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Left home alone with my mother-in-law | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6878 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 1 03 May 2008 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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My mother and sister in laws from Taiwan are visiting. Today my wife took her sister shopping and left me home with my mother-in-law and our 2 kids. It was quite a day. My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. She only speaks Taiwanese and Mandarin. On top of that she mixes them together in the same sentence.
Although my Chinese is still a work in progress. I managed to tell her many things she understood. We had a repairman come over to take a look at the bathroom. I have no idea how to say repairman. I told her that a person was here to look at a problem in the bathroom. I also managed to convince her to go out to lunch, and even asked her if she wanted Japanese or Chinese. She wanted to stay home and watch the baby. I told her that was impossible. The restaurant was a challenge since the menus were in English. I wound up asking her if she wanted pork, chicken, or beef. She laughed when I told her I was going to bake bread for us for breakfast tomorrow. I understood a lot of what she said, as long as she stuck to Mandarin. I didn't undestand her word for word, but I could get the main points. When she threw in some Taiwanese I became completely lost. We also talked about a few other things. most conversations were a few sentences back and forth. Overall I have a long ways to go to become intermediate. But my Chinese has definitely improved. Last time I saw my mother-in-law, no matter what I said in Mandarin, she always replied in Chinese "I don't speak English". My goal is to get proficient enough to function independently on my next trip to Taiwan, most likely in Jan 2009 1 person has voted this message useful |
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