Job Discussion Forums

[tw]

Oh God! Not the Chinese-people-just-do-not-bother-trying-to-understand-us-foreigners-when-we-speak-Mandarin discussion.

[Gregor]

Middy made a good point, which I made to a colleague of mine. He was talking smack about Chinese people being dense, so I asked him, "Ho re OOO?"
"What?"
"HO RE ooo?"
"Huh?!?"
(with considerably more anger in my voice, and spoken much faster) "HO RE OOO!"
He didn't get it, though it was SO CLOSE to "How are you?" that he had no business not understanding me.
He got the point.

jg, I'm glad you brought up stroke order. Once you've studied it a bit and practiced some, it becomes almost self-evident. But when I first got here, I could not, for the life of me, understand why a horizontal line has to be produced before a perpendicular vertical one. NOW, though, if the strokes are written in the wrong order, it is REALLY clear to me that such is the case, even if the character is otherwise drawn correctly.

As for listening skills, mine are coming along. But my wife has a niece who we just don't see that often, so she doesn't know how to talk to me. It's funny, because she's well impressed that I can understand her but only...when...she...talks...like...this. My more familiar nieces have to speak more slowly and carefully than they usually would, but it's not like an imposition or anything. It's really more like my teaching voice, as opposed to my natural, back-at-home Gomer Pyle voice.

I also agree with jg that it is a really good idea to ween yourself from pinyin when you can.
Gregor

[erinyes]

[Drizzt]

From my personal experience I would rate it like this:

1) Writing--by far the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese.

2) Reading--still very difficult, but not nearly as difficult as writing, since you only need to recognize characters, instead of needing the exactitude required for writing.

3) Listening--also quite hard, particularly because there are so many different regional dialects. Also since so many words are phonetically the same, only differing in tone. So until you can pick out tones easily, it's quite difficult to know WHICH word they are referring to at times.

4) Speaking--In my opinion, by FAR the easiest of the 4. Of course speaking to get your meaning across, and speaking with grammatical accuracy are two different ball games. As long as you get out there and use the words you know and practice stringing them together into sentences, you'd be surprised how easy spoken Chinese can be. It's true that if your tones aren't very good, it's difficult for others to understand you. I've realized though, that many times your tones can be a LITTLE off and the listener can still fairly easily understand you from context, provided to speak fluidly and not too slowly.

[tom selleck]

I guess I wouldn't have much to add to the "don't even get me started" themes.

Those of us who have really tried, I mean really tried, can come up with a list of events as long as the Great Wall.

Among my favourites:

People who say, "Ting bu dong", before you Even open your mouth.

When I first came to China, I looked forward to "Old world" wisdom to give this ignorant Westerner a different view of things. Something lost by years of over layering sophistication obfuscating our unnescarily complicated Western society.

All the times I asked a local yokel a simple question, then too test my Chinese, ask a Chinese friend, in Chinese, "Where are these apples from? (for example) or, I'll have a plate of yu xiang rou si. The 1st listener not only would mock my speech but not understand. The 2nd "test" listener would listen in Chinese, and respond back in English. "You want to know where the apples are from. Well, usually they are from Ili....or, you want Yu xiang rou si? I saw you eating that yesterday...

It's like this: Amongst the uneducated: Don't even try. The ones with their eyes glazed over like unblinking squirrels. These towers of power never have had the benefit of Pinyin like the younger generation has, and are thorougly convinced their hua is hen biaozhun.

The 2 most annoying things in learning Chinese:

1) The condescending, "Ni hui shou Zhongua hua shou de hou!" The nerve!
I tell a guy I want the 30th floor, and from that, he can deduce I speak Chinese well!

I used to actually believe these empty compliments.

2) If you speak standard Mandarin eveyone should understand you! Where did that one come from? Why does it persist?

This thread is as much about Chinese culture as it is language learning. A colleague of mine once sniffed, "This whole mei you banfa culture.....!"

They dismiss themselves from the simplest, most solvable of tasks, such as understanding a Westerner or leagues of people disgusted with some corrupt chieftan wreaking havoc upon their lives. Can't do a thing about it. Mei you banfa. Here comes a foreigner now.

Get ready.

He's going to say something. Mei you banfa.

Ting bu dong.

[smalls]

From my experience, I would have to say that is seems to be about half pronunciation mistakes and the other half being shock value (a foreigner speaking Chinese) when it comes to many Chinese understanding my Chinese. I remember reading East of Eden, Steinbeck, and at one point a Chinese farmer who has lived in the states for twenty some odd years, all of a sudden speaks perfect English to another farmer in confidence. The farmer askes the Chinese farmer, why do you always speak in pigdeon (sp?) when you are completely capable of speaking regular English. His response was something along the lines of 'If I didn't speak pigdeon, they (Americans) would not understand, believing that I was Chinese, thus incapable of speaking standard English.'
Had a Korean friend who came over, were in a pretty remote area, and when I would ask for the bill in Chinese, they would always look to him and say 'ting bu dong.' He could not speak any Chinese, but would jabber a little bit of nonsense, and they would say 'hao de' and bring out the bill. Our guess, they thought he was Chinese, guessed his meaning from the situation, the plates and bottles were empty and we had our bags on our backs, and deduced that he was asking for the bill. Later on, I told them our situation, the staff laughed, and that was that, they thought he was just from another province, and that his pronunciation was pretty odd. I think how you look can definitely have an initial reaction on how well you are understood. Pronunciation makes one hell of a difference, but there is always more out there (or at least I keep telling myself.)