Weird limao
bubobubo
June 21, 2008, 10:51 AM posted in General DiscussionRecently, I've taken to studying online with native speakers of Chinese. A phenomenon that I have experienced with at least ten 中国人 is that after several sentences in Chinese, they comment "我在怀疑你是不是中国人" or something similar. I mean, I'm used to eliciting a "你的 中文好厉害" (This reminds me of a lesson introduction here on CP "Goodness me, you Chinese is amazing!") so I don't take these antics too seriously, after all, it's a way to be polite and as a matter of fact, I myself often reassure my interlocutors "别担心， 你的英语真不错" although I had to strain my ears trying to understand them. I have studied Chinese autodidactically for approxiamtely 7 months, so contrary to what most tell me, it is obvious that I'm a foreigner.
But what really startled me is that some, especially women, become almost sulky, and tell me "I really can't believe you're not Chinese", "骗我了", or "我哭了。。。", some even leave never to reply to me again. I don't really understand what's going on. During my lifetime (36 years), I've lived in more than 13 countries for at least a year, respectively,but never have I faced such personal obstacles during the language learning process and never has my (admittedly abysmal) language ability caused such weird reactions.
pulosm
June 23, 2008, 10:38 PMIs this really a problem or an opportunity for you to tell us how great your Chinese is? ;-)
I find that there are three stages of Chinese progression:
(1) The Lie: When you first start to learn Chinese, you utter "ni hao," and people say "you are so fluent, I am amazed!!!" It's a lie. They are not impressed, just happy and encouraging.
(2) The Bitter Truth: Soon you become pretty good at Chinese. You are confident and talking all over the place. You mostly get compliments. But now, instead of pure compliments, you get corrections and criticisms. "Why did you say "le" there?" or "that tone was off!"
(3) The Finale: After a long period in (1) and/or (2), you move to (3). People you speak to aren't impressed that you speak Chinese and even act like it's normal and just respond back to you.
P.S.-I can't fathom talking live to strangers online. What do you talk about?
mark
June 23, 2008, 07:45 AMI've never tried to fool any Chinese speaker into thinking that I am Chinese. (In person it would be rediculous, but why be deceptive?) However, it is seldom a problem to get Chinese people to converse with me in Chinese, if I put some effort into my end of the conversation. Usually, the issue is overcoming their doubts that I actually can communicate in Chinese.
Fooling people doesn't sound like a good way to start of a friendship. Maybe, that is the cause of the dissappointment.
As to accent, I've been told that Chinese can tell that I am a westerner, but not necesarrily pinpoint my nationality. It is probably just that there are still not that many westerners who speak Chinese. So, most Chinese don't have enough data to correlate.
Also, Chinese like English has lots of different accents. So, having an accent is not necessarily proof of foreign origin. The rest of the trick is having heard the accent before enough times to match it with an origin.
Finally, I can convince English speaking telemarketers that I don't speak English. My English accent when speaking Chinese is undetected in that circumstance.
caughtin
June 23, 2008, 08:00 AMmaybe coz there is large difference between English(other western languages) and Chinese ---- the pronunciation. So when someone who are western &can speak very good Chinese..hehe~~~It will be a very 'unbelievable' thing.
As to those "骗我了", or "我哭了"....hehe....it's 太过了.
mayor_bombolini
June 23, 2008, 08:19 AMHi mark,
I've only done this as a practical joke with people I already know.
henning
June 23, 2008, 08:36 AMAnother advantage of being married to a Chinese woman. No risk of running into that kind of deceptive politeness. Much the opposite so.
I: "我们一起去过恶魔岛吗?
She: "What?"
I: "恶魔岛。。。在旧金山。。。"
She: "What?"
I: "Alcatraz"
She: "Ah..恶魔岛. mó, second tone"
I: "mo?"
She: "No - mó. Repeat after me: mómómómó - èmó"
Son (3 years old): "mó"
She: "Exactly. Like that. His pronounciation is so much better than yours..."
mayor_bombolini
June 22, 2008, 09:33 PMbubobubo,
I've called Chinese friends in China pretending to be Chinese.
I've been able to pass as Chinese for the first few sentences, but as soon as the conversation get's complicated I crumble. I need to ask them to slow down or repeat...and then I'm exposed.
I have a tutor that says when I know my material I sound Chinese.
I believe it's possible to pass.
John
June 23, 2008, 08:48 AMbubobubo: So these are all voice-to-voice interactions? I found that with patience and hard work, it's not that hard to get a feel for how Chinese normally chat (in Chinese), but it does seem like it would be really hard to fool people voice-to-voice. When I used to practice Chinese chatting on QQ, I also got a lot of doubters, saying they didn't believe me, and that I was a Chinese person playing a prank (this was after about 2 years of Chinese study, one in China).
Henning: LOL at your story! :)
caughtin
June 23, 2008, 08:56 AMIf you got those doubters...that means you really did very well at Chinese!!
Congratulations! :)
Henning: very very interesting! haha~~~
RJ
June 23, 2008, 08:57 AMMark, good points. Oh and billm is not talking about being deceptive, he is referring to playful calls to good friends if I understand him correctly. Thanks for the tip on handling telemarketers.
RJ
June 23, 2008, 09:07 AMAny knowledge of Chinese still seems to surprise the Chinese, whether it is email or speech. They always want to know how I learned this.
RJ
June 21, 2008, 12:05 PMbubo,
Maybe you are just that good. :-)
The Chinese are not as used to hearing foreigners speak their language. I deal with Hungarians, Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, and various others in person, and on the phone. I can tell where they are from, and learning to understand through their accent is a skill I happen to be good at. Some of my co-workers have great difficulties with this. With this in mind I have asked several Chinese if they can tell when a foreigner speaks Chinese. After all, no matter how good they are I can always tell when I am talking to a Chinese person. They may be very understandable but still there is something about their "R's" and "L's" and "Z's" that I can spot right away regardless of how subtle. Unless they are ABC, 100% have this. But the Chinese I have interviewed claim if an american is a good Chinese speaker, and they closed their eyes, they could not tell he was a foreigner. I find this hard to believe but I have yet to find a Chinese person who will tell me, "oh yea, americans always say this or that different and you can spot them right away". Is the Chinese language really that different in this respect?