I’m currently studying third year Chinese at Princeton’s Chinese program in Beijing, which will end shortly, and afterwards I am going to ICLP in Taiwan. One good aspect of the Princeton program is that it has a “language pledge” which states that none of the students can speak English through the program. In coming here, I’ve found this rule to be extremely useful in interacting with the local university students, because they always want to speak English. Since we have this rule, I can just tell them and they’ll just speak Chinese. Since there’s a cultural exchange with Americans, they’re happy to be our friends, but they are dying to speak english.
However, ICLP in Taiwan is not only very hard, so will need a lot of out-of-class Chinese practice, but also without a language pledge. I was wondering if University students here, especially ones at TaiDa, will try to get you to speak English with them? I know the pressure to speak English is huge for mainland Chinese students, but don’t know the situation in Taiwan.
If I don’t want to speak English, I just tell people I’m Polish and my English sucks. Problem solved.
Oh, you mean if you don’t want to lie to them?
I think the whole ‘pledge’ thing is a bit weird (sounds very puritanical) - is it so difficult to say “Please don’t speak English to me, I’m learning Mandarin”? If anyone continues to speak to you in English after that, I would suggest this person is an arse and can then safely be ignored.
Lying is going to be easier, though.
In your daily life there will be instances of people who simply cannot seem to compute the fact that there’s a foreigner in front of them speaking Mandarin - people who will continue to speak broken English even after you’ve answered in perfect Guoyu. This is not a regular occurrence, however.
Oh yeah, and expect people to laugh at your funny Beijinghua (and misunderstand you due both to the accent and differing vocabulary).
People will insist on speaking English to you even if you speak perfect Chinese? That’s odd. Even working people fluent in English will insist on speaking Chinese when I talk - it’s just the younger people who seem to be nuts for English. They don’t do that in Beijing, but I do also have the “I’m Polish” excuse, I even have a fake polish name – Bronislaw Koschinski. I even used it once. I am not sure if my accent will run me into problems, since I got all of my pronunciation off from a teacher from Taibei and only modified my tones to be like Beijinger’s. I don’t have any of that r-sound going on, i.e. renyuar, sanlituer except as a joke. Don’t a good few people in Taibei have a “biaozhun” accent?
In mainland China, the “I’m learning mandarin excuse” might be met with “I’m learning English. That you speak only Chinese is unfair. If we meet for two hours, it would be fair to speak English for the first hour, and Chinese for the second hour”. This kind of bullshit. Even the best of them are nuts for English practice. The whole language pledge thing words wonderfully, though. How is it in Taiwan if you’re living about a university and want to actually have friends you age there (I just graduated), but intend to be speaking Chinese all the time? I mean, just saying: I’m here to learn Chinese will do it for anyone?
The Beijing university students require the force of law to be restrained.
