Ben Hedges

[suMMit]

What do you think of this guys pron?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2TsiE3R4iI&list=WL&index=11&t=30s

 

I think it's excellent. It does't sound totally over the top "Beijing Newscaster Chinese", you can still tell he‘s a 老外 but it sounds natural and doesn't hurt or strain the ears. He's also got a pretty good youtube channel mostly I guess geared towards elementary. I like listening to learners who have excellent pronunciation, I feel like I gain something from shadowing them as well as natives. This guy also usually features various cohosts that are absolute hotties?

[Tomsima]

Sounds fairly unnatural to me, in the sense that he's prepared what he wants to say, and so does sound a bit stilted. Not taking anything away from the guy, speaks well, but he's definitely within the attainable advanced level. I personally would advise against shadowing his pronunciation, but go ahead if that's what works for you

[Flickserve]

Personally I wouldn’t shadow from him. For instance, if he’s two steps away from sounding native, if I were to copy him, perhaps there’s going to be more variation in my pronunciation especially for some of the tones. 

[Jan Finster]

4 hours ago, suMMit said:

This guy also usually features various cohosts that are absolute hotties?

 

If I were you, I would enjoy the eye candy, but not shadow him or any other non-natives (e.g. Luke from Mandarin Blueprint).

I like Ben's grammar explanations. He has some good videos on Youtube.

[suMMit]

Yeah I agree with you guys. Saying I shadow him was a bit of an overstatement. But sometimes seeing a laowai pronouncing a particular word or phrase that I find difficult somehow helps me. But I'd be pretty happy if I reached that overall level.

51 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

Luke from Mandarin Blueprint

His pron is some of the best laowai pron I've heard. 

[Jan Finster]

7 minutes ago, suMMit said:

His pron is some of the best laowai pron I've heard. 

 

I would not argue that his pronunication is great, but it is still likely not native. For instance, I know hardly any non-native English speaker, who speaks English with a native intonation, word stress and sentence stress, etc. (No matter how "fluent" they are, no matter, if they do not have an accent, no matter how big their vocabulary is). I  assume there are subtle nuances that us learners cannot even pick up on at the learning stage we are at.

[Lu]

His Chinese is good, but something in his intonation, or the way that he speaks at the back of his mouth, makes him sound a bit like an old man in the park playing chess. Not that that is bad, but he is young.

And I agree about not shadowing him. His intonation is clear and 100% understandable, but still laowai.

[Guest realmayo]

Interesting Lu that you mention how he speaks from the back of his mouth. I like how he avoids the over-earnest speaking from the throat style that lots of native English speakers, myself included, tend towards when speaking Chinese.

[feihong]

He’s perfectly understandable but something about his tones doesn’t sound very natural. It feels like there maybe isn’t as much of a drop in pitch on the fourth tone. Basically, he speaks well but with a noticeable accent.