Most distracting mistakes in Chinese/English

[yingguoguy]

When teaching English I try to my students that communicating your meaning is far more important than getting your pronounciation and grammar perfect. Never the less there are some common mistakes which are particularly grating for the person listening to you and which shouldn't be to difficult to fix with some concious effort. After a recent oral exam, I compiled a list for my students and this got me thinking about the same type of mistakes I and other foreigners make in Chinese. For example some of the things on my list were:

- Getting 'he' and 'she' confused. This is surprisingly common even amungst excellent students and it confuses the heck out of native speakers as they lose track of who is being spoken about.

- The strong 'h' sound made at the back of the throat. While again I don't think pronounciation is that vital, this can sound quite harsh to English ears.

- Misusing the word 'welcome' as 'please' in 'welcome you to come again' or 'welcome you to eat dumplings'. I assume this comes from literally translating '欢迎‘

- Failing to answer 'negative' questions clearly. For example I kick myself everytime I ask a question like "We don't have a class tomorrow, do we?" as the answer invariably comes back as 'yes', and I realize yet again that I have no idea if the answer is 'yes, we do' or 'yes, we don't'. I have to ask the question again, which confuses the student as they don't understand what they've done wrong. While it's relatively easy to grade your language by slowing it down, or using simpler vocabulary, it's actually quite hard to train your self to avoid this kind of question as you instintively want to communicate 'I know we don't have a class tomorrow, but I want to check' which the simpler 'Do we have a class tomorrow' doesn't do.

- Refering to their cousins as sisters or brothers. This is more a cultural thing, but I once had a housemate who would flat out refuse to call any of her army of cousins anything other than sisters, and to this day I don't know how many true siblings she actually had. While Chinese speakers feel this is more affectionate, inevitably English listeners insist on stopping the conversation to find out exactly who's being talked about.

- Saying 'neige' repeatedly whilst thinking. This sounds very sharp and foreign compared with 'uuuuummmm' or 'errrrrrrrr'

On the other hand I would consider getting the articles a/the wrong or pluralizing an uncountable noun, while very common, to be very unimportant in conversation and very difficult to fix.

So I'd like to ask people, Chinese native speakers especially, which mistakes particularly hinder conversation, and which are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Here are the obvious one's I've thought of, but how irritating are they really? And which other ones have I missed. (Bear in mind that I'm still a relative beginner so some of these may go away after more study).

- Being unspecific about time: I recently asked someone ’周末你作什么?' and it took a few minutes to realize they were talking about what they were going to do next weekend while I was talking about last weekend. Since Chinese doesn't have tenses and as we don't understand how '了‘ works yet, we've translated 'What did you do at the weekend' literally but given no clue as to which weekend.

- Using 个 with everything. On paper I know a lot of tones, but somehow I never remember in the heat of discussion which counter I should use for umbrellas or desk lamps and figure that if I hold up the appropriate number of fingers while saying 'ge' I'll be understood.

(What's that counter for fingers again?)

- 二 and 两. I guess this is probably more of a newbie mistakes, and again it's something I'd be able to get 100% on the HSK test for, but only ever remember after saying the wrong one.

- Spending far too much time making a complete hash kinship terms and saying ‘奶奶, is that my mothers mother, or my fathers mothers? Oh so whats my mothers mother called again?'

- Tones: We know our tones suck and it's the biggest problem for communication, but not something we can fix overnight. We're working on it, we really are.

[wushijiao]

Good list. Interestingly enough, I don't think Shanghaiese students make these mistakes:

-Saying 'neige' repeatedly whilst thinking. This sounds very sharp and foreign compared with 'uuuuummmm' or 'errrrrrrrr'

-The strong 'h' sound made at the back of the throat. While again I don't think pronounciation is that vital, this can sound quite harsh to English ears.

In fact, I think Shanghaiese speakers of English are much better, on average, than sole Putonghua native speakers (but that is material for another post) .

I teach writing, and so I have made many "Chinglish" lists. Maybe I'll post some of those up.

What is the oppostie term? 英lese? (Yinglese) perhaps? What are some other common errors that we make? I assume there are mistakes with the usage of 的，还是, 就 that seem small to so, but not to Chinese people.

[flameproof]

What I found interesting:

People can use written English very well (like in chats), but can talk only very poorly, or not at all.

I presume English teachers do that on purpose not to teach themselfs out of business..

(hey, that was a joke!)

> ..... than sole Putonghua native speakers ....

I think Putonghua native speakers have often a very good English accent by nature. The rolling R sounds very american. Cantonese have usually a much poorer pronounciation.

[weiming]

I would call these just 'interesting' and put forth the idea that you shouldn't be so sensitive about your mistakes. I find most Chinese to be much more forgiving about tiny language 'snafus' [is that the plural?] and extremely polite and helpful in correcting any one's that actually make you sound dumb. Though I can always come up with new ones p[yeah, I keeps 'em comin'].

You have to remember, Mandarin is more of a 'common tongue', it's being mutilated by literally millions of people every single day in every imaginable way both 'foreigners' and mainlanders. Thus, there's less of a tendency to point and laugh when someone screws it up.

Or maybe that's just what I tell myself.

-I personally cringe every time a student uses the phrase '哪儿里'.

-I had a friend who absolutely refused to learn the pronunciation of 'C' in pinyin, and ordered '太' every single time we went out. 'Shao jiay [he'd shout across the restaurant] dian tai!' and all the while running through my mind is 变态，变态...

-I overuse personal pronouns, or don't use them at all, which infuriates my girlfriend any time I'm relating a story involving more than two people.

-tones, tones, tones. I couldn't agree with you more there, I want to slap myself every time I let one fly, regardless of whether I'm understood or not. I'm 'that guy' you know, the international student or local convenience store clerk you made fun of as a kid.

I of course would love to hear from native speakers about what is 'interesting' to them. Most locals here are so busy politely complimenting me on my language I can never get a straight evaluation.

[BFC_Peter]

I think yingguoguy's post got most of the ones that I've noticed over the years, and the ones I personnaly find most irritating are the ones I hear most namely the he/she and cousins/sisters/brothers and I always feel compelled to correct the mistake

Similar to the negative questions point, I find that Chinese people frequently miss the fact that I have asked a question - so we go all round the houses before I get an answer.

Last but not least, Chinese people dont' always remember to include please and thankyou, and me being English (who are often accused of overusing these words) I also find this irritating.

As I understand more about Chinese, most of the mistakes made are understandable but it doesn't stop some of them being irritating (I feel the same way about some of the common mistakes that English people make when using English, but I don't try and correct these so I'm not always such a pain in the *rse)

[yingguoguy]

-I personally cringe every time a student uses the phrase '哪儿里'.

Sorry I don't get this one, what's the problem here? Have recently taken to saying 哪儿里 everytime someone compliments my Chinese, and now worrying about it.

Agree about the c, along with re it's the sound I have most difficulty with. Though I'm making serious efforts to correct it in class, at the moment I'm going to great lengths to avoid it in the real world. (I've started asking where the 卫生间 is, instead of the 厕所)

Last but not least, Chinese people dont' always remember to include please and thankyou, and me being English (who are often accused of overusing these words) I also find this irritating.

More generally I think that students have problems expressing politeness well in English, not only please and thank you, but the idea that making a sentance longer (and changing tense) makes it more polite (as in 'I was wondering if you might possibly...) Chinese students can come across as being rather terse. Of course this is an advanced issue, something that needs a lot of study to use well, but I'm not sure many students are aware of the importance of it.

As a corollary, I often feel when I'm speaking Chinese that I'm not being polite enough, I always have a strong desire to put more words in my sentances, they just seem incomplete.

Japanese people on the other hand generally come across as being exceptionally polite because they add 'For me', 'Isn't it'?, 'I think', 'I mean' to most sentances, most of which are a result of unconciously copying idioms in their own (famously politeness-orientent) language.

With some of my colleagues I find them forgetting the word 'sorry' much more irritating than 'please' or 'thank you'

[weiming]

哪儿里, at least within the range of my limited experience, does not exist. How could it? 哪儿/那儿 is the contracted form of 哪里 [see post on this forum 哪儿里 or 哪里]. How could one say both? That would be like: he's is my father.

[Miaoer0808]

- Spending far too much time making a complete hash kinship terms and saying ‘奶奶, is that my mothers mother, or my fathers mothers? Oh so whats my mothers mother called again?'

actually, many Chinese also confuse about that in conversation. They also need to ask “谁的妈妈？你爸爸还是你妈妈的？”（whose mother? Your father’s or your mother’s?） to make sure they get right understanding. In formal conversation, Chinese usually use “奶奶”for father’s mother; use “外婆”（wai4po2）or “姥姥”（lao3 lao3）for mother’s mother.

[Quest]

actually, many Chinese also confuse about that in conversation. They also need to ask “谁的妈妈？你爸爸还是你妈妈的？”（whose mother? Your father’s or your mother’s?）

I don't think many do... maybe the person [a foreigner] they talk to constantly confuses the two? So, they have to ask to be sure, not that they dont know it themselves.