What Language Do We Speak at Home?

One of the questions we are frequently asked is “what language do you speak at home?”

The answer is plain Japanese. It appears usually the person who asked this question is surprise by the answer.

My native language is Chinese (Mandarin).

Mizuki’s native Language is Japanese.

Our first first dominant foreign language is English so most people assume we talk in English at home.

We had been communicating in English when we first met in 2007.

At the time, we didn’t really share many mutual English vocabularies.

I had spoken in English and Mizuki was usually able to guess what I was talking about and replied to me in Japanese.

I was sort of able to anticipate what she was trying to say.

After I graduated and went back to Taiwan, I decided to learn Japanese so I tried very hard to speak Japanese to her when we talked on Skype.

The four years of long distance relationship had some benefits.

I was able to increase my Japanese listening and speaking skills.

However, it has its downside, too.

Mizuki got so used to talking to me in Japanese so she cannot speak to me in English anymore.

She can still speak English very well but she doesn’t feel comfortable at speaking English when I am around.

I guess her brain has associated me with Japanese and has a hard time to change the built-in language setting when speaking to me.

I would like to help her on improving her English proficiency but I don’t know how…..Orz…