Reply to My in-laws refuse to speak English in my present

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[quote=Anonymous]I can understand both sides.  I am an American Born Chinese whose parents met in the US and raised their family.  My parents speak exclusively Shanghainese to each other, but will speak Mandarin to me and my siblings.  Both of my parents worked for over 30 years in the US so they both can communicate easily in (albeit broken) English.  The things is that sometimes they just forget.  What worked for me is that when we are together, if they speak in Mandarin to me, I'll try to respond in English and have a running commentary translating what they say to my wife.  Usually mid-stream they'll slip back into English.  The problem is that even after 60 years in the US, there are some things (idioms, popular culture, current event references, etc) that they just don't understand and despite speaking English for 60+ years, it's still their second language and Chinese is still their first language.  So sometimes I have to explain things to them in Mandarin because it will easier and faster to explain.  When I'm going for easier and faster, I can't always top to translate back to English.  Fortunately after 12 years of marriage and 14 years together, my wife is understanding about those situations.  I try to catch her up at my earliest opportunity.  It's work for the spouse/child in the middle, but that's the person that has to build the bridges between his/her spouse and parents.  (S)He's the one with the vested interest in family harmony and not having in-fighting going on around him/her.

Also, try to learn some basic vocabulary.  If you learn some basic vocabulary, you often will know enough about your partner and what he'll talk about to be able to follow a conversation from the words you know.  In my family, we often speak Chinglish (Mandarin Chinese with a few English words sprinkled in).  When I was in college, my best friend/roommate used to listen to my conversations with my parents and afterwards would try to tell me what the conversation was about based on the scattered English words.  He was amazingly accurate.  My wife has started to perfect this skill too and if I "recap", sometimes she'll have me breeze over parts that she got.

In your case, your spouse and in-laws probably don't use too many English words (although there are many words that just don't translate well, so the word in the original language is just best), but the concept also works well if you learn a handful of Cantonese words.

Good luck.[/quote]

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