I check in on the Forumosa Forums every now and then. If you can manage to get past all the threads where people just bitch about everything that’s wrong with Taiwan and how it should be fixed, there are some interesting threads there.
One of the threads I’ve been reading lately is the “Ways to force people to use Chinese on you” thread. This thread bears particular relevance to me, since I am learning Mandarin and and often like to practice it when Miss Expatriate and I go out.
Now, there are a few problems with this:
1) Many, many people in Taiwan speak English
2) Even more people think they speak English and want to practice
3) Spoken Chinese coming from a white person often goes completely unnoticed
Combine these three factors, and it’s often difficult, I find, to do anything completely in Chinese. Just this last weekend, Miss Expatriate and I went for dinner in Taichung. As soon as we walked in, the hostess was there with a “Hello! Welcome!”
I immediately responded with “[hanzi]ä½ å¥½. å…©ä½[/hanzi].” (Hi. A seat for 2 people please.)
Her rebuttal: “Yes, come this way please.
I turned to Miss Expatriate and said “I hate her already.”
To be honest, I’ll often completely ignore anyone that speaks English to me. If I’m at the nightmarket and a vendor shouts “Come. Try! Very good!” at me, I’ll keep walking. It annoys me to no end, for a few reasons:
1) They see a white person and they assume I’m American. OK, I am, but I might also be German. What about all the white people in Taiwan that don’t speak English as a first language. How many vendors bother learning “Hello, come try this” in Norwegian? Probably none.
2) They are treating me differently. I’ve lived in Taiwan for 2 years. This is, for all intents and purposes, my home. I have a job, I have my papers in order. I’m at your nightmarket. Why are you treating me as if I’m any different from the hundreds/thousands of other people wandering around looking for a late night snack?
Anyway, it irks me because it makes it that much more difficult to practice Chinese. Getting back to our hostess in Taichung, we ate our meal and then Miss Expatriate left to go get the car while I paid. I knew it was coming. I could see it in our hostesses eyes. I knew she would speak English to me again. I was determined to steer the conversation into Chinese.
I got to the counter and she said “655.” (how much we owed).
I pretended I didn’t understand her and said “[hanzi]多少錢[/hanzi]?” ([pinyin]duo1shao3qian2[/pinyin]) (how much is it?) Actually, I didn’t even say that. Saying that is what would be considered “Textbook Mandarin.” Most locals in Taiwan will shorten it to “[hanzi]多少[/hanzi]” and it comes out pronounced like “[pinyin]dou1sao3[/pinyin]?” I’m fairly certain I say it much like a local, too: Miss Expatriate seems to approve of it and it has worked in many situations before.
She repeated herself, in Chinese this time: “[hanzi]å…百五å五[/hanzi].” “Victory!” I thought. I handed her some money. Then, she immediately started writing down the bill and explaining it to me in English!
“2 teas. 20 each.
2 dinners. blah blah blah blah blah” for the entire bill, in English. Immediately after her and I just had our small exchange in Chinese.
Anyway, I suffered through it since I’m much to nice to start yelling at her, even though I really wanted to.
So where does that leave me? Even after I speak Chinese to a local and they answer me in Chinese, they revert back to English for God knows what reason. What else can I do?
I’ve thought of lying and saying “[hanzi]我è½ä¸æ‡‚[/hanzi]” (I don’t understand) but that wouldn’t be very nice.
I’ve thought of adopting a very heavy Irish or Scottish accent and letting them struggle with my English then.
I’ve thought of only speaking German when presented with English.
In the end, I guess I’ll just keep trying to speak Chinese, hard as the locals make it. Perhaps I should a try a tactic that seems to have worked for the guys in this video:
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