This goal isn’t particularly exciting. It doesn’t involve anything unusual or outstanding, and it’s something everyone takes for granted… conversation.
The official language of Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese and it is my goal to have a normal conversation with a native speaker of this language while in Taiwan.
image from nouvellesimages.com
I’m not looking for anything amazing. I’m not trying to discuss politics or Russian literature, I just would like to have a conversation of a few lines in which the person I’m speaking to doesn’t have a hard time understanding me. For example, I would be quite thrilled if the conversation went like this:
Amelia: “Oh hello, how are you?”
Unsuspecting Taiwanese Taxi Driver: “Fine, and yourself?”
Amelia: “Very well, thank you. Can you tell me how much it costs to get to [neighbourhood]?”
UTTD: “Oh about $3600 NTD.”
Amelia: “That’s absurd!”
UTTD: “Throw in a bubble tea and I’ll lower it to $3000.”
Amelia: “Fine.”
Something like that.
I have been learning some rudimentary Mandarin, and so far I can say “Hello,” “how are you,” “fine,” thank you,” and “thank you very much.” There are more words I know but I can never remember them when I need them. I’ve also been practicing the sounds of the Pinyin alphabet, which is Mandarin translated from the written characters into the Latin alphabet. But of course, like in any language, the letters don’t always make the same sounds as they do in English.
But it seems I have bigger fish to fry, linguistically speaking. I found out there are five tones in Mandarin, four of which I learned the basic concepts of. The tones in the words have the potential to change its meaning entirely. We have much more freedom speaking in English in terms of our tones. I feel this will be the hardest part in learning the language.
Amelia's Accidents and Adventures in Taiwan 
When Dave and I taught English at that summer camp a few years ago, the kids taught us how to say “shake my bum and give you smell” in Mandarin. I can teach you that if you want. Might not get you taxi discounts, but useful nonetheless.
On the contrary, I think this would be very, very useful. We’ll talk later about this. :]