What do you call Chinese-speaking foreigners? In English or Chinese?

[vellocet]

So, it occurs to me I'm fumbling for a word that describes Chinese-speaking foreigners.  Something better than 会说中文的老外. Maybe that's it.  I don't know.  I have been using the clumsy construction  "Sinophone" but that word is specific to  Quebec, Canada where everyone is a Francophone (French speaker) or Anglophone(English speaker.  I shuffled prefixes around to try to make it mean Chinese speaker  but if someone's not familiar with the usage in Quebec maybe they wouldn't get it.  Is there a better word to describe us? 

[lordsuso]

The first thing that came to mind is "non-native Mandarin speaker". No idea in Chinese.

 

I'm from Spain and I have no problems with sinophone, we have the same suffix in Spanish (although "sinohablante" sounds better than "sinófono" to me).

[nicklinjm]

It may not be v helpful to you, but having spent 10 years working around Chinese people they just don't make this distinction, generally speaking. If you absolutely want to say the equivalent of sinophone / lusophone / francophone then yes, I guess it would have to be "hui shuo zhongwen de laowai" (or sometimes "dong zhongwen de laowai").

[sanchuan]

Do we have a term for Chinese-speaking Chinese?

[Guest realmayo]

On 6/4/2024 at 12:56 PM, vellocet said:

Is there a better word to describe us? 

Since such a word does not exist, I think this forum should invent one  

Let's come up with some possibilities.

My effort: 华语洋

[Explore Chinese]

A genius 😜

[elizabethwilliams707]

In English, people who speak Chinese as a foreign language are often called "Chinese learners" or "people who speak Chinese." In Chinese, they might be referred to as "外国人学中文" (wàiguórén xué zhōngwén), which means "foreigners learning Chinese." The exact term used can depend on the situation and how someone wants to describe them.

[Tomsima]

@elizabethwilliams707 is this an AI answer?

[elizabethwilliams707]

@Tomsima No, I'm not using AI. I shared that answer based on what I know. Do you have any other questions about learning languages?

[Lu]

@elizabethwilliams707, your answer did read rather like AI-generated text. Perhaps you can tell us a bit more about yourself, we have a topic for that even. What brought you to studying Chinese, how far along are you, what brought you to the forums?

[Tomsima]

I mean, I'm surprised that this is the way the internet has gone, but that answer also reads like an ai answer...!

[honglam]

Well, ethnicity, nationality and language ability are really complicated terms. And the competence of language varies. Usually I'll use a sentence to describe such situation, such as 他听不懂汉语/他听的懂汉语/他能说一点汉语/他能说汉语/他汉语很好...