Josh and I have already been in Taiwan for over 10 months! I admit I hoped we’d be speaking more Mandarin by now. But, I did manage a small conversation with a new coworker today! It was a super basic conversation… Are you married? (which I said wrong, but she understood well enough), How many kids do you have? Sons or daughters? How old? And Oh! Oh! My shining moment! I understood when she said that her dog behaves better than her kids! ha! So I enjoyed some humor in the language! Yay!
Which is to say… Yes, Josh and I are still trying to learn Mandarin. And yeah, we’re still beginners. Working full time, mainly in English, makes progress slow but there is progress. We continue to take 3 hours of private night classes each week. And we supplement our studies with language apps, youtube videos, podcasts, etc. Which also means we continue to occasionally learn words we later discover are “mainland” mandarin not Taiwan mandarin. Here’s some of the latest examples we’ve come across since I wrote about it last.
1. Your welcome! This is one of the first mandarin phrases I learned. bù kè qi (不客氣) Good news, it is used here! But I started to notice that I almost never heard bù kè qi when I said “xie, xie” . Instead I kept hearing “bù huì (不會)”. (like Boo whoay! :)) I started asking people about it and it sounds like it may be adopted (or adapted?) from Taiwanese.
2. And Yep another super basic word that differs from here to there. Via multiple apps & audio lessons, I learned hé (和) (like, huh?) to mean “and”. But turns out, here in Taiwan they say hàn (和) (like han solo).
3. Restaurant Another beginner word! I learned both fàn diàn (飯店) and fàn guǎn (飯館) Before learning that the most common word here is cān tīng (餐廳).
4. Taxi: This is one that actually might confuse if you use the mainland word for Taxi here in Taiwan (although in most cases context would probably make it clear what you mean). The word for Taxi here is jì chéng chē (計程車). Mainland speakers say chū zū chē (出租車) But here in Taiwan that means rental car.
5. Tomato …. Potato 🙂 Tomato here it’s fān qié (番茄) not xī hóng shì (西紅柿). And potato is mǎ líng shǔ (馬鈴薯) not tǔ dòu (土豆)… that actually means peanut here in Taiwan!
Honestly, in most cases if you use the less common word or phrase, Taiwan Chinese speakers will probably still understand you. And they are wonderfully gracious people, so hurray for that! But in my case, since I’m living in Taiwan, I do want to use Taiwan’s dialect. And at the very least, I definitely need to understand the different words they use! If you are in a similar situation – I hope this helps you! Click here to see the first in this series of posts and check out italki’s article for a more in-depth look at this topic.