That Other 快乐汉语 Show - What's With The Shrill Foreigners?

[edelweis]

I have been watching that "other" 快乐汉语 show on CCTV4 (not the one with Sushan I mean) with the 3 foreigners in a classroom, the Anna character and her chinese friend etc.

Why do all the foreigners in that show have grating voices? Is that the way americans speak Chinese or something?

(Or is it just my imagination and do they have perfect Chinese voices??)

[Yezze]

Why do all the foreigners in that show have grating voices? Is that the way americans speak Chinese or something?

What do you mean by grating.

[Sarevok]

I just learned that there is some 快乐汉语 show, but I only found the episodes with 苏珊 on youtube/tudou/etc. Got any links for the "other" one? Videos on the official site seems to be unplayable for me (even when opening them in IE).

Maybe I am missing something, but what's the target audience and purpose of this show? The first episode starts with 你好,您好 and 你好吗? and the grammar explanation part in that episode is also revolving around these phrases... but if you can follow the rest of the show, then you surely grasped these basics quite some time ago and don't need such explanations. And if you just began and are learning basic phrases like these, then, well, it is nice to see them used in action and context, but then, if you don't understand said context...

[edelweis]

@yezze: I mean their voices do not sound pleasant and natural like the Chinese characters voices. There is something like a rusty door sound in the foreign character's voices - all 4 of them. (Susan and Dashan do not have that strange voice)

@Sarevok: I can't remember about the Susan show, but this other one has explanations in Chinese (with Chinese and English subtitles). It makes for listening practice while having lunch, whether I already know what the explained expression means or not.

I listen to cslpod intermediate for the same purpose - whether I already understand the lesson's text properly or not, the explanations in Chinese are interesting to listen to.

I watched a bit on the CCTV4 website but the sound is so poorly recorded you can't tell the difference between the characters voices... I guess you have to watch it on TV to notice it.

[benhadad]

snip

I watch some on Youku and agree that some of the characters voices in Chinese are a bit forced and not as clear as the locals, which is to be expected. The local girls are very smooth and the female they were using her Chinese was a bit gruff, but to me it didn't affect the understandability. I know quite a few locals that sound like her or worse. There are many females that have deep gruff voices here too.

[edelweis]

snip

So you heard "Anna"? I find her voice slightly less grating than the other foreigners... as you say "forced"/loud and high pitched.

What about Victoria (girl in classroom) and the two classroom boys? (a scrawny black guy and the (fat) greek or indian looking guy)

I am not saying they are not understandable, I am just wondering whether they have a common (foreign or local?) accent or something.

[anonymoose]

I just had a look at the 快乐汉语 with 苏姗, and really what a load of crap it is. I don't understand why CCTV can't make good programmes to learn Chinese. There's obviously noone with any educational expertise on the production team. I watched the first episode, and the intial sketch is a few minutes long with relatively fast and complex language (by foreign learner standards). Then they start reviewing "ni hao" and "nin hao" at tortoise speed. Who, who's going to have understood more than 10% of the dialogue in the first sketch, is going to need to learn "ni hao"???

In fact, so many teaching materials produced in China have similar faults. For example, I have some Shanghainese material. They read out a sentence slowly in Shanghainese a couple of times. Fine. Then they go and read out the same sentence at the same ridiculously slow speed in Mandarin, twice. I mean, what's the point??? Anyone who's going to be able to use the material must be a mandarin speaker already, so why the need to read out the mandarin so slowly, and why twice? It makes the material very very boring to listen to. The producers have obviously put no thought into what the purpose of what they are doing actually is.

That reminds me of the previous 快乐汉语 series with 大牛. It started off reasonably good, until they decided to combine it into a "learn English" programme as well, so each time they'd go over a Chinese sentence slowly, they'd also go over it in English slowly. Again, it made the programme very boring to watch.

:x

Rant over.

[Sarevok]

That's exactly what I was thinking while watching the first episode. Either they make a Chinese learning TV show for intermediate/upper-intermediate students (which would be welcome as there is nothing in that department at the moment, would be good to have something to make the transition to the regular TV shows easier) or something for beginners (where there is a ton of materials already). A show with something of the both worlds is not gonna cut it...

[anonymoose]

Sorry, Sarevok, I didn't read you previous post, but yes, I agree exactly.

[BertR]

I just had a look at the 快乐汉语 with 苏姗, and really what a load of crap it is. I don't understand why CCTV can't make good programmes to learn Chinese. There's obviously noone with any educational expertise on the production team. I watched the first episode, and the intial sketch is a few minutes long with relatively fast and complex language (by foreign learner standards). Then they start reviewing "ni hao" and "nin hao" at tortoise speed. Who, who's going to have understood more than 10% of the dialogue in the first sketch, is going to need to learn "ni hao"???

Actually this is only the case for the first couple of episodes. After a while the grammar structures being reviewed become much more complicated and most can't be found in the first 4 NPCR books.

After these first episodes they clearly target (upper) intermediate learners.

[anonymoose]

Actually this is only the case for the first couple of episodes. After a while the grammar structures being reviewed become much more complicated and most can't be found in the first 4 NPCR books.

After these first episodes they clearly target (upper) intermediate learners.

Which just goes to show how little thought was put into production of the series, turning off prospective viewers with such a rubbish beginning.

[edelweis]

hmm well when I started learning Chinese I liked to watch TV shows even though I understood strictly nothing except for adverts phone numbers and the occasional 啊 at the end of a sentence. So whether the show is crappily designed or not does not matter at all to me, as long as I can understand a few bits, review a few expressions I already knew, I'm happy. I'm not going to buy the DVDs or book and study seriously from a TV show though. They're just for additional practice while eating, in an "all japanese all the time" mindset.

To come back to the grating voices: tonight while trying to catch up my SRS backlog (I always answer aloud) I noticed I tend to have a bit of the same issue

If I don't make a conscious effort to keep my voice in a higher range and light sounding, it starts to sound forced and grating. So I will try to correct this. Discovering this almost makes up for having to listen to those unpleasant voices in the show.

[edelweis]

This morning I watched 学汉语到北京 and thought "now here's a show with pleasant sounding - and good looking - foreigners". And they do have pleasant voices even though one of them definitely has a j-z-zh issue.

Then I realised this show is set in Beijing, a place with many foreigners to select actors from, while the new 快乐汉语 show is set in Chengdu. Most probably they didn't have that many advanced foreign students to choose from, that's why we end up with this set of odd-looking, odd-sounding foreigners.

(Despite my obvious shallowness I did get used to them )

[anonymoose]

This morning I watched 学汉语到北京 and thought "now here's a show with pleasant sounding - and good looking - foreigners". And they do have pleasant voices even though one of them definitely has a j-z-zh issue.

Then I realised this show is set in Beijing, a place with many foreigners to select actors from, while the new 快乐汉语 show is set in Chengdu. Most probably they didn't have that many advanced foreign students to choose from, that's why we end up with this set of odd-looking, odd-sounding foreigners.

(Despite my obvious shallowness I did get used to them )

I guess your point is valid. In Beijing and Shanghai at least, they should be able to find western native speakers of Chinese. There are many children who have been brought up in China, and this number can only be increasing.

[onebir]

That Other 快乐汉语 Show is this one?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXA-qERCVAs