dashan 大山, Igor(from taiwan) and any others who have disgustingly good chinese

[venture160]

Just wondering if you have ever come across anyone who has a disgustingly awesome mandarin proficiency. I know there is Dashan etc, but what about all those foreigners who come to study their asses off in Beijing or whatever and then go on to a job translating or working at some multinational company and don't have a national media presence. I have met a few who could easily rival Dashan, working at trade firms or other related industries. For example I recently came across a 25 year old who had unbelievable Chinese, he had spent a year at CIEE, then Princeton in Beijing, lived with Chinese roommates for a year in the states, then did SAIS Nanjing, to say the least, his chinese impressed me. You have to think, how many people (non-chinese) are there who really have mastered written and spoken chinese, and have a good idea of Chinese culture. I wonder if you guys have come across these chinese language heathens, that one person who just when you think your chinese is the shit, sends you back into depression and a 40 hour bout of studying characters to prove them all wrong. Of course one trip to the local 中国饭馆 and ordering in Chinese, then subsequently getting unwarranted praise from the people around you is always a way to make you feel better.

feel free to share your stories

[lylestyle]

Yeah, the host of "Happy China" on CCTV, I think his name is Daniel. His Chinese is the best, and most natural, of any foreigner I've come across, better than Dashan's I think. Anyone know the background on him?

[xiaoxiajenny]

Did you mean Daniel Newham? He's quite young, 24,25 something like that.

http://www.cctv.com.cn/lm/736/61/65365.html

http://www.cctv.com.cn/lm/736/1.shtml

http://www.cctv.com/program/happychina/02/index.shtml

[daydreamer]

I think 大山 is better. His spoken is even better than many Chinese people. He began to stay in China in late 1980's.

[BeijingSlacker]

Not sure if I like Da Shan's style, but I think it would be really hard to speak better chinese than he does as his Chinese is almost perfect. He's even got a Beijing accent.I've only seen one non-native speaker who speak as well as Da Shan. She is a Japanese lady who is married to Zhuang Zedong, the Chinese Pingpong Champion. She speaks Chinese with the Beijing accent in a way that only native Beijingers do and she even looks Chinese. Hell man, I couldn't believe she is Japanese until I saw her speak Japanese.

[wushijiao]

I have never met a laowai with Chinese as good as Dashan's. The thing is, like Beijing Slacker pointed out, Dashan has flawless pronunciation, even having a Beijing accent. I have met some other people who have pronunciation on par with Dashan's, but they didn't have the range in either historical chengyu's and academic language or in colloquialisms.

I'd bet that in Beijing, with all the universities and embassies, there are a lot more Dashan-level speakers.

My long-run goal is to be Dashan-esque in pronunciation, vocab, colloquialisms/slang, historical and political Chinese, knowing what behaviors are appropriate to what situations....etc. I still have a very, very long way to go.

[roddy]

So who is Igor? Is he a Taiwanese version of Dashan?

Roddy

[venture160]

yea, he is a news anchor though, so he speaks alot faster, really really impressive. I will try and dig up a link. Yea there are alot of no names running around that have Chinese that is quite impressive, especially in Beijing, although my Chinese american friend who worked for a year at the art museum in shanghai, sais she ran across a few businessmen who had almost flawless chinese, (american's) who had shanghainese down pretty well on top of mandarin

[carlo]

A friend of mine was born in Beijing of two European parents 20+ years ago, and grew up here. I think she speaks better Chinese than Dashan (with all the respect I have for Dashan). I know a couple more people with similar background (and I didn't go looking for them! ), so while I agree that this is not as common as ABCs speaking English, honestly I don't get depressed if someone with a foreign face speaks better Chinese than myself. (And, why should I?)

[Harpoon]

A friend of mine was born in Beijing of two European parents 20+ years ago, and grew up here. I think she speaks better Chinese than Dashan (with all the respect I have for Dashan). I know a couple more people with similar background (and I didn't go looking for them! ), so while I agree that this is not as common as ABCs speaking English, honestly I don't get depressed if someone with a foreign face speaks better Chinese than myself. (And, why should I?)

So she's fluent then? Undistinguishable from other regional mandarin speakers? That should be the case, if she aquired the language so early on.

[Tsunku]

I find it interesting how focused many seem on the Beijing accent.

My Chinese is pretty good, but not as good as Da Shan's (not yet anyhow!), but I doubt I will ever have a Beijing accent. I don't think my accent is bad or non-standard, but it is decidedly more southern than Da Shans. Actually, living down here in the south, I get kind of annoyed by the guys newly arrived from Beijing, who go nuts with the "er" and try and sound like TV announcers. It sounds really out of place here, and seems almost a bit show-off-ish, like "hey, look at me, I can speak better Chinese than even the Chinese folks here." (and believe me, that comment gets thrown at you a lot here. Kunmingers tell me my mandarin is better than theirs all the time).

To me, fluency is a matter of usage and vocabulary, not sounding like you're a dongbei-ren. I'm not saying we should mangle the tones, or mispronounce anything, but should we look down on people whose accent was picked up somewhere other then Beijing? "Standard" spoken Mandarin is a pretty recent construct anyhow ...

But to answer the questions, yeah. When I first started studying Chinese in China, over two years ago, one of my classmates was this dude with disgustingly good Chinese. He loved to lord it over the rest of us too. One of his retarded habits was writing a "character of the day" on the board. The "character of the day" was inevitably complex and useless, just an excuse for him to show off how great his writing skills were. He'd also refuse to help newbies out with stuff, claiming they had to learn how to do it on their own. Fine, sure, but if you've only studied Chinese for like, two weeks, doing stuff like buying plane tickets or opening a bank account can be pretty difficult. I thought the guy was a bit of a prick for not helping.

What keeps my Chinese from being disgustingly good is my vocabulary is still too broad -- not enough specialized and academic terms. I'm also seriously lacking in Chengyu. I can carry on a conversation in rapid Chinese, without really having to stop to think or translate too much, but I probably have the vocabulary of someone about twelve years old. There are a lot of people walking around out there with better Chinese than me. In Kunming there are a handful of people with Chinese good enough to do translation and interpreting (myself being one of them, go me). One guy is head and shoulders above the rest, and his advantage is that he's spends a lot of time going over specific vocabulary and learning terms which just wouldn't come up in normal conversation. He also has an impressive range of Chengyu. However, despite the awesomeness of his Chinese, he and I were one day looking through a Chinese version of Cosmo, the women's magazine. Reading an article about how to tell if your man is cheating on you, there were still quite a few terms which had us stumped!

[wushijiao]

honestly I don't get depressed if someone with a foreign face speaks better Chinese than myself. (And, why should I?)

I couldn't agree more. When I find someone that has better Chinese than I do, I usually ask about their studying methods so that I can learn something and improve. I don't get jealous, sniping at their personality or whatever else.

He'd also refuse to help newbies out with stuff, claiming they had to learn how to do it on their own.

Unlike this guy, Dashan hosts one of the most useful shows about Chinese that there is.

I agree with Tsunku that the Beijing accent thing is overdone. Each city or region has its own version of putonghua that would be equally impresive to mimic. But because Beijing is where so many tapes, CDs, films and other learning materials are from, I think most mid-level learners can easily distinguish the Beijing accent from generic northern ones, and certainly from southern ones. So I think many people can recognize the accent, but can't quite reproduce it; thus, they have the strange sense of awe for laowais who can do it well儿.

[Hann]

I have heard these guys chinese and it truly is amazing, but my question is this?

How? and How long?

I have a friend whose Chinese and Taiwanese i think matches these guys especially when he uses his 'authentic' accent, but he has had a Chinese wife for over a decade. Not sure how old 大山 is, but as someone else noted Daniel is mid 20's. It leaves my head spinning. haha

[BeijingSlacker]

I find it interesting how focused many seem on the Beijing accent.

My Chinese is pretty good' date=' but not as good as Da Shan's (not yet anyhow!), but I doubt I will ever have a Beijing accent. I don't think my accent is bad or non-standard, but it is decidedly more southern than Da Shans. Actually, living down here in the south, I get kind of annoyed by the guys newly arrived from Beijing, who go nuts with the "er" and try and sound like TV announcers. It sounds really out of place here, and seems almost a bit show-off-ish, like "hey, look at me, I can speak better Chinese than even the Chinese folks here." (and believe me, that comment gets thrown at you a lot here. Kunmingers tell me my mandarin is better than theirs all the time).

To me, fluency is a matter of usage and vocabulary, not sounding like you're a dongbei-ren. I'm not saying we should mangle the tones, or mispronounce anything, but should we look down on people whose accent was picked up somewhere other then Beijing? "Standard" spoken Mandarin is a pretty recent construct anyhow ...

[/quote']

I can't speak for others, but I personally do not find it more impressive when a Chinese learner speak Beijing accent than other chinese accents. Actually I think it is probably easier to pick up Beijing accent because, as wushijiao mentioned, Beijing accent is used a lot more on TV or in movies. So I would be probably more impressed if a non-native speaker can speak Kunming or Sichuan accent.

That being said, I do think it is more impressive/interesting to hear a CL speak Beijing accent (or other Chinese accents) than standard Mandarin like a news announcer. It does not have much to do with the fact that it is Beijing accent, but rather the colloquialism one can achieve. I think native English speaker would probably find it more interesting to hear a non-native English speaker talk in a heavy Alabamian or Cockney accents than the standard English(whatever that includes).However, I personally would not to put in much effort to master a regional accent, which, like you said, is a lot less important than fluency or vocabulary.

Actually' date=' living down here in the south, I get kind of annoyed by the guys newly arrived from Beijing, who go nuts with the "er" and try and sound like TV announcers. It sounds really out of place here, and seems almost a bit show-off-ish, like "hey, look at me, I can speak better Chinese than even the Chinese folks here."

[/quote']

I do not have a Chinese learner's perspective, but here is what I think.

If the guys you talked about did learn their Chinese in Beijing and they watched a lot TV programs in Beijing accent, isn't it natural for them to use "er" a lot? If I were to live in Kunming, I probably wouldn't change my natural Beijing accent just to not sound "out of place".

[carlo]

This young lady, born and raised in Beijing, wrote an award winning first novel in French after studying the language for a couple of years... I think this is no less impressive than speaking Chinese after studying it full time for a decade or more.

As to my friend, AFAIK Chinese is her first language. Ironically, she speaks excellent English, but neither of her European parents' mother tongues. As the international status of Chinese improves, in two decades or so the number of native Mandarin speakers of foreign origin might increase to some extent, as it has in HK or Japan.

[venture160]

I do agree that down the road, maybe 5-10 years we could see a very lage increase of Chinese learners in the western countries, especially the United States. Public schools are just beginning to offer mandarin, although only in afluent communities where foreign language studies can even be fully funded. I say 5-10 years before we have a balloon in Chinese because right now for most people it still seems too hard, and currently Japanese holds more of a pop culture sway over American youth. In my 20,000 person state university, the Japanese program has well over 300 students, and I can honestly say half of them take it because of their interest in Japanese pop culture. While in my Chinese program there are no more than 50 total, with more than 2/3rds dropping out after the 2nd year. I have found a large problem with US college level Chinese is that often times the professors are a couple generations older than most Japanese professors, and teach/focus on far more traditional aspects of Chinese culture, which to many at first can be boring and honestly hard to understand. In 5-10 years we will see an influx of younger chinese professors who are more in touch with contemporary China, and could help to retain students. Not to mention I do forsee a not immense but signifigant amount of interest revolving around the 2008 olympics, which could sway many to study Chinese.

What does this all mean? For us studying Chinese right now, this is the time. By the time more and more people are learning Chinese hopefully we will have already found a place in some China related market, and hold those positions while a new generation of Chinese learners are being trained. Furthermore as cities like Beijing and Shanghai have more and more western amenities that makes expat life bearable, we will start to see a much higher level of fluent speakers who have cultivated their ability by living in China for a prolonged period of time.

[Harpoon]

but seriousy venture, how important is it for Americans and other Westerners to learn Chinese? I mean, hobbies are hobbies, but it's not really necessary. It's the Chinese that are busting their asses (by Chinese Government decree) to learn as much English as they can because their future livelyhood literaly depends on it. They're the developing nation. And as they develop, they will only know more - I mean, try going to Europe, you can say your polite "bonjour" or "guten tag" and the European will answer in kind to the silly American, before launching into English.

It's not our responsibility to break the langauge barrier, any company coming into China is greeted with assloads of fluent English translators fighting for the job. It's our culture that's being exported to them, not the other way around. And in terms of business, there is no room for error or commical misunderstanding, you would be expected to communicate complicated plans, procedures and details quickly and efficiently..

[venture160]

personally I don't take learning Chinese as a hobby, but as a serious study to which i devote hours to, and I will be studying for twelve months straight in China coming this June on top of a previous semester in China, and when I am done with that I know very well that I will still have a ways to go.

And in my opinion just assuming that everyone will speak english someday is kind of far fetched. Yes there are lots of chinese who speak english very very well, but it is imperitive that Americans and other westerners understand Chinese as well so we can have a true two way dialogue, its important to learn something from the Chinese as well. Also there are a number of jobs in the United States that would NEVER go to a Chinese national (i.e government jobs) in which Chinese is needed. Why do people study indonesian, korean, swahili, or czech? Why are you stuyding Chinese if you just consider it a hobby and unimportant?

[Harpoon]

personally I don't take learning Chinese as a hobby' date=' but as a serious study to which i devote hours to, and I will be studying for twelve months straight in China coming this June on top of a previous semester in China, and when I am done with that I know very well that I will still have a ways to go.

And in my opinion just assuming that everyone will speak english someday is kind of far fetched. Yes there are lots of chinese who speak english very very well, but it is imperitive that Americans and other westerners understand Chinese as well so we can have a true two way dialogue, its important to learn something from the Chinese as well. Also there are a number of jobs in the United States that would NEVER go to a Chinese national (i.e government jobs) in which Chinese is needed. Why do people study indonesian, korean, swahili, or czech? Why are you stuyding Chinese if you just consider it a hobby and unimportant?[/quote']

no reason to study indonesian, korea, swahili or czech

i think that english will only lose importance if there is some major shift in world power

and im studying chinese as a hobby

[Guest]

no reason to study indonesian, korea, swahili or czech

i think that english will only lose importance if there is some major shift in world power

and im studying chinese as a hobby

I find that attitude pretty arrogant. People learn those languages because they want to communicate with peopple who speak them. My mother, for example, learned Swahili because she's a doctor who did research and volunteer work in Ethiopia and Kenya. She absolutely had to be able to communicate with non-English speaking patients. In the context of this thread, the posters here are learning Chinese BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN CHINA!

For languages such as Spanish and Mandarin which have MORE native speakers than English, the rational for learning is obvious. The only reason so many people learn English as a second language is the fact that English speakers, despite being only the third most numerous language group, are the wealthiest language group. And in case you haven't noticed there IS a major shift in world power in progress. French (the lingua franca only 100 years ago) is continuing its decline while Spanish and especially Mandarin are rising powers. Even in the US, the percentage of native English speakers is decreasing, while the numbers of Spanish and Chinese speakers increase every year.