Mandarin Chinese

For some unknown reason people are always really surprised when they hear me speak Mandarin Chinese...they'd look shocked and then they'd compliment that I speak really good Mandarin, when in fact I'm really not confident about speaking in Mandarin.

I've only had about 4 years of learning Mandarin formally in class, but that was in primary school in Hong Kong (between 1996-2000; months before the handover they suddenly thought it was time for us to learn Mandarin) where we only had about an hour per week, and honestly no one was listening in class, let alone practicing or speaking it when we're at home.

Since coming to Britain I think I've actually learned more Mandarin than I had done in HK, mainly by watching Phoenix TV on Sky. And I guess the visits to Shanghai and Beijing (my Dad worked there for several years) helped a bit too.

I think people are surprised when they hear me speak Mandarin is because people from HK are supposed to be Mandarin-speaking-handicapped; some people are surprised just by the fact that I read/write Chinese alone...they think that since I've been in the UK for a decade I probably don't know how to read/write Chinese. Some of my parents' friends in HK are like "you can read Chinese? wow that's great!", and I'm like "duh of course I can". Okay I may not be able to write a business letter or an academic essay in Chinese (not that I don't have the vocabulary, it's just I don't know the format and style), but I can certainly read essays, novels and newspapers in (traditional) Chinese.

But the truth is I'm still not confident in speaking Mandarin, maybe because I so rarely speak it I'm never certain if I'm speaking it correctly or not. I really need to get back to practicing speaking Mandarin, and Japanese...and perhaps someday I'll go back to studying French and Spanish again (my GCSE levels only allow me to read menu at restaurants). It'd be nice to be able to become a polyglot :)