Why is her Mandarin Rubbish?

[wannabeafreak]

Can someone please tell me why people think her Mandarin is rubbish?

[gato]

You forgot to include her photos

http://gd.sohu.com/20070214/n248242621.shtml

Mostly just somewhat poor pronunciation. She also seems not to have a big vocabulary, but that may not be related to speaking in Mandarin. The commenters are too harsh on her. Maybe she stole their boyfriends.

[peekay]

She does have a very strong Cantonese accent... these days maybe mainlanders expect Miss Hong Kong to speak perfect Mandarin.

[Hofmann]

That's terrible, because it's Mandarin, plus Cantonese 懶音 applied to Mandarin (which I've never heard before), with crappy tones. From listening to this, I'd speculate that her Cantonese also sucks.

[wushijiao]

I'd tend to disagree. Yes, she has a thick Cantonese accent, but, can any native speaker not understand her? I find that you can basically understand her.

Anyway, as far as this question, "Can someone please tell me why people think her Mandarin is rubbish?"

I don't know if there is a reason to be so harsh. Some people speak Mandarin well, others do not, others are improving. Saying someone’s Mandarin is "rubbish" seem to be a bit too judgmental and isn't useful for laying down a path towards improving (or maybe I'm just blinded by flesh!)

[wannabeafreak]

Saying someone’s Mandarin is "rubbish" seem to be a bit too judgmental and isn't useful for laying down a path towards improving (or maybe I'm just blinded by flesh!)

I'm not saying its rubbish since I can't tell if its good or not. I cannot even understand a single sentence

Just reading the comments and that's what people reckon.

[HashiriKata]

her Mandarin Rubbish?

Rubbish to whom and by what standard? If I happen to stop this speaker in the middle of Hongkong to ask the way, I'd probably think her Mandarin is very good.

[calibre2001]

I understand what she's saying. It's much easier to understand HK artists duing interviews compared to Taiwanese/mainland artists...

It's really no different when the BBC interviews a non native english speaker who speaks with a strong accent. If you know the language you will hear through it anyway.

Heck its harder to understand a Sichuanese who mixes up his dialect with mandarin!

That's terrible, because it's Mandarin, plus Cantonese 懶音 applied to Mandarin (which I've never heard before), with crappy tones. From listening to this, I'd speculate that her Cantonese also sucks.

from 0:34 onwards

Edited June 1, 2009 at 10:30 PM by calibre2001

[chrix]

so what's her Cantonese like? I can't judge but I don't think you can say anything based on her Mandarin tones...

[imron]

Can someone please tell me why people think her Mandarin is rubbish?

It's certainly no worse than say

or

。

[skylee]

so what's her Cantonese like?

It's ok. Standard. Oh but I am just a native speaker, no expert. Those who really study Cantonese might point out weaknesses in her Cantonese.

[heifeng]

This reminds me, I've always wanted to put together a 'your mandarin is as good as xxxx celebrity thread.' which would be funner than you are approx an HSK or PSC blah blah blah

I think that 古仔 ranking would come in just above hers. Who should come in just under though...hmmm

oh, back the subject at hand maybe it's just me but even though it's canto-mandarin, it's still fairly easy to understand if you are use to hearing different accents, even if it's faaar from standard putonghua.

translation

l => n

la => omit

yinwei22222 => yin1wei4

go=> ge

tones=> something other than what she said

see => xi

etc etc etc

although she says 性感 pretty well..haha

Edited June 2, 2009 at 12:39 AM by heifeng

[carlo]

Now just why is youtube still blocked?? After seeing her pictures I got really interested in her Mandarin pronunciation

[chrix]

It's ok. Standard. Oh but I am just a native speaker, no expert. Those who really study Cantonese might point out weaknesses in her Cantonese.

if a native speaker, born and raised, says it sounds like standard, why wait for the experts

After all, right and wrong in language is always relative to a certain norm and/or register. Sometimes people tend to overlook that fact when they get too passionate about debating what's right or wrong in language, and I've seen it happen with speakers of any language.

[Hofmann]

...Are my standards too high then? Her Cantonese...doesn't sound like mine. Let's just leave it at that.

[chrix]

yeah I think in many Sinitic languages, there's no clear-cut standard, rather you have several regional variants, sometimes with some being considered more prestigious than others, but not necessarily so. But again, this is subjective. The more people agree (and agreement is often done unconciously) on a given standard, the more influential it becomes.

But did you have a chance to listen to her speak Cantonese in the meantime? I'm just saying because your first assessment seemed to be based on her Mandarin, before somebody posted the Cantonese link...

[Hofmann]

Yes, I heard her Cantonese. It turned out to be exactly as I expected.

The reason I made my first judgment of her Cantonese based on her Mandarin is because few Cantonese speakers would make the mistakes she made in her Mandarin if they spoke Standard Cantonese. The [n] to [l] merge is one example.

[wannabeafreak]

...Are my standards too high then? Her Cantonese...doesn't sound like mine. Let's just leave it at that.

She speaking Cantonese:

Is she a native speaker? Has a weird sounding accent.

[chrix]

FWIW, Wikipedia sez she was born in HK, but has a famous aunt from outside of HK.

[Hofmann]

Is she a native speaker? Has a weird sounding accent.

She sounds like a native speaker. I'm a native speaker too, but I'm certain that she'll think I have a weird accent.

Dubya is a native English speaker. Anyone want to learn English from him?