Chinglish

My flight leaves at 1pm today, but a few post-packing thoughts before I literally get Shanghai'd:

Up until I was about four years old, I spoke Cantonese pretty fluently. Fast forward 16 years and the best I can do is try to order a glass of water at a Chinese restaurant, only to have the waiter/waitress misunderstand my mangled pronunciation, whereupon I give up and just order in English.

So when I found out that my family was going to China (my dad, grandma, and I for three weeks, my mom and sisters for three months), I began imagining all sorts of scenarios where I'd be trying to interact with a local in China and all they would see would be another (supposedly) local Chinese person who was simply mentally handicapped and not able to grasp basic communication skills beyond gestures and very poor Chinglish.

Even worse is the fact that my parents and siblings can all speak and understand Mandarin to some degree (while I am limited to 'Nee Hau'), so when they'd see me struggling trying to converse with said local, they would either

a) point, laugh, and take a picture of the situation for their amusement

or

b) intervene with the local on my behalf, and apologetically explain (in Mandarin, of course) "Please don't mind our son/brother - he's slow and had an accident involving chopsticks as a child." And then take a picture.

To be fair, about three months ago, my dad did suggest I begin learning Mandarin on my own. I nodded and agreed that it was a good idea. So being the initiative-taking unprocrastinating type of guy that I am, I waited until last week and used the Google Translate app on my iPhone to begin learning the following phrase:

我不会说汉语

My pronunciation is still pretty lacking though so I may just end up having to resort to gestures and Chinglish after all. Ah well, at least my chopstick skills are on par. I may not know what I'm ordering, but at least I won't starve.