Nateweb

Okay, so as you all know I took a year of Chinese. I understand that my Chinese is laudably bad, but I still know some, and and pick up random words in conversations. I can even have small conversations. The problem is that most of these conversations would never occur. For example, I could understand this:

A: Hello, good morning!
B: I don’t recognize you.
A: I am Professor Ding. And you are?
B: Good morning Professor Ding. I am Marco Polo. Do you have class today?
A: Yes, I have history, mathematics, engineering and computer. What is your favorite traditional Chinese holiday?
B: Dragon Boat Festival, but I like Chinese New Year too. I speak Chinese fluently, but write slowly. Do you have a garage near your apartment?
A: Yes, my apartment has a garage. I drive a car. Do you watch a movie right after going to the bank?
B: No, I do not watch a movie right after going to the bank. What do you do on the weekend?
A: I watch TV with my foreign student friend Anna in the student dormitory at the university which is directly to the left of the Police station and to the right of a Supermarket Parking Lot.
B: I have 3 red shirts, and 4 blue tennis shoes. I also have 2 hats and 3 ducks. (Note in this sentence all measure words would be replaced with “ge”)
A: I like shoes, but tennis is too difficult. Do you play ping pong?
B: Yes I play ping pong, do you have 3 blackboard erasers and a pencil and speak French fluently?
A: No I do not have 3 blackboard erasers and a pencil and speak French fluently, but I want to become a doctor.
B: Very good. My health is good, but my foot hurts.
A: Sorry, but 3+3 is not equal to 9. 3 * 3 = 9.
B: See you again soon! I wake up at 6am and goto school at 7am then eat lunch at noon and work on homework in the library.
A: Your welcome!

While I can understand that, and can actually add more to it, these conversations don’t tend to come up too often.

Anyways, believe it or not, there are lots of asian people where I work. There is a mixture of cultures (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese), but a lot of people seem to speak Chinese.

Now, here is where I’m not sure what to do… and this has actually come up a lot and I’m not sure what to do. If people are conversing in Chinese they often switch to English whenever someone who doesn’t speak Chinese joins the conversation or gets near to them etc.. just being polite. Well, should I ever say something in Chinese or basically communicate that I could have some understanding of what they are saying? You see, I am interested in listening to the conversations to try to pick up what they are talking about. At work they are obviously talking about work-related stuff and it is often interesting to hear how they do it.

This is where I’m not sure what to do. If I don’t say anything, I’m eavesdropping. Granted, I can barely understand anything they say, but it is even shadier because by default they would assume I have no idea what they are saying. Also, I often DO try to understand what they are saying just out of curiosity.

However, if I say something to them it would be extremely random. Clearly they weren’t talking about American people speaking Chinese.. they were just talking about work. I feel like it would only be me bragging or if not bragging, calling attention to something totally irrelevant and random. Also if I did bring it up, it would be a big letdown when they ask me some simple question that I can’t answer because I don’t remember or learn the simplest word. Also, when I speak my tones are horrible, so I would be lucky to find a person who would be able to understand what I am able to say. The best thing is to just listen and see what I can understand.

If you’re curious, the image is the 2nd most popular image result for “Chinese” on the stock image website I use. I was hoping to find some elaborate characters, but I guess this is Asian enough.