Frustrating...

So, I'm studying my new vocabulary that I picked up from the 食尚玩家 TV food show. I chose this as my initial source because so much of our time spent in Taiwan is spent eating or talking about food. Also, since the show interviews people on the street, I can learn conversation styles that probably won't be shown in any study guide I have. Since my wife's friends and relatives will also probably use the same informal language, why not try to learn it?

The frustrating part is that my wife doesn't want to help translate this for me. I already have the basic vocabulary translated so it's not like I'm asking her to translate everything. I'm simply asking for the proper context and some word grouping translation. I've known for many years that she hates teaching because she has very little patience. However, tonight, every time I asked a question to verify my understanding of a sentence, she said that it wasn't proper grammar or word usage and that people didn't speak that way. Well, I got it directly from the show, so people do speak that way. Of course it may not be perfect grammar because it's folks on the street speaking informally. We do the same here in America.

So let's say I learn perfect grammar, word usage, etc. Sure that will be very helpful and I do plan to speak correctly. However, I still need to be able to understand folks when they might not speak formally. Is that too much to ask? I'm the type of person that hates to ask anyone for help. The only thing I ask from my wife is to cook (she's great at that by the way) and to help me with my Chinese. She, however, rather ask me to help her with everything. Ugh...

I have some Chinese friends at work but they are all from mainland China and their word usage can greatly differ from what's spoken in Taiwan, especially when it comes to informal language and slang. Looks like I'm on my own with my Chinese dictionary and the various Internet language tools and web sites.