Is this a native speaker?

[xiaocai]

@leeyah: Is she really a native speaker? Her accent sounds really very strange to me.

(split from here.) New threads are free all this month!

Edited September 23, 2009 at 06:33 AM by roddy

[leeyah]

Is she really a native speaker? Her accent sounds really very strange to me.

Emmm, to me "she" sounds rather like a teenage guy is most likely not a Beijinger, may just as well be originally a dialect speaker (& I can guarantee he is not Cantonese for sure) Zhejiang maybe? I just happen to know some "Zhejiangers" who speak this kind of Putonghua.

Btw, your English is impeccable for a native Chinese speaker, which I must say is very strange to me, because it's much better than that of most 华侨. I am tempted to ask: how come? but I'll just say : Impressive, 真的天外有天啊！佩服！

[HashiriKata]

I listened to the first story on the list and even with my limited experience of Chinese, I must say the reader is not a native speaker of Chinese. She's just too inconsistent in her variations/ mistakes to be a native speaker of any sort. As a non-native speaker of Chinese, she reads very well though!

[Guoke]

Btw, your English is impeccable for a native Chinese speaker, which I must say is very strange to me, because it's much better than that of most 华侨.

Being a typical 华侨，I can't help feeling stigmatized. Do 华侨s speak poor English because they are 华侨s? If there are many more non-English speakers who could hardly speak English, why are 华侨s singled out?

Come to think of it, that's a fact we cannot deny. Most 华侨s do speak poor English besides poor Mandarin. So don't worry! I'm not offended in any way.

[leeyah]

I listened to the first story on the list and even with my limited experience of Chinese, I must say the reader is not a native speaker of Chinese. She's just too inconsistent in her variations/ mistakes to be a native speaker of any sort.

Dear HashiriKata, for such a limited experience of Chinese you seem to have developed extraordinary skills being able to assess who is and who is not a native speaker, which I cannot boast of even with my much longer exposure to the language. 真羡慕你呀

Anyway, precisely for this reason, I asked one of our Chinese teachers to assess "her" reading and he said it's genuine, but the person reading the stories sounds like a teenage kid (boy), which could be an explanation of xiaocai's doubts seconded by post #6:

And oh, not to forget: I'm really glad the site I linked to has attracted such valuable attention.

[in_lab]

I asked one of our Chinese teachers to assess "her" reading and he said it's genuine

What did he mean by that?

[gato]

@leeyah: Is she really a native speaker? Her accent sounds really very strange to me.

I think it's a native speaker. The pronunciations are mostly accurate. There may be a slight accent, which is magnified when each character is read separately. A common marker of non-native speech is the sometimes stilted rhythm, so by speaking slowly and pronouncing each character separately, she is in fact speaking in a way that might characterize a non-native speaker's speech.

I only heard one obvious mistake in the first two minutes. At the 1:42 mark: "有一天" sounds like 有一 ting.

[kurii]

I listend to the 牛郎 clip, and the speaker sounded native to me. Noticeably at 3:43, the way she said 天宫 was a typical trait of some regional accent that I can't specify.

On second thoughts, that could be a non-native speaker. European accents don't sound exotic to a Chinese ear. They can be taken as 四川腔, 山东话. Like in English, Indian English sometimes is mistaken for the Welsh accent.

Edited September 23, 2009 at 06:47 AM by kurii

[HashiriKata]

Native speakers can have different accents, but they're normally consistent in their accents and in pronouncing the same words. This speaker's inconsistency in her pronunciation of the same words raises doubt to whether she's a native speaker of Chinese.

Apart from her frequent vacillation between nǐ and lǐ for 里, below are some mispronunciations and inconsistencies I noticed in the first story on the list:

1:37 zházháyǎn > zhánzhányǎn

1:51 Zánmen > zhánmen

1:58 Zǒu > zhǒu

2:02 Zǒu > zǒu (inconsistency of zǒu, between 1:58 and 2:02)

2:14 Kāikěn > kāihěn

2:22 Yǒurén > rǒurén (inconsistency of this yǒu with méiyǒu biérén @2:29)

2:32 Zàinà > zhàinà

3:22 Bié zháojí > bié zhāojí

3:40 Zhào >zhāo (I wonder if native speakers would have variations like this and 3:22 above?)

3:55 Yínzān > yínzhān (the z sound in the text is some times read as /z/ and other times /zh/)

Edited September 23, 2009 at 08:21 AM by HashiriKata

[Don_Horhe]

Even though she/he doesn't sound native to me (I'm far from familiar with all Chinese accents), I think that it is a native speaker who's reading, due to the following reasons:

Apart from her frequent vacillation between nǐ and lǐ for 里

Mixing up "n" and "l" is something quite normal for Southerners (even our teachers do it).

1:51 Zánmen > zhánmen

1:58 Zǒu > zhǒu

2:32 Zàinà > zhàinà

3:55 Yínzān > yínzhān

zh, ch, sh -> z, c, s is also another Southern thing (although I've also heard 东北 people mix them up). The inconsistency is due to hypercorrection - the speaker knows he/she pronounces a given sound wrongly and corrects it, but, in their effort to conform to the standard, they "correct" what is already correct, i.e. 所以 sometimes sounds like shuo3yi3, 动词 like dong4chi2, etc.

Yǒurén > rǒurén

Again, in the South, "r" is sometimes pronounced as "l" or "y" (like the lady in the bus the other day saying "Lang yixia, lang yixia" for 让一下 , or some friends speaking about "lanfan yen" 南方人 (-ng -> -n is yet another Southern thing)) so again that might be because of hypercorrection.

Bié zháojí > bié zhāojí

Actually this is normal. The following quote is from The Phonology of Standard Chinese by San Duanmu:

10.6.3. Variation of T2

Chao (1968: 27– describes a change concerning T2. In a trisyllabic

expression, if (a) the first syllable is T1 or T2, (b) the middle syllable is

T2, and © the final syllable is not weak, then the middle T2 can change to

T1 in conversational speed.

Edited September 23, 2009 at 09:56 AM by Don_Horhe

[in_lab]

I wanted to point out that the concept of a native speaker is not clear cut. There are children who grow up speaking a Chinese dialect at home. When they enter school they speak almost no mandarin. By the time they graduate from high school, they speak mandarin better than their first language (a larger vocabularly and a wider range of expression). This girl could be on a path like that. Her mandarin isn't perfect now, and is not her first language, but in a few years it could be better than her first language.

Edited September 23, 2009 at 09:56 AM by in_lab

[HashiriKata]

@ Don_Horhe & in_lab: 你们说的真有道理.

[b_t_v]

So, who's going to open another new thread to settle the issue of whether the speaker is a he or a she?

[leeyah]

I see we've got a new thread and some really great responses which succeed in restoring even the faith of skeptics...One thing to keep in mind is that it's an audio library intended for children learners of foreign languages, so words may be pronounced separately and in slow tempo for obvious reasons (most children are slow readers). Anyway, speaking of Chinese language I hope we are all aware of the fact that the phrase actually hides many "mysteries". One of them is >> Chinese language is an ocean of different dialects, most of which are mutually unintelligible, and that's precisely the reason why Putonghua is needed in this huge country.

As to what (in)consistency really means and how relevant it is in determining whether someone is a Chinese native speaker or not (even if this is a very broad term) I suggest we focus on when Chinese speakers speak offical PHT (which may/may not not be their native dialect but is a must & don't forget that even PTH has regional sub variants). One thing is for sure: being able to recognize a native speaker means you need genuine speaking environment exposure, i.e. to spend some time in China where you can meet speakers of different dialects, listen to the variations & compare.

As an illustration I'd like to add this: I met a guy from Jiangxi who is native 江西话 speaker. Curious as I am, of course I couldn't resist asking him about his 母语. He told me Jiangxihua uses the same pinyin to write words as Putonghua and some words may appear similar, when in fact they tonally are not >> if I got it right, apparently Jiangxi has second tone for what in Putonghua is first tone,and fourth tone for PTH second, etc etc. We were talking computers and he gave me an example of the change of tone from his dialect to PTH: 电脑 diàn nǎo becomes dian2 nao3 in Jiangxihua, which sounds funny to a native PTH speaker. No need to repeat previous posters' observations on the pronunciation of n>l, zh>z, etc etc but: so much for consistency. Jiangxihua is not unique in this respect - there are many dialects in China which operate on the same principle & of course, we all know that change of tone can be tricky in Chinese...

(Wa, to think that our laowai tone mistakes might be understood as biaozhun by some dialect speakers ... is a comforting thought ... really )

[Guoke]

There are children who grow up speaking a Chinese dialect at home. When they enter school they speak almost no mandarin. By the time they graduate from high school, they speak mandarin better than their first language (a larger vocabularly and a wider range of expression).

Yes, and I belong to this group. I wish somebody could tell me what my mother tongue is and whether I could call myself a native speaker of Mandarin.

[Don_Horhe]

I'd say you're bilingual, with your bilingualism being either vertical (language 1 + language 1 dialect) or diagonal (language 1 + language 2 or dialect 2, where language/dialect 2 is not of the same group or family as language 1), depending on which dialect you grew up speaking at home.

[muyongshi]

You're "mother-tongue" is not necessarily your academic language {ie the language you learned math in} so therefore it's still your native language. In fact you can have two native languages. And it has nothing to do with your academic language.

[leeyah]

I agree with both Don_Horhe & muyongshi. You are not a person of Chinese descent who has lost his roots/language. You are bilingual and since one of the two languages native to you is a Chinese dialect, you are a native Chinese speaker. The fact that you don't speak Mandarin at home is negligible, and it is well known that, as learners, Chinese dialect speakers tend to "absorb" Mandarin more quickly & naturally, which is best illustrated by your posts in excellent written Mandarin.

[Guoke]

OK, let me get this straight - so I'm bilingual in Mandarin and my dialect, and English is my academic language. Seriously, I sometimes find myself reluctant to say that I'm a native Mandarin speaker because I don't speak it at home with my family. Yah, I like the idea of being bilingual in both Mandarin and a dialect. Thanks for the enlightenment, guys.

[leeyah]

bilingual in Mandarin and my dialect, and English is my academic language

No. This means you are trilingual.