Quote:
Originally Posted by garinda
How are you finding communication?
Do many ordinary people speak English?
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Well, I'm staying in Hangzhou and learning Mandarin, and as you may know, there are quite a lot of dialects in China... which are very different from Mandarin, and Hangzhou happens to have its own dialect... so... ordinary people often don't speak English OR Mandarin, which makes conversation impossible. So pointing, nodding and doing actions for what you are trying to say is the only real way of communicating in situations like that.
Some younger people speak bits of English at least, so are able to understand some basic phrases and give basic responses... very very few speak conversational English. I can speak a bit of Chinese now to get around, but if I get lost I have to resort to pointing to a map because I can't understand directions or things like that.
Overall it isn't really that bad. I thought it would be far worse but it helps to be here to study mandarin in the first place, so every day it gets a bit better. My only real conversation outside of the classroom was with a taxi driver though, but that was highly satisfying to say the least! I've tried learning two languages (French and Spanish) and found them to be something that I've never engaged with, but mandarin has been a highly rewarding language to learn so far, if quite difficult.