A few weeks ago I helped a family friend with their son’s private school application. For that school, parents fill out a short questionnaire about their kid’s academic abilities, why they want the child to attend that school, etc. Because their English is not good, my mom referred me because apparently I was a good word smith (not really…at all) and went to private school. Now my Mandarin has gotten progressively worse since coming back from Beijing, and my Cantonese was never really good to begin with. I helped phrase answers to the questions, because the husband’s vocabulary is not that great. He would explain to me aspects of his kid’s abilities, what he enjoys doing, in Mandarin, and miraculously, I was about to understand most of it, and respond in kind in a mix of Mandarin and English…
Perhaps my conversational skills have not deteriorated that much, but I don’t think I’d be able to understand the news.
