Ice Breaker / Smooth Coversation Starter

[agradychandler]

What is your typical "ice breaker" line when you run into a Chinese person and want to show off/practice your language skills?

I'd really like to see if anyone has any good tips. I am a white male living in the USA and my Chinese is pretty good, but I always find it very awkward starting a conversation in Chinese.

Typically, if I run into a person I think is Chinese, I might ask in English "Are you Chinese" to get their attention and if so,then I ask 你会说中文吗？(Can you speak Chinese?). If so, I then say a quick line which I practiced so many times that it sounds very fluent to hopefully kickstart a conversation in Chinese: I say 我要趁这个机会跟你多联系一点儿中文吧！(I would like to take this opportunity to practice some Chinese with you).

What are your thoughts? Any better tips to break the ice with a native speaker without sounding like a student learning Chinese?

[David Wong]

I don't know, but people don't usually approach strangers to try to have a conversation of any substance. Either way, the person's going to know your real intention. What kind of reaction have you gotten with your approach?

I suppose something like "吃饭了吗？" or "今天天气真不错啊！” might work but I'm not all that confident making that claim.

BTW, it should be "练习“ and not "联系”。

[Shelley]

I think you must be very brave.

I have in the past when I first started learning Chinese, try and strike up conversation with Chinese people. What a mistake that was.

I have since found out that if you assume or indeed even ask if people are Chinese and they are not, you can really offend people.

It seems that people from Malaysia are very sensitive about this, i had one lady really get very angry with me she said " Just becuase i look Chinese doesn't mean I am Chinese. i come from Malay and i do not speak Chinese, you are very rude to think so"

This of course may have been an isolated incident, but it has put me off. i will not speak Chinese unless I am absoulutly sure that they are Chinese.

I thought about a T-shirt that said in Chinese, I am learning Chinese, if you would like to speak to me I need the practice. But I don't want to have to wear the same T-shirt all the time So I then thought about a badge but still that doesn't seem right.

So now I am very careful about starting conversations as it can really upset some people.

So if anyone can come up with a way to ask without offending I would be very happy to try again, maybe, perhaps, tentitivly

Best of luck to those of you who are brave enough to try.

[agradychandler]

Thanks for the comments. I definitely agree with the above and usually tend to not try even ask if they are Chinese unless I already know that they are. Let me give an example:

I work at a manufacturing company and recently had some colleagues from China visit our site. I knew they were Chinese, but I didn't know how to break the ice. Of course I could say 你好。我很高兴认识你们., but just wanted to see what others usually do.

[Shelley]

Ah this is different, if you know they are Chinese then i just throw in the odd comment in the right place like xiexie, duibuqi, and other little comments,

i have found that the first comment almost goes unoticed, like they are so used to hearing it, it takes a while to sink in that it is coming from someone they might not expect to speak Chinese. ( I am British)

Saying hello straight away in Chinese has got to be the best way to start. A quick round of 你好 你好tends to get the ball rolling.

Hope it goes well for you.

[WestTexas]

people don't usually approach strangers to try to have a conversation of any substance. Either way, the person's going to know your real intention.

Maybe you are just a little shy. I talk to random people in public all the time, and Chinese people are often eager to talk to me.

I live in China and it's easy to start a conversation with a random person. Here's what you do: Just have a little pocket notebook with something you don't understand in Chinese and ask the person to help you. That's it. Then they will often ask stuff like, where are you from, how long have you studied Chinese, etc and there you go. Or, you can have some open-ended questions prepared that you will ask.

Alternately, just carry around a Chinese book and underline a character you don't know or a section you don't quite understand. Then, just pull it out and ask away. The book gives you something to talk about as well if the conversation flags.

[imron]

I talk to random people in public all the time, and Chinese people are often eager to talk to me

But you are living in China, so the situation is different, and you can be maybe 99.9% sure that the person you are speaking to is Chinese without even needing to enquire.

The situation is much different outside of China where you have a mix of people from different countries who potentially speak some form of Chinese, but who may take mild offense or annoyance depending on the term you use for Chinese (both person and language), similar to how many white foreigners in China find it annoying that many people just assume white foreigner == American.

Then you also have people who are of Chinese descent who may or may not speak Chinese and if they can't (or can't speak very well), can sometimes feel a little uncomfortable around non-Chinese people who can speak good Chinese.

All of this can make striking up a conversation in Chinese with a random person outside of China to be a bit of a minefield.

[abcdefg]

I don't do "smooth" very well, and am fairly thick skinned about this issue. Live in China now, but when I return to the US and am eating at a Chinese restaurant and the waiter or waitress looks Chinese, I just start talking Putonghua with them, saying the same things I would otherwise be saying in English. (Nothing about language practice.) If they happen to be Cantonese or are dialect speakers from some small town in Fujian, it may not work out great. But I do it with a smile and nothing is lost from the effort.

-------------------------

Off topic, but on a related note, a couple nights ago here in Kunming I was having a foot massage. I often use that time to review flash cards of new vocabulary. They have Hanzi on one side and Pinyin plus English on the other.

As often happens, the masseuse asked me what I was doing. She and the young male masseur working at the next chair wanted to know how the cards worked and I was explaining. Must admit I was showing off a little and having fun.

The boss lady (from Jilin) walked up and paused. Instead of the effusive praise ("Oh, your Chinese is so wonderful, etc.") that one usually gets even with a hesitant 你好, she wagged her finger at me and said "注意发音" then just walked on. How refreshing!

[Meng Lelan]

she wagged her finger at me and said "注意发音" then just walked on. How refreshing!

Excellent, yes, that is how they ought to treat us Chinese learners - admonish not praise.

[li3wei1]

That's when you know you're getting good, when they stop praising and start correcting.

As for striking up conversations:

a) eavesdrop until you hear a few words of mandarin

b) if they're in a tourist spot, taking pictures of each other, offer to take a picture of all of them

c) if they look lost, ask if they need directions

d) otherwise, ask if they are traveling or if they've moved here, if so how long, etc.

Don't be too upset about mistaking someone's nationality. How many times have people made assumptions about you in their country based on your skin color?

[civic94]

Im not saying im 100% right, but im just generalizing.

chinese people in america, if you go to boston, san fran, chicago, and LA, most chinese are from the south, usually toishanese, or from the guangdong area. out of these 3 areas, in san fran, it has the most chinese history, as in some people are 4 or even 5 generation Chinese, who dont speak mandarin or cantonese. usually in these chinatowns the newcomers, they speak cantonese. in the 70's to now, there has been a mass wave of toishanese and cantonese coming over.

in philadelphia, nyc, and dc, most are from Fujian province, there are still some cantonese there. in the late 80's until the early 00's, there has been a mass wave of fujianese coming. usually these chinatowns speak fujanese.

in seattle, houston, there are cantonese, but theres more chinese-vietamese there.

out of all these places, the chinatowns are slowly turning into mandarin speaking. the new wave of ex pats from northern china are coming, some came here because of work visas, some came here with $$.. the previous times, its usually illegally or sponsor by a relative.

I dont speak madarin, but i had people who is not chinese come up to me and speak mandarin to me in philadelphia and nyc. I think in china i can see how some chinese will praise a forigner if they can speak chinese, but in america, some of my ABC friends dont mind if a forigner speaks mandarin in a chinese resturaunt.

but if a forigner speaks mandarin just to show off or just get praised out of the blue, sometimes it pisses some people off, not all. when is the first and last time a person of chinese ethnicity who spoke english perfectly, and the american folks praise them because he can speak so well? I dont mean to be mean but i am blunt. sometimes it does pisses some chinese people off, even if you want to practice, they might take it as your trying to show off. would you like it if your a english speaking forigner in china, and tons of chinese folks come to you to practice english or show off what they can speak? 1. it will annoy the hell out of you. 2. what if your skin is white, they think your american, but what if you dont speak english, you speak french, russian, german, etc.

[fanglu]

would you like it if your a english speaking forigner in china, and tons of chinese folks come to you to practice english or show off what they can speak?

This totally hypothetical. Such a thing would never happen.

[civic94]

This totally hypothetical. Such a thing would never happen.

I already said im generalizing at the beginning of the post. it might happen to you, it might not, but it has happened to people that i know.

not all chinese in america can speak mandarin. and not all chinese in america like each other, some hong kong and GZ people think they are the highest class compared to the toishanese, and the toishanese dont like the fujianese. and on top of that, some cantonese folks here dont like the mainlanders who dont speak cantonese, and vice versa.

you know in the past, in nyc, boston, san fran, chinese gangs were against each other in their chinatowns, you would think all chinese are a group in america, and we should help each other. in nyc, there was fujian gangs, cantonese gangs, and toishan gangs, that ran their own protection/drug/prostitution/gambling business and literally killed each other for turf. they spoke their own dialect, and never spoke mandarin. even when I was in middle school, we had cliques of toishanese,cantonese,fujianese. I can remember some kids came from an area that only spoke mandarin and just never fit in. we dont look alike, we dont eat the same food, and iif you dont speak the dialect, your an outsider.

My fujianese friend that is coming with me to china, he is from nyc, moved to seattle when he was 14. I was from boston, moved to seattle a year earlier than him, was also 14. we are very good friends, and we both admit, if we were in boston or nyc, we would never be this close as friends. its just the boundary of he is fujianese, he will have his fujanese friends, and I will be with my cantonese friends, there is a fine line that we wont cross. now in seattle, the chinese here are mostly from vietnam, so we dont relate, and other than that there is not much fujianese and some but not alot of cantonese here. but slowly i have been seeing more and more mainlanders come over for microsoft jobs. we became close friends because there is not much chinese here, so we hunged out. the chinese-vietamese folks can speak cantonese, but have a really bad accent, and its just not the same, most of them just hang out with vietamese people and do everything the vietnamese way (eat vietamese food, their house has vietamese decorations, dream of visiting vietnam instead of china, etc).

Im pretty sure people here seen on chinese tv, they have a show where forigners spoke mandarin and are judged by how much they know about china's history and their speaking skills, and the crowd is very into it. Can you imagine a show like that in america, where they have chinese/asian folks speaking perfect english, and the crowd is into it? I doubt it. it will never survive for even a week.

now if a forigner came up to me and spoke perfect cantonese with their 9 tones, i will be amazed.

[abcdefg]

Nothing could be more crude and clumsy than the "ice breakers" I get here in Kunming. Example:

"你们外国人喜欢吃什么菜？“

I get this over and over. Yet I manage to remain civil.

[imron]

This totally hypothetical. Such a thing would never happen.

I already said im generalizing at the beginning of the post. it might happen to you, it might not, but it has happened to people that i know.

I think you missed the dripping sarcasm

[civic94]

I think you missed the dripping sarcasm

haha if you added a smiley face after "happen" i would of got it. its hard to tell reading vs listening to you.

[civic94]

Nothing could be more crude and clumsy than the "ice breakers" I get here in Kunming. Example:

"你们外国人喜欢吃什么菜？“

I get this over and over. Yet I manage to remain civil.

try living in america and being of chinese ethnicity, even if youre 5th generation chinese (im 2nd). lots of white americans ask me what is my real name, not my american name. and of course, where am i really from, even tho i was born in boston. i ask them back, where are you from? and they say they are american.. they dont even know who they are. the real americans are the native americans. somewhere along the line their ancestors migrated to america and wiped out their ancestry and culture in just a few generations.

at least the folks in kunming is curious of what type of food you want to eat, I have people make jokes about me eating dogs, that i only eat rice, making fun of a Chinese accent, prank calling Chinese resturaunts.

the only white americans that i see that try to preserve their culture, is jewish and Italians. for italians, they try pretty hard to preserve it in nyc and boston, they are very proud of being so, even in their 2nd or 3rd generation. but if they actually go to italy, they cant speak a lick of italian, and the locals would just look at them as american, not italian.

[heifeng]

Sorry, but I think there is a thread hijack in progress here and Civic94 needs to start a separate thread enumerating all his (her?) apparently numerous, numerous grievances about living in the U.S. of A....

[civic94]

Sorry, but I think there is a thread hijack in progress here and Civic94 needs to start a separate thread enumerating all his (her?) apparently numerous, numerous grievances about living in the U.S. of A....

I already answered the question to this thread twice, and on the other one i was replying to abcdefg. why dont you help out and answer this thread? your first post on this thread is to pinpoint me but not answer the op's question? nice...

[anonymoose]

I wouldn't say I'm particularly shy talking to people, but I'm not good at approaching random strangers. Thus, I tend not to start up conversations, but am happy to chat if someone else starts talking to me (that is, assuming they want a normal chat and don't have ulterior motives, which is more often than not the case when a foreigner is approached in Shanghai).

However, I overheard a tour group speaking Shanghainese once in Bangkok, so couldn't resist starting a conversation in Shanghainese just to see what reaction I would get. I also overheard a couple of young girls chatting in Shanghainese in Belfast. I would have loved to try the same thing there, but unfortunately I was with a lady at the time, and didn't want to make her jealous.