Do You Need to Know Mandarin to Go to Taiwan

Reader Question: How difficult it is to learn Mandarin and is it isolating to motility to Taiwan if you don't speak it? The language bulwark is my biggest fear, especially because I plan to travel in there by myself.

Is Mandarin really hard to acquire?

Curt answer: Yes, Mandarin is really hard to learn.

A lot of people that are smarter than me take learned it, and they might tell you that "it's not that hard." Only difficulty is relative. And learning Chinese (as a European) is much more hard than learning Castilian or English language. I've seen a scale that positions languages according to their difficulty and it puts Castilian at 0.75 and Mandarin at 1.v — pregnant that for each month of learning Castilian you lot do you lot'd have to put in at least two months of learning Mandarin to end up at a roughly equivalent position. That might not seem as well bad but, if yous ever studied a mod language at schoolhouse, think about how bad y'all were at the end of your first yr, then realise that it'll take you ii years to exist that bad at Mandarin.

I tin't fifty-fifty understand the English language…

Personally, I institute it more than twice every bit hard to learn Standard mandarin as I did to larn Castilian (disclaimer: I speak neither language well). This is considering yous take to learn a new alphabet (which come with insidious 'stroke orders') and you lot have to learn well-nigh the unlike 'tones,' which are notoriously hard for the adult European ear to distinguish. And there is absolutely no frame of reference to depict on, because while I can hear the discussion absoluto in Spanish and know exactly what it means in English immediately, I can hear the discussion mǎ in Chinese and not accept a clue that information technology refers to equus caballus. Or I tin look at 馬 and have even less idea that it refers to equus caballus. And to make matters worse there are four different tonal versions of the word ma (mā, má, mǎ and mà) that deport no relation to each other at all (mother, horse, hemp and scold).

And the tones matter a great deal! Charlie and I would walk into a soup shop and enquire for some soup (tāng). The person behind the counter would say "I'm sorry we don't have any sugar (táng), this is a soup shop, not a saccharide store." Now in England, if a foreigner walks into your soup shop and asks for some sup or some sap or some sop, the guy behind the counter will know that he'southward really afterwards soup and the foreigner is just saying it slightly wrong because he is foreign, afterall. But in Taiwan they aren't used to hearing bad Chinese in the manner that we are used to hearing bad English language, and and so their ear isn't trained to work out what y'all might actually want if y'all aren't maxim it with 99% accurateness. This can be dispiriting for the person learning Chinese (do you really call back that I'm in your soup shop looking for sugar?)

Charlie's favourite blood-red bean soup in Taiwan

I've heard it said that it takes a decade to learn to speak Standard mandarin. I've also heard it said that after ten years of learning to speak Mandarin, you volition have learned an awful lot of humility, and a fiddling bit of Chinese.

Having said that, in that location are some practiced $.25 to learning Chinese.

They accept less sounds than we do in English, and some of them overlap, making phonetic learning easier. Their grammer is as well a cakewalk compared to ours. And while learning to read and write is intimidating, it'due south also incredibly exciting. I learned how to read a Chinese menu with well-nigh sixty% accuracy in a couple of weeks cheers to Memrise. Being able to indicate to dumplings and become dumplings for the get-go fourth dimension was really good fun, fifty-fifty if I did in one case look almost forty minutes to get the biggest bowl of tentacles you have e'er seen (and I don't eat seafood).

Of the people that I met in Taiwan, those that had the about success with the language were invariably the ones with the Taiwanese girlfriend/fellow. However, our friend Stephanie has been learning Mandarin while also property downwardly a teaching job since she arrived in Taiwan in 2012 and has progressed really well. There were one or two people we knew in full time study that were pretty good too, although that'southward the expensive option. Spending a couple of months in a Chinese school would certainly not be a bad program, every bit long as you tin afford it, as information technology would assistance you non merely get the basics but also help you settle into the customs.

Chinese educational activity manner is very different to European teaching way: a lot of people complain that in that location is as well much repetition and not enough explanation, but that's the method which has worked for them before and they're sticking to it. Charlie and I learned through language substitution twice a week for almost of the year, and we never got whatsoever further than "I want a… " "where is the…" or "I'one thousand feeling…" level of Mandarin. Yet, though we never had any corking conversations, the locals nosotros met seemed truly delighted that we were taking the time to acquire their language, so I don't regret learning the basics for a infinitesimal.

Will I be isolated if I move to Taiwan without speaking Mandarin?

Unless y'all finish up being the only European in a small mountain hamlet, an disability to speak Chinese shouldn't leave you lot isolated. Learning English language is hugely in demand in Taiwan, which means that there are a group of English language speaking English language teachers in every boondocks.

Taipei is full of English speakers, both foreign and local, and they will welcome you with open up artillery. In the smaller towns you lot might not have as much choice every bit you are used to it when it comes to choosing your friends — falling out with one of the 5 English language speakers in boondocks is a  xx% reduction in your number of English language speaking friends! That being said, English language is quickly being learned by the Taiwanese and is being taught at schools now, then anyone who went to school in the last couple of decades, ie the 20-somethings, usually have some grasp of English. Some of them who also went to private schools or studied English language at a higher level are very proficient, and oftentimes dying to practise their linguistic communication skills. Charlie and I fabricated many Taiwanese friends who we spoke mainly English with and we were treated with incredible kindness.

There's always the risk of finding yourself isolated whenever you move to a new metropolis and take a new job, but non being able to speak the local language isn't such a huge barrier as you might believe, provided that you are proactive and friendly near making ties with your local community.

Living in Taiwan without speaking Mandarin…

Equally for the technical details, bureaucracy in Taiwan is hard, even for the Taiwanese. For the non-Mandarin speaker it's shut to impossible. Your best bet is to take someone that you trust who speaks Chinese help you out — that might be your new employer or it might be someone at Chinese school.

When nosotros went information technology was legal to come to Taiwan and written report, but not to come and work as an English language teacher, though the hundreds of English schools on every street corner were full of people taking a more flexible arroyo to the rules. The bigger English language schools (in straight opposition to the police force) are quite strict about only hiring English language teachers with native English passports (such as England, the USA, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia), but smaller schools are sometimes more lenient.

Normally the people who move to Taiwan are English language teachers, and the school has an incentive in finding you a house and making certain that all your paperwork is in lodge. Speaking any kind of Mandarin isn't something which the schools in Taiwan wait of their English teachers.

For more than real life experiences about instruction in Taiwan, check out our Education in Taiwan Interview series where we speak to different expats who accept lived and worked in Taiwan.

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Source: https://charlieontravel.com/how-hard-learn-mandarin-taiwan/

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