Accents are killing me....

[陳德聰]

You're both apparently indeterminate =_=

I'm just trying to say you can't go off spouting hypothe-theories as if they're fact when they're little more than opinion based on anecdote.

Edit: I mean, I guess you can, but I won't agree and you have no credibility...

Also on the phone all you have to say is "wei?" and people will blast off into Chinese.

[Guest realmayo]

陳德聰, I think you should re-read Xuelan's post. He/she talks about conversation outside the classroom being much more difficult that conversation inside the classroom. And then says that there was the occasional person who wouldn't understand.

The research is applicable because it shows that we tend to interpret things in line with how we expect them to be. Simple as that.

Let me give you a final example: you wrote:

I completely read your "indeterminate" as "intermediate"

... which is a perfect example! You've confused two words with completely different meanings. If you were proof-reading a text you'd pick it up as a probable typo. But here, because you expect to see one type of word, that's what you see.

[Guest realmayo]

spouting hypothe-theories

I was interpreting my experiences, and the experiences of others, in line with well-developed and well-supported theories about how the brain works. Sorry that seems so unreasonable.

[li3wei1]

Xuelan said, essentially, that these things happened to him/her.

You said, that's impossible, such things don't happen.

I said, I heard a story about such a thing happening.

Which of the three is 'spouting a hypothe-theory'?

[Guest realmayo]

Just for completeness: from Sinosplice: http://www.sinosplic...e-this-is-china

I should bring up the idea of the “psychological block” to communication in Asia. I have had this experience in both Japan and China. Sometimes you’ll speak to a person in near-perfect (if not perfect) Chinese or Japanese, and all you’ll get is a shaking of the head and a “I don’t speak English.” These people will not listen to you at all, because when they see a white face they become absolutely convinced in their minds that communication is impossible. Often it’s the old that suffer from these psychological blocks.

[renzhe]

OMG, this is getting out of control. I think that we'll all agree that:

1) People will often fail to understand you at first if they have a strong expectation that you can't speak a language. I can control this phenomenon here in Portugal simply by choosing a T-shirt. T-shirt with German stuff on it = people get stumped and reply in English. T-shirt with Portuguese stuff on it = people understand perfectly from the start.

2) As soon as you reply in a burst of fluent, correct Chinese/Portuguese/whatever, people will get over the shock.

So people who are really good and native like don't have problems in practice. You just have to get over the initial shock and give the other party time to adjust to the changed context, and you're good to go.

It can still get tiring in places like China where foreigners usually don't speak fluent Chinese because this happens often.

[xiaocai]

Interesting. On the other hand, my paternal grandmother, who can watch any TV program in standard Mandarin with no problem, can barely speak it. And no matter how hard she tries, her Mandarin sounds more like dialect with accent no matter how hard she tries.

As for the pronunciation of 四 and 十 in Sichuan dialects will depend on the sub dialect the person speaks. In northern 四川话 and middle 四川话 they have the same pronunciation but different tones. They sound completely different though in southern 四川话.

[陳德聰]

WHOA. I said that it is more likely that someone would misunderstand based on bad Chinese than because of a white face, and somehow that means that I think it's impossible that what happened to Xuelan was because he has a white face? I even conceded that it was a possible explanation at least twice.

Read.

[OneEye]

I encounter similar things all the time, and I do speak with little discernible accent. There's an employee at the 7-11 near my place who spoke English to me every time I went in for weeks, despite the fact that every word out of my mouth was Chinese. He heard me, understood me, and responded in English, every time. After a few weeks of this, I finally said something like "我一句英文都沒有跟你講過，你幹嘛不講國語？" He almost fell over. His response? "你會國語？我以為…因為你是…" Me: "因為我是白人嗎？" Him: "不好意思。"

But in general I do believe that most of people's frustrations with native speakers not understanding or choosing to switch languages really are due to them not having good pronunciation. I hear the "I do just fine in class but when I talk to people outside..." all the time. Usually there's something about how the locals here just don't speak very well (it's amazing what power the idea of a "standard language" can have). The fact that a teacher understands means absolutely nothing. They've listened to foreigners mangle the language in every imaginable way for years, of course they can understand you. The real test is whether you can interact with native speakers in real life, whether they speak perfect textbook Chinese or not. If you can't understand them, it's your listening skills that are lacking, not their speaking ability. If they can't understand you, it's your speech that needs improvement, not their listening. There's no way around that. If your area has a nonstandard accent, you just have to get used to it. It's your own language ability that's lacking, not the native speaker's. That may be an unpleasant thought, but I think a lot of learners need to hear it.

As far as the 四 and 十 thing, the tone gives it away. If you have to think about which tone it was that you just heard, you need more listening practice.

[Guest realmayo]

陳德聰, you said it was highly unlikely, and that you'd rather believe that people reporting this actually have bad Chinese.

Nothing wrong with healthy scepticism, but then this isn't a situation you could have been in yourself. Best is for you to study, say, Romanian for a few years, then go to the wilds of Transylvania, hit them with your language skills, and report back!

[anonymoose]

The problem with this argument is that we have no evidence either way, and everything is based on assumptions only. In this case, the best we can do is comment on the various possibilities in terms of their relative likelihood, but recognise that ultimately, in the absense of solid evidence, any of them could represent the truth.

Personally, I think poor pronunciation is more likely than the white-effect, but at the same time, I think the white-effect definitely exists. On one occasion, I wanted to say something to an elderly (60-ish) lady in Shanghai, but when she saw me, before I even had a chance to open my mouth, she said (in Chinese), "Sorry, I don't speak English, I don't understand what you're saying".

[iteachchina]

Haha, this is one of the best topic strings I've read! So funny how the dialect differences are such a big factor here. I go to a place every week where the people are all from different areas of the country. It's amazing to hear how different their speech is. Some of them sound like variations of Putonghua, others sound like they aren't any kind of Chinese.

[iteachchina]

Just continuing the idea about people understanding/not understanding the waiguoren, I think some of it is just the fact that many people still don't expect us to be able to speak Chinese with any skill, so they hear us speaking, but they are not looking for chinese, so they don't really "hear" the language. Kind like when you look in the cabinet for the red box of raisins, and you look right past the box because it's green, and not red like you thought.

My wife always tells me how it cracks her up that she'll be talking with someone for a minute or two, and then the other person will say, "so, can you speak Chinese?" Ummm....

I was with another friend at a restaurant and he asked the fuwuyuan where she was from. She just stared at him with no response. He said, "I'm speaking to you in Chinese..." You could see a light come on, and then she was all embarassed.

This stuff happens to us every week almost. It's so fun to be here in China....haha.

[anonymoose]

I went to McDonald's yesterday and placed an order in Chinese, which must have lasted several seconds. The guy behind the counter immediately responded, "Sorry, I don't speak English", and got the menu with pictures out.

[Guest realmayo]

What country were you in?

[陳德聰]

Haha well the better question is, was this because of your pronunciation or because of this white-effect?

[Guest realmayo]

You're asking him if he can't place a McDonald's order in comprehensible Chinese?

[peterlkj]

Well, like the other whiteys in the room I'm gonna have to agree it's a real effect. My solution - start with 喂，你好 before diving in.

[Matty]

I don't want to be a jerk but I find it highly unlikely that someone would not understand you "just because [you're] white". Perhaps your pronunciation is not as good as you believe it to be. I have noticed that there seems to be a relatively pervasive Dunning-Kruger thing going on with students of Chinese.

It's real, I've experienced it a number of times and it's not due to my Chinese abilities. It's a mental block I've seen and mostly when they seem a little stressed or flustered. Often they seem to rush out with their not-understanding lines and not even hear a word you say. However if you give them a moment to calm down and relax they seem to be able to take it in. I really have a feeling it's an effect of being overwhelmed in one way or another.

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As for the out of class experience... Back when I was in Harbin it was mostly ok, though there were a few locals with a very heavy accent I had trouble with understanding for a while, but one day I guess I just got used to it and didn't even notice the difference - that or they all vanished never to be heard from again.o

More so in the south I find there's a lot of variance in languages and accents. The longer you're there the more you'll get used to the different accents of their Mandarin. However I've found the some older folks Mandarin abilities are quite limited. I had a doctor in a small town once who tried his very best to speak to me in English, it was a failure, so he tried Mandarin, which he was ok with at most times but even then there were times even his nurses couldn't understand his Mandarin.

The truth is that in-class learning can only teach you so much, it's more of a getting started mark for real life, once you're out there you've got to practice, learn, adapt and fill in the blanks. The in-class experience is quite different from the out of classroom experience. I had to actually quit my listening classes due to stress... I found it much harder to listen to the Mandarin dictation than to real people, partially for the echo, but mostly because it is so slow it bored my and my mind goes wandering off to other places.

Many of the dialects are quite similar to Mandarin, I can understand a fair bit of 四川话 and a few others around the place that I hear. It even surprises some locals when I understand what they say. Many don't seem to realise the similarities, I had more difficulty realising the differences in some of these cases.

I live in 南宁 now and something I've found quite humorous over the past few years is the compliments I get on my 桂林话 which I always thought was just 普通话. I've now come to the conclusion that 桂林话 could in fact be renamed 普通话 for the tone deaf. (Like me)

[johnk]

I don't think that there is a waiguoren effect, it is more of a "when you hear hoofbeats, expect horses, not zebras" effect.

On my last trip to China with Air China, the girl sitting beside me on the plane was Japanese. She did not speak or understand Mandarin. It was kind of fun watching the air hostesses come around and rattle off their speaches to her in Mandarin. She had to wait for them to give me the English version before she could chose a meal or whatever.