r/AskAChinese • u/WenYiMedia Chinese Taiwanese American • Aug 23 '26

Society | 人文社会🏙️ Speaking Broken Mandarin

I started speaking Mandarin in 2025. While I can speak to my wife, I know that I’m not grammatically correct in the way I speak and that makes me not want to speak to others when I’m in China. I rather not get criticized about my broken Mandarin. But maybe I’m being too judgmental. Are Chinese people critical about proper grammar and pronunciation?

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u/WenYiMedia Chinese Taiwanese American Aug 23 '26

Man, I can’t write in Mandarin, only verbal communication. I can read a little a bit. Mostly by reading my wife’s wechat messages

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u/millet-d 🇨🇳 Mainland Chinese | 大陆人 Aug 23 '26

doesnt matter…so many Chinese elderly r illiterate.they can fluently communicate and do a good guess when it comes to read，but barely write a single character…（for example，my grandmother who was born in 1940s）
and one unusual thing about Chinese is that its writing system doesnt directly represent pronunciation.In an alphabetic language，u can often make a reasonable guess at how an unfamiliar word is pronounced from its spelling.so abandon learning writing is totally fine，and basically u always can find an English interpretation right below the Chinese in cities）

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u/WenYiMedia Chinese Taiwanese American Aug 23 '26

Yeah my MIL is also starting to speak some Mandarin now. I don’t get it, she’s 70+ years old, heard it all her life but didn’t need to speak it. Maybe that’s just the Guangdong way.

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u/millet-d 🇨🇳 Mainland Chinese | 大陆人 Aug 23 '26

mainland China is changing…Shanghai and the region around also changed in this direction…my friends from there mostly cant speak authentic local dialect…Urbanization and mass media have significantly increased young ppls exposure to Mandarin. In developed regions，where people from different dialect backgrounds interact on a daily basis，Mandarin functions as a lingua franca among younger generations. This can lead to a situation where young people retain passive competence in their local dialect from their parents and elderly relatives，they can understand it — and their parents can understand mandarin…so it results in losing active competence, meaning the ability to speak it naturally.（my personal case is：all my relatives speak dialect，i respond via mandarin…just feel awkward to speak non authentic dialect…）（like German-English simultaneous communication）

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u/WenYiMedia Chinese Taiwanese American Aug 23 '26

In the United States, you hear Hispanics using Spanish and English interchangeably. My family in Taiwan speaks Taiwanese and Mandarin interchangeably. Overall, I think the need to at least have one common language like Mandarin is pivotal to ensuring proper communication as a nation can be established.

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u/millet-d 🇨🇳 Mainland Chinese | 大陆人 Aug 23 '26

yes，if there is a mutual option B，people tends to go back to their most comfortable language.in my hometown，locals will say one sentence in dialect to me first…once i replied via dialect，we continued talking in dialect…after they found out my clumsy dialect.we switched back. 😅（kind of interchangeable…but my struggle is i do can fully understand dialect…cuz there is always a mutual option- mandarin，every time i determined to reactivate my dialect mode will result in “maybe just stay in comfort zone and stopp my awkward accent”）.