大山

[rmontelatici]

What about 大牛 (the british guy who hosts the 快乐中国 program on CCTV-4) ?

How does he sound to you native speakers ? How do its oral skills compare to 大山's ?

(I'm only asking about fluency and quality of pronunciation, not erudition, ability to act on stage and the like).

[Lu]

And how about Wang Lihong? As to what I heard he didn't know much Mandarin when he came to Taiwan, and now he's absolutely fluent. But once I saw him on tv and I could tell he wasn't a native speaker, there are small mistakes here and there, slight slips of the tone, or of the 'melody' of a sentence.

But he's a different case, of course, as he doesn't look foreign.

[sky888]

^^^

I really like 王力宏. When I heard him for the first time, without actually knowing, I immediately knew he was from the US.

[dalaowai]

Most Chinese I've talked to say that Da Shan doesn't have any noticeable accent. I've been in China a long time and taking many taxis everyday. The taxi ride always starts the same way. The driver comments on my Chinese, then asks me where I'm from. I reply Canada, to which he immediately replies, "Norman Berthune was a great Canadian doctor." After discussing Berthune's contribution to China, the drivers always follow with "Da Shan is also Canadian. His Mandarin is so good...blah blah blah".

The drivers then proceed to say that if they're just listening to him speak, they can't pick up that he isn't Chinese.

Now the taxi driver thing is only an example, neighbours, friends, etc, all say that his Mandarin is disgustingly fluent. He's even able to do Chinese stand up comedy to the delight of many.

[Lu]

I'm a bit wary about the 'can't hear he's not Chinese'. Even I get that sometimes, if I call someone who hasn't seen me. Maybe it's the large variety of accents + the fact that not many foreigners get very fluent makes most people assume the accent they hear is something from another province instead of from another country.

[hakkaboy]

Carlo, I found an audio file on this forum of you speaking Chinese. You are the Dashan of this forum. There are a few foreigners who speak fluent Chinese, so there are potential Dashans out there. But I have to tell you this: there are plenty of adult learners of English who speak native-level English.

[carlo]

You gotta be kidding. I know several adult learners of Chinese who speak better than me, and none would be caught dead performing xiangsheng on TV. There are probably many more out there, and I don't think everyone enjoys making a show of it.

And no, sorry, I cannot think of many adult learners of English who sound native. Fluent, sure, but not indistinguishable from a native speaker. I've been exposed to English quite early, lived and studied drama in England and read hundreds of books in English, but I don't think I can pull it off. And I have seen very few people who can.

Of course I'm talking about adult learners. If you learn a language before age 10 and mantain it until later, you are likely to end up sounding exactly like a native speaker. This is something that until recently wasn't very well understood in China at the popular level, just like it isn't in most non-immigrant cultures around the world. Some people to this day still think that language is passed along with DNA, and hence believe that Chinese adoptees in the US, say, should be 'native Chinese speakers' even though they have never been exposed to the language once in their lives.

[starvken]

I heared of 大山 ten years ago, when I heared Dashan first time, I think his pronunciation had much foreigner accent. Frankly, in that time, his pronunciation was so so. But last year, when I watch TV, I am surprised that he can speak standard mandarin as good as a native speaker, even better. It is true that his commander of Chinese is better than many of native speaker. If I only heared his voice, I can’t distinguish him from other Chinese people. He is the gue I know who speak mandarin best.

[Mugi]

starvken, where are you from? Are you a native Mandarin speaker?

I am surprised that he can speak standard mandarin as good as a native speaker, even better. It is true that his commander of Chinese is better than many of native speaker.

I know this is being picky, but are there any native speakers of standard Mandarin? He cannot possibly speak (non-standard) Mandarin better than a native speaker - all native speakers of a given language speak their language perfectly; gramatical errors, mispronunciations, strange collocations and all. Some people may speak a given language better than others based on a subjective definition of what is "correct", but from an objective point of view, as a native English speaker even George Bush's English is perfect - every "mistake" or gaff he makes is necessarily a natural phenomenon of the English language, even if he is the first and only person to make such a "mistake".

On the other hand, someone who has learnt English as a second language may have "perfect" grammar, pronunciation, intonation, always choose the right word for the right situation, but by virtue of the fact that they don't make the "mistakes" that a native speaker would make, necessarily means that they are in fact a worse speaker of the language than a native speaker. I know a Japanese guy whose English I cannot fault other than he sounds "unnatural", almost like a machine. Any native English speaker can tell after two minutes of listening to him speak that he is not a native English speaker - he's just too perfect. A non-native speaker can only ever speak as well as a native speaker.

[nipponman]

I think a definition of "perfect" is required to enlighten those in this discussion.

If by perfect you mean, never makes grammatical errors, never makes tonal miscalculations, has the same command of grammatical structures and expressions etc. Then I would think this is very much acheiveable. Now, if you mean, can tell when someone meant something but said another, or makes the right mistakes and is comfortable with them (which you said), then this is more difficult, but I don't think impossible. Just my opinion,

nipponman

[randall_flagg]

Just to add another interesting aspect: I think it is funny that when foreign learners of Mandarin speak Chinese, you don't only hear that they have an accent, but most of the time you can place that accent! Like the girl in my class: She was new and I had never talked to her before, but when she started speaking Mandarin, I just KNEW that she was from Russia. The same happened when I heard an American speak Chinese. But I find it really tough to try and imitate that accent when I speak Chinese. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that one day. Why? Just for giggles, I guess.

[randall_flagg]

And about the perfect language thing: I think it is very hard, almost impossible, for foreign learner’s to achieve perfection, no matter what language they are learning. Consider what it would take to have 100% command of a foreign language. Of course, a lot of people are able to shake of their accents at some point, speak grammatically correct Chinese/English/Finnish and know a whole lot of words. BUT the biggest problem is that to be able to speak a language like a native speaker you need to have insights into every aspect of the lives of people in that country. You need to watch the same TV programs native speakers are watching, you need to have a girl/boyfriend to argue with to be able to REALLY pick up the subtleties and FEEL those words the barks at ya, listen to the same music, eat the same food…..AAAH! That’s a lot, don’t you think? Yet I do feel that if you have to have more than a basic understanding of all those aspects of the culture to REALLY know what’s going on. But, yeah, I think it is possible: perfection can be achieved.

And all Chinese I’ve talked to told me that 大山 has no accent at all. But I agree with what has been said before: maybe he does have an accent, but the fact that he is fluent, hits the tones just right and that there are so many dialects in China contribute to the fact that listeners will not think of him as foreign sounding.

Case in point, I know that my Mandarin is a long shot from perfect, or even from “good”, I guess. But when I was in China this summer, people told me that they thought I was Chinese when they heard me speak (of course, that was before they turned around/looked up). I thought it was cool, albeit unrealistic. I then proceeded to tell people that I was from Xinjiang. I know other foreigners do that as well, and I was tickled pink when people believed me (yeah, I do know that most Han Chinese don’t think to well of people from Xinjiang).

Anyway, my point is: through a lot of hard work, a native-speaker level can be achieved, even if you are an adult learner.

[necroflux]

Very well said Mugi, I've never thought of it that way but I think you are exactly right. There is no such thing as "correct" language. One can analyze a language/culture and determine exactly what style of speech is accepted as the "most intelligent sounding", or which style would sound most natural (idiosyncracies included). Native speakers can usually switch between these two, George Bush aside. We talk differently when giving a speech than in day to day life. But I doubt most of us will ever achieve that ability in a second language. So decide now whether you are going for diplomacy or sales I guess.

I'm personally incorporating the exact imperfections in speech my roommate/tutor has, including all but eliminating the "g" sound on words ending in that latter, i.e. deng, sheng.. at least this way I have a consistent character to my language. My friend assures me, BTW, that his speech is widely respectable compared to some dialects. Let's hope he's right.

[Quest]

I'm personally incorporating the exact imperfections in speech my roommate/tutor has, including all but eliminating the "g" sound on words ending in that latter, i.e. deng, sheng.. at least this way I have a consistent character to my language.

Some people in Taiwan (mostly Taiwanese/Minnan speakers) ignore the "g" sound (many HK people do that too in Cantonese), but mainland mandarin speakers (especially in the north) distinguish the two sounds very well. I don't think leaving out the "g" is a common mistake by native speakers, it doesn't sound good.. You might want to change that habbit.

[necroflux]

Actually he is a 2nd gen Chinese whose parents fled to Taiwan in the 40's (give or take a decade) - good guess. The weird thing is that his mom uses the "g" when she teaches me, but he leaves it out.. his excuse is that he is teaching me a form of speech that sounds "cool" rather than stilted I guess.. Maybe i'll just mitigate the difference and have a soft "g" at the end.

[Quest]

his excuse is that he is teaching me a form of speech that sounds "cool" rather than stilted I guess..

No, people who leave out the final "g" sounds would get laughed at even in Taiwan. There is a Taiwanese group 闪亮三姐妹 that often get mocked (by other artists) for their 台湾国语, signified by their confusion with the "n/ng, h/f, zcs/zhchsh" sounds.

[in_lab]

闪亮三姐妹's confusion about when to pronounce and when not to pronouce the -g is related to the fact that they are 客家人. I read in the paper that they had hired a tutor to help them with their pronunciation. The reason has to be that they are tired of being made fun of on TV. It really is kind of funny how bad they are at it.

[carlo]

Mugi, I think your definition is circular. A native speaker speaks perfectly, but how do you know that someone is a native speaker? Well, 99% of the time you know it in advance.

Have you heard of Turing tests? Scientists and SF authors have long speculated that sometime in the future AIs will be able to imitate humans so accurately that if you met them online, say, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The mathematician Alan Turing in the 50s proposed that if a machine is undistinguishable from a human being in such an 'imitation game', then we should conclude that the machine is 'intelligent'.

The situation with native speakers is similar. You can't prove someone is a native speaker: you can only *define* someone to be one.

This usually is not a problem in a monolingual culture, but sometimes things get confusing. Simultaneous bilinguals show varying levels of linguistic competence in the 'minority language', so are they native speakers of L2? A child needs about 10 years to learn to produce sounds the same way an adult speaker does, so are children native speakers? An American army brat who grew up in Taiwan and knows nothing about football and American popular culture, is he less of a 'native speaker' of English? And so on.

[starvken]

Mugi,

Yes, I am a native mandarin speaker, living in shanghai, china.

I know many non mandarin native speaker can speak fluent Chinese, but it is easy to distinguish them. For dashan, it is really hard to do that. Not only his fluent chinese, but his pronunciation, his tone, his manner have typical Chinese mark. From tv programe, I know, Before he came china about 16 years ago, he had learnd Chinese for many years. He has the family in china. He has a Chinese wife who had been his classmate in china, and gave birth for him to two boy about ten years old. But for his typical white appearance, he is absolutely characteristic of Chinese in many ways. Not strictly speaking, dashan is a typical Chinese on the culture aspect.

[gato]

Uh oh, I see a battle of definitions coming.