Last week, I got a question that made me feel good about the time I've invested in learning Chinese. It happened in the subway station on my way to a teaching job. He was asking me about being an English teacher, a topic about which I've talked many times before. After asking me a bunch of rapid-fire questions, he said “我说这么随便你怎么都能听得懂？” - You can understand me when I speak this quickly? When I replied in the affirmative, he asked me, "are you a native Chinese speaker or...?"! Of course I told him I wasn't, though it might have been funny to see (a la Fluent in 3 Months) how long I could pretend I was. (And yes, there is at least one white native speaker of Chinese.)
Today, I got a mail delivery. Unlike in the US, parcel delivery in China isn't always to your door (probably because everybody lives in apartment blocks). It's delivered by motorized tricycles with parcel carriers on the back, whose drivers will often stop at the gate to your complex or (in my case) the plaza of your school and call you to tell you that your mail has arrived and to come pick it up.
Anyway, when I arrived at the plaza and met the guy with the package, he seemed a bit surprised. After handing over my parcel, he told me that I spoke very good Chinese, and that "我没有听得出来" - that he hadn't heard it. I'm pretty sure he was referring to me being a foreigner!
In both cases, I hadn't said much yet. And in the latter case, some of what the delivery man had said, I hadn't understood, but had just ignored it since I knew the routine for getting the mail. So, in actuality I'm still far from having the competence, not to mention the accent, of a native speaker. But it's good to still be reaching new milestones in this incredible and incredibly challenging language.
Today, I got a mail delivery. Unlike in the US, parcel delivery in China isn't always to your door (probably because everybody lives in apartment blocks). It's delivered by motorized tricycles with parcel carriers on the back, whose drivers will often stop at the gate to your complex or (in my case) the plaza of your school and call you to tell you that your mail has arrived and to come pick it up.
Anyway, when I arrived at the plaza and met the guy with the package, he seemed a bit surprised. After handing over my parcel, he told me that I spoke very good Chinese, and that "我没有听得出来" - that he hadn't heard it. I'm pretty sure he was referring to me being a foreigner!
In both cases, I hadn't said much yet. And in the latter case, some of what the delivery man had said, I hadn't understood, but had just ignored it since I knew the routine for getting the mail. So, in actuality I'm still far from having the competence, not to mention the accent, of a native speaker. But it's good to still be reaching new milestones in this incredible and incredibly challenging language.
