Speak some Chinese!

I was walking home (the Wuxi soon to be old apartment) with my wife Jenny from the local mall.  I was talking with my wife about our son Tony and what he would be doing at the Red Lion where he will be working during the summer holidays.  Apparently, he’ll be serving tables.

I noticed the presence of this older man who seemed to listening to our conversation as he was walking near to us.  He was then walking besides me when he tapped me on the shoulder.  “Why don’t you speak some Chinese?” I replied “我会说一点！”  In Chinese, I said I could speak a little.

This raised the question in my mind that I will try to truthfully answer here:  Why is it that after living so long in China, your Chinese is not very good and you basically stand around like a dumb mute in all social situations?  

I can offer so many excuses: laziness, the difficulty of pronunciation and the tones,  variations in local usages and official mandarin, preference to study other languages (such as French, Spanish and Latvian), lack of interest in local matters. a preference to live on the dissident American right corner of the Internet, my solitary nature, and the fact that I don’t really need so much Chinese since I can get my wife and son to deal with communication problems.

I do know some Chinese.  It’s just that I haven’t learned enough to be fluent.