31–40 of 57 posts
Do people find it remarkable that he is able to speak a foreign language? Most people in the world are able to converse in more than one language. Or is it remarkable that a foreigner speaks Chinese?
(Not necessarily an accurate one; but as a European, that seems to be how the average American is viewed)
It comes down to: (1) Chinese people are blown away when a Westerner speaks Chinese, and (2) Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks Chinese. I have been taking daily Mandarin lessons for the last few months, since I'm traveling increasingly often to Beijing to teach programming classes (in English), and want to be able to communicate more easily with my students and colleagues. I'm having a super-fun time with…
Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"
Just two days ago, my postal carrier asked me a question about computers. (She's knows I'm in high tech.) I started to explain things, and she said, "What you're saying is Chinese to me." I said, "Actually, I'm learning Chinese," which she definitely didn't expect!
It comes down to: (1) Chinese people are blown away when a Westerner speaks Chinese, and (2) Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks Chinese. I have been taking daily Mandarin lessons for the last few months, since I'm traveling increasingly often to Beijing to teach programming classes (in English), and want to be able to communicate more easily with my students and colleagues. I'm having a super-fun time with…
Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A question if you will: What the hell is an ILR? Also yay I learned a word - circumlocution.
This: http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale1.htm I would imagine.
For those wondering, here is a list of what various ILR levels entail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILR_scale
Although I find the scale rather odd. When it comes to English, you could easily classify me as ILR 5[1], but on account of my heavy accent and the fact that I sometimes grope for words[2] you could put me in ILR 3. Can anyone explain in more detail how this works? Is it subjective on part of whomever is doing the evaluation?[3]
[1] I've published books in English and until people hear my accent they normally mistake me for a native speaker. I also have a terribly tendency to fix native speakers' grammar because it bothers me too much.
[2] I'm used to using two languages at once (Slovenian and English) so when I'm put in a context where I can only use one, I start groping for words. This happens both in English and in my native Slovenian.
[3] I remember doing IELTS tests a few years ago and I got marked down on listening comprehension and speaking fluency because the lady expected me to diss GMO's and I disagreed with her opinion and told her the various benefits they bring. She thought I didn't understand what she was saying, so I had to fake a different opinion to satisfy her expectations.
Very impressive, Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Dif...
Cantonese, on the other hand, has a decent amount of media but relatively little in terms of materials aimed at teaching foreigners.
Taiwanese learners have a decent amount of local television and music to lean on if/once they reach a high level of competence, but there isn't even a standardized written language! Instead there are the following horrible options:
1) Use an essentially unworkable system of trying to apply patchy etymological research of Taiwanese going back to middle Chinese to guess which characters modern syllable could be represented by.
2)Picking characters with similar Mandarin pronunciations, using a romanized script. This has the drawback that Taiwanese has several sounds and tones that Mandarin doesn't.
3) Use a well developed and self-consistent romanization (aka our alphabet) system developed by missionaries over a century ago. This is pretty decent but there are competing romanizations.
4) Use a mishmash of characters and roman letters together. This is very common.
One advantage both Cantonese and Taiwanese hold over smaller languages is that it's not too hard to find speaker communities in just about any major world city and many of those speakers are fully fluent only in that one language and find Mandarin to be a painful alternative. If you want to study an American Indian language like Blackfoot, you'll have the additional problem that every speaker of it is bilingual in English.
All in all, I don't think Mandarin ranks anywhere near the most difficult option for English speakers. It's certainly harder than romance languages, but in the big scheme of things it's of medium difficulty at worst.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"
This is only true in bigoted European stereotypes of Americans. 20% of the country is bilingual. In port cities such as San Francisco or New York the ratio is much, much higher. It's just not that special. Non-Asians learning Chinese is still somewhat special, though much less so than it was in the 90s.
Yes, a lot of them know a second language, usually because of family.
Of course that's not what it shows when most tourists don't even try to speak the local language in Europe.
I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?
It didn't blow my mind. He learned a language, quite some people do that, even if the language is hard and remote. Headline disproven. Edit: it is impressive, as any language skill remote from you mother tongue. But I am not a fan of superlatives, especially if they indicate that I should take part in the appreciation. FWIW: German headline on the topic: "Facebook CEO [...] impresses students". http://www.spiegel.de/…
Quite a lot of people don't.
Learning a language is not impressive in any way.
The only people who's mind was blown are probably people living in large countries like the US, the UK, France ...etc.