided.”

This is sarcasm, right? It’s hard to believe anyone could honestly hold such a view. [/quote]

No, truth, sadly. In 1998 when I was teaching at a southern Taiwan U, they demanded that I do free translation for the university. All of the university’s stuff. Anything – you know, academic work, websites, whatever anyone wanted. Actually, what happened was the Chair told the Prez I’d be happy to without clearing it with me first. Not a smart thing to do. Naturally I balked at going into competition with myself! I’ve had other experiences like that. A very obese friend of mine whose Chinese is good has told me stories of people asking all sorts of questions to him about how he and his petite wife do it. Being able to speak Chinese is not some magic ticket to the inside that will bring wealth, happiness, and cultural adjustment. No matter how well you speak Chinese, you’re still a foreigner. Often it is simply better to speak English.

Just think of all the people you know who can’t speak a word of Chinese. Some of them are even married to locals! And no one can claim that they don’t have a good time here. To be able to speak Chinese is to enter into a deeper relationship with Taiwan. That is not an unqualified good thing.

All deranged and sometimes right. Years of living here have worn me down. :slight_smile:

I think another thing is, I don’t work in the floating world of the english teacher, a special hothouse where everyone speaks some English, the staff are all deferential females, and people understand foreigners to a certain extent, but in a university where I am simply a tolerated token. And I have been here so long that my perceptions are colored to a certain extent by the fact that they were formed in 1989, not 2004. I try to adjust for the improvements here since then, but I lag. Sorry! I’m not one of you flexible, forward looking young’ns! One of my earliest major experiences of Taiwan was getting death threats from gangsters in the wee hours when my wife’s investors were trying to force her out of the school without paying her for her portion. Yes, I am paranoid. But with good reason.

Anyway, I’ve been working trying to get the paranoia under control. But I keep getting interrupted by that damned radio in my tooth…

Thanks for all the good words!

Michael

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[quote=“Vorkosigan”]Being able to speak Chinese is not some magic ticket to the inside that will bring wealth, happiness, and cultural adjustment. No matter how well you speak Chinese, you’re still a foreigner. Often it is simply better to speak English.

Just think of all the people you know who can’t speak a word of Chinese. Some of them are even married to locals! And no one can claim that they don’t have a good time here. To be able to speak Chinese is to enter into a deeper relationship with Taiwan. That is not an unqualified good thing.[/quote]

I always kind of pitied those people, but now that I think about it, they’re all the kind of people who are disappointed or outraged or otherwise quite dissatisfied with Taiwan, and understanding more of what’s going on around them would just make things seem worse for them. I guess ignorance can be bliss after all.

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[quote=“Poagao”][quote=“Vorkosigan”]Being able to speak Chinese is not some magic ticket to the inside that will bring wealth, happiness, and cultural adjustment. No matter how well you speak Chinese, you’re still a foreigner. Often it is simply better to speak English.

Just think of all the people you know who can’t speak a word of Chinese. Some of them are even married to locals! And no one can claim that they don’t have a good time here. To be able to speak Chinese is to enter into a deeper relationship with Taiwan. That is not an unqualified good thing.[/quote]

I always kind of pitied those people, but now that I think about it, they’re all the kind of people who are disappointed or outraged or otherwise quite dissatisfied with Taiwan, and understanding more of what’s going on around them would just make things seem worse for them. I guess ignorance can be bliss after all.[/quote]
Strange, I am struggling to understand why things are the way they are yet others are happy not knowing. Maybe I should change. :wink:

8

On my planet, some people who can’t speak Chinese in Taiwan are very happy, while others are not. Similarly, some people who speak excellent Chinese are unhappy, while others are not. Perhaps your planet is different, though. You might also note that my website says other things about learning Chinese:

However, there are numerous drawbacks to not knowing Chinese. For one thing, it is insulting to live somewhere without speaking a local language (Taiwanese often express contempt for foreigners who live in Taiwan without speaking the language), and for another, those foreigners generally know very little about Taiwan (although they invariably believe they know everything).

Learning Chinese is endlessly useful in everyday life, for everything from deciphering food packaging labels to reading street signs. Many people find it extremely difficult to get around in Taiwan’s cities without some Chinese, especially outside of Taipei where the signage is less likely to feature English.
Most importantly, Chinese is the ticket to any number of high-paying teaching and translation jobs.

Best of all, you can read Tang poetry in the original.

In other words, the site tries to give a balanced view with several different takes. Sure, if you pull one out it sounds extreme. But I believe people should be given a number of views. Don’t you?

Michael

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I’ve changed my Chinese page to reflect the criticisms here. I think you guys have some strong points.

Michael

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I hope you can also reconsider your observations about how easy it is to learn to speak Chinese. While it is true that Mandarin does not have conjugations and the like, I think speaking it with a reasonable degree of fluency and accuracy is very difficult indeed. Most foreigners ‘top out’ at a level of proficiency where they can speak well enough to make themselves understood but have poor control over the accuracy of what they are saying.

11

[i decided you were right]

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I decided you were right after all, and changed it. The new text should cycle through my server in the next 24 hours or so. For some reason things sometimes don’t appear instantly.

Michael

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Do you have any statistics to back up your observations about how foreigners can’t learn to speak good Chinese?

I always wondered where that came from; why exactly everyone in Taiwan thinks that foreigners are incapable of learning Chinese and are so shocked to hear a non-Chinese person speaking their language. This behavior didn’t just spring up on its own; the people here learned it after generations of dealing with foreigners who didn’t think Chinese was worth learning (ironically, it seems like the foreigners I know who take this attitude are the same ones claiming immigrants to their own countries should definitely learn the language).

So who do you think is really to blame for the view that foreigners can never really understand Chinese? The “backward locals”? Or the foreigners they learned it from?

14

Speak for yourself mate. :raspberry:

There are a excellent Chinese speakers on those boards - when I speak it over the phone, people will often think that I am from HK, as they fathom a not too heavy accent in my spoken Chinese.

If you give it a decent amount of attention, learn to speak Chinese is not that much harder than learning to any other language.

Writing Chinese on the other hand is a bitch.

15

That happens to me too. Are you ABC? Are you overseas Chinese? I think several factors are at play – there are a lot of different accents in mandarin here, the range of what’s acceptable is broad, and good second language speakers can fall into that range.

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I consider myself a pretty laid back, friendly person but occasionally I do get a little cheesed off when I

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[quote=“M. Turton”]“Another problem with speaking excellent Chinese is that you will be exposed to all sorts of interactions you might otherwise have avoided.”[/quote]I could say the same thing about English :wink:

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I don’t think Michael is saying ‘don’t learn Chinese’. He’s just saying there is a downside to speaking good Chinese.

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Look,

I

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Oh, I am not overseas Chinese or ABC, I am Danish, the first in my family able to speak Chinese, and proud of it. I do hold a masters in Asian Studies, which means that I spent several years on the language, culture etc. of China, and most is directly applicable here.

I would say that speaking Chinese is a huge asset. I still believe that if you put 2 hrs in per day with a private teacher, then you will be able to speak an OK Chinese after a few months. Formal instruction is key.

When it comes to people not being able to speak chinese… Well, if they are happy good for them. I am holier than thou chewytobacco, and if I decided to stay here for several years, then I would try to put away a few hrs per week for some instruction. After all, being able to speak this language is overall a huge asset when living here.