Is this normal speaking speed?

[Guest realmayo]

Sorry if this sounds a bit wide-eyed but I do think it's cool how one can go from finding stuff at that speed just extremely and ridiculously fast and start formulating all kinds of reasons why spoken Chinese is almost impossible to 'decode' at native speed ..... to taking it for granted that as long as the language is well within one's range it doesn't matter how fast it's said, it just goes into the brain and sticks there with no noticeable time spent decoding it. I'm glad I clicked on the first link, to remind myself that the more advanced stuff that I'm finding super-hard at the moment might, if I keep working at it, one day seem pretty simple too.

[roddy]

Give it a couple of years and deathtrap will be helping people understand 胖大海.

I went looking for a transcript of the 有学生证的鸡* one and found this - I'm not going to check it, but it might be useful.

*and by typing that with Google Pinyin, the GoogleMind now thinks that chickens can go to university.

[simplet]

I still love this Antiwave podcast.

Lol Looks like my comprehension needs some work still. I tried listening to that in one go and for most of it I thought he was talking about the chinese new year and that the street were covered in vomit. That was pretty funny while it lasted, to say the least. I lost it when the wheather report announced 100% chance of puke.

[skylee]

Don't understand. What is fast? The one at #1 and the NPCR video at #19 are very slow. 鏘鏘三人行 is regular speed. 胖大海 is a bit faster and I have to concentrate because of the accent and the topics.

I think if you find these difficult it is probably the vocab instead of the speed that is the problem.

[imron]

I tried listening to that in one go and for most of it I thought he was talking about the chinese new year

It's poking fun at the dust-storms in Beijing, and talking about the dust that has fallen and covered everything in the same sort of tone and excitement someone would use to talk about snow.

[imron]

Honestly I didn't think Roddy's first link was that fast.

Try this one by the same guy

[simplet]

It's poking fun at the dust-storms in Beijing, and talking about the dust that has fallen and covered everything in the same sort of tone and excitement someone would use to talk about snow.

Yeah I realized that after a while but he was talking about the spring and everything being covered with some kind of yellow thing, and that made me think of all the people getting blind drunk during the new year and pissing or vomiting in the streets, so I thought "xia tu" was something like "下吐" at first (like it's raining vomit). Needless to say it became really hilarious when he started talking about the children going outside to play in it and so forth.

[yonglin]

To the original poster. I agree with everyone else -- it is slow-to-normal.

It's not clear if you're actually studying from the NPCR, or just using the youtube clip as additional listening practice. If you are learning from the NPCR textbooks, I suggest you listen to the audio CDs instead. I also found the DVDs (from which the youtube videos are ripped) way too fast when I was at this level. This is especially true if you want to imitate speech rather than practice listening. The dialogue on the CDs is a lot more clear, there is no annoying background noise or music, no broken accents, and they also read the word list / grammar drills aloud (all very slowly and clearly).

imron, I agree that the video about chopsticks and licking fingers is terrible-- it looks like they're actually upset with each other! And it's so strange with the whole "let's sit down on opposite sides of a table and talk about this!". The feeling you get from listening to the CD is way different --- just like friends casually chatting with each other.

[renzhe]

I'll just point out that I found NPCR videos insanely fast when I was first starting. I felt pretty much like the OP.

It does become easier with time, really, it just takes lots of listening practice.

[wushijiao]

Wushijiao, pretty sure it was you who turned up 胖大海。 Good work, now find a current equivalent

My iPod is currently dead, but once I re-buy a new one, I'll get to work on finding good and interesting listening materials!