Do you speak chinese?

[Drak_w88]

i can speak cantonese ^^ but cant mandarin crying  

[chiczter]

i can speak mandarin and write it and understand but not cantonese i can only read and write cantonese  

[Pocky267]

I can speak a little but i can understand most stuff!  

[[C.O.N.N.I.E]]

I can speak Mandarin fluently, but I can't write it. >.< I can type it, though. ^^

 

[Lawrencew]

I can speak Chinese (cantonese), quite well for an overseas chinese I think (hehe...).

I can't write it, but I'm learning to. I'm getting manga to help!!  

[blackangel_xu]

i can speak really good Chinese!!! also the writing. i used to talk to ppl in Chinese!!! and actaully...my English ish not that good... sweatdrop  

[Matyy]

我还学中文。我学普通话。

I learn Mandarin, I learn to speak, write, type... I love Chinese, but it's all still quite basic.  

[[.Mihiko-chan.]]

i know both Cantonese and Mandarin. ^_^  

[Loveless Lee]

i can speak fluent cantonese. i can read and listen cantonese as well lol.
i can understand a bit on mandarin but i dont speak it....i pick up bits of a convo from listening to my mummy speaking it all the time lol  

[[HelloKitty]]

I can speak mandarin fluently. I can also read but my writing is not up to standard. Can't understand canto though.

 

[[.Mihiko-chan.]]

ooo. i cant read or write well.
my reading is better than writing. xDD  

[--Fufu Pooh]

I could speak a little Chinese, Japanese and Korean....well im learning them.....

 

[x~Jiang~x]

i can speak cantonese but cant speak mandarin crying  

[MiasmaMoon]

Although I'm Vietnamese and Cantonese by blood (my Chinese family's from around Hong Kong and Macau), I actually speak more Mandarin Chinese than Cantonese.

I grew up in a house where English was spoken most of the time. I also had to learn Vietnamese, although I never started speaking it until 7th grade. When I was little, my mom tried to teach me Cantonese in her spare time, but that was left out, since my dad hated it. He didn't like Cantonese, he didn't understand Cantonese, and he felt that, if me and my siblings didn't learn Cantonese, we wouldn't be able to talk about him behind his back. He was very xenophobic. Actually, when he married my mom, he didn't know she was Chinese! Most people in Vietnam are either Vietnamese, Chinese, French, or a mix of those. Because of these circumstances, eventually, my mom gave up on teaching us Cantonese.

So yup. I never really learned Chinese growing up. But I remember I had a math teacher in 5th grade, who would teach us Mandarin Chinese while teaching us math. (I actually went to a private school, so they were lenient on that.) She was a great teacher, and I learned most of my basics from her, but eventually, I was transferred to public school, due to financial problems at home.

Still...growing up, I tried learning my own language. Every now and then, I would ask my mom, "What's this word in Chinese?", only to be rejected. Even though my mom was Chinese, she neither had the time or the patience to teach me Chinese anymore. We didn't have any friends or family members around that spoke either Mandarin or Cantonese, since I lived in a small town, and practically the entire Asian population was Vietnamese.

We later moved to Houston (only about two hours away from my original home) when I was in 8th grade, but even so, I lived nowhere near Chinatown, or any place that had Chinese-speaking people, for that matter. There were hardly any Chinese people, and I began to feel hopeless.

9th grade came, and finally...I met a Cantonese-speaking person! Thank goodness, she spoke Mandarin! By then, my Mandarin had deteriorated, and we really couldn't converse to each other that well. In her head, she was probably thinking that I couldn't speak Chinese at all. (She was right!) But the friendship didn't become that strong. School was already busy enough, waking up at five in the morning, getting home around seven in the evening, and then finally going to sleep around midnight.

It wasn't just my limited Chinese that bothered people to not speak Chinese with me--it was also the school itself. You see, the school is so diverse, so multicultured, that there were even people who couldn't speak their own language with each other! No one spoke their own native language, really. Even the entire Spanish-speaking population didn't speak Spanish with each other!

My hobbies drifted around, and I began to forget wanting to learn Chinese. I met a friend who spoke Korean (really one of the only Korean people there), and she taught me the alphabet and I tried learning myself, and I even learned ASL with a group of Deaf students, even to the point of becoming fluent after three months! But still...in my head, I really wanted to learn Chinese.

After 9th grade ended (which happens to be right now), I decided to stay home and learn Chinese by myself. Thank goodness though, I managed to become fluent to the point where I can get my point across! I may not know a lot of Chinese, even now, but I'm content. And I'm wanting to learn more.

Even though I'm isolated from Chinese people, even from my mom, I want to learn Chinese. I feel like it's somehow part of birthright, be able, no, to know how to speak my native language. And the saddest thing is, my mom isn't supportive of me learning Chinese. But I promised myself that I wouldn't give up Chinese, that I would keep learning until I become fluent. And so I chose Mandarin Chinese, as my base on learning my culture. And you know what? I started off with Mandarin, and I'm going to finish with Mandarin.

And you know...

Cantonese could always wait.

Wow, I practically wrote my life story of Chinese on here! eek  

[lizasmiles]

I speak cantonese fairly well, but my mandarin sucks. I took a quarter of mandarin in school but that didn't help much. I can read and write very limited chinese xd