How good is your spoken Chinese. (For non native speakers)

[Emjay]

I'd have to say my Chinese is about 6/10

I've been in China for 2.5 years. My spoken chinese is decent but my vocabulary is lacking. I have never studied the language so thats why I'm learning slow. Lots of guangdong people coment on my Chinese and make fun of their friends by saying my Chinese sounds better than theirs.

so where is everyone else at? How long have you studied?

[liuzhou]

While I have no intention of discouraging you, I feel obliged to point out that people telling you how great your Chinese is tends to be pretty meaningless.

Tonight, for example, I leapt into a taxi and gave the driver the name of my street. Three words, 三中路. He then praised my perfect 普通话, despite the fact that I had said it in local dialect. (In fact, my 普通话 is terrible - nearly as bad as the locals!)

When we arrived at my destination, I casually asked him (in local dialect again) if he had come across my favourite Xinjiang style restaurant which disappeared but is rumoured to have re-opened somewhere in town. I could see his brain desperately working behind his eyes as he realised that I could say more than my address! Then he stopped praising me!

Still don't know where the friggin' restaurant disappeared to, though!

[Emjay]

I didnt claim my chinese was great. Just that the people of this area of guangdong (mostly non guangdong people) comment that my pronouniciation is more clear than the locals. This is speaking mandarin of course. They have several local languages here as well as cantonese.

I wish I had time to study, most of the mandarin I learnt was in my first year here when I was out everynight making friends. This year I don't think I have improved at all.

The purpose of my thread was to have people rate themselfs and maybe we could identify our weaknesses together.

[anonymoose]

I would also say self-rating is fairly meaningless. I have heard people claim they are good speakers when they can barely string a good sentence together, whilst others who in reality are very good still claim to have poor chinese.

Anyway, for me, my vocabulary still needs widening. Although I learn a lot of words, when a real situation arises, I often realise I don't have the appropriate word at the right time.

[wushijiao]

I would say that self-rating is arbitrary, unless there is some sort of specific criteria to go off of. Besides, like anonymoose said, probably most people who have good Chinese become modest when they realize the extent to which they don't know.

Nonetheless, I agree with Emjay that it is important to take stock of what one is doing well and what one's weaknesses are on a consistent basis. For example, about six months ago I realized my reading skills where getting much better than my listening (for movies, TV...etc..) So I made a goal to listen to tapes eveyday for at least an hour during my commute, listen to the radio, and watch at least one Chinese movie per week, in addition to my other reading goals. I also speak 95% Chinese with my wife, which helps.

Still, I need to improve tones, tone sandhi, vocab and listening to quick, accented speech.

[Saifz]

Nee Ho & Way Nee.... is all what I can say in Chinese

I really need to learn, but I don't know anything

I want to speak the Taiwanese accent, just like Taiwani people... can someone help?

[Lu]

Taiwani people, that's a good one :-) If you want to learn Taiwanese, best way is coming to Taiwan. I doubt you can take courses on it anywhere abroad.

I'd say my Chinese is ok. I can read books if they're not too hard, newspapers if the subject is not too unfamiliar, I can speak about most subjects, but not about specialised ones, and I can understand 99% of what people say if they speak clearly. But like Wushijiao said, the more I know, the more I realize how much I don't know.

Also, what happens when I get complimented on my Chinese is this:

Someone: Ooh, your Chinese is so good!

Me: No, really, not so good, hai keyi.

If people tell you you're good often enough, you start believing it, but the same goes for saying of yourself you're not so good.

[random]

lol.... My spoken Chinese is awful, and don't even start on my reading skills...

PS: Saifz, there is a website about Taiyu here: http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/taiwanese/index.htm

[Jim]

My spoken Chinese is fantastic, but native speakers undermine me by failing to appreciate my creative jazz-style reinterpretation of the tones and poetic approach to reconstructing the grammar and vocabulary.

[wushijiao]

creative jazz-style reinterpretation

Classic phrasing! I, too, am a Chinese-speaking Charlie Parker, of sorts.

[peach]

Can't wait to get back into learning Mandarin again. We we're taught at shool but I only know my numbers now. Bit sad really.... i'd like to learn enough so as to teach my children.