his wife can speak chinese
His wife is American.
That doesn't mean she can't speak Chinese.
Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#22Chinese is considered a hard language to learn for Westerners. As a fellow founder I find this really impressive.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#23Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#24his tones are off, but he has a pretty impressive vocabulary
I took Chinese in high school and did ok. Didn't use it and have tried to pick it up twice as an adult and have yet to get the tones down in conversation.
Put a book in front of me, I can get it. Let me listen to someone speak it and I am lost.
Any ideas on how to conquer that fault?
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#25his tones are off, but he has a pretty impressive vocabulary
I took Chinese in high school and did ok. Didn't use it and have tried to pick it up twice as an adult and have yet to get the tones down in conversation. Put a book in front of me, I can get it. Let me listen to someone speak it and I am lost. Any ideas on how to conquer that fault?
Watch reality Chinese television with subtitles. You get both the visual confirmation alongside the sound. They can be kind of a drag to get through (esp if you're used to HBO-level stuff), but the benefit of reality TV is that you can miss parts of a conversation and not be completely confused as to what's going on as there is no real plot.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#26[deleted]
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#27his tones are off, but he has a pretty impressive vocabulary
I took Chinese in high school and did ok. Didn't use it and have tried to pick it up twice as an adult and have yet to get the tones down in conversation. Put a book in front of me, I can get it. Let me listen to someone speak it and I am lost. Any ideas on how to conquer that fault?
Here's how I did it:
Listen a lot, as often as possible. Watch TV and movies - there are many on Youtube and Youku. I like to convert interviews from Youtube into mp3s and listen to them during the day during down time. Pick a character in these shows and try to imitate their accent (stick to someone your own gender). Try not to read the subtitles (even the Chinese subtitles).
If you want to go further, strip out voice clips from these TV and movies and put them into an SRS system (Anki, Mnemosyne, etc...).
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#28A German professor once told me German is actually harder to learn than Chinese.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#29Is Facebook blocked in China these days? It used to be. Must be weird to be there representing a blocked company.
Facebook is not uniformly blocked everywhere in China. I have friends in different regions of China occasionally gain access.
As for Zuckerberg's Mandarin, well done, but he needs to work on his accent and tones.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#30Would someone please translate the jokes?
I know a tiny bit of Mandarin and listened to the first couple of minutes. The first three big laughs seem to be when he looks unsure when asked why he decided to study Chinese, when he says that his wife's grandmother was shocked to hear him speak Chinese, and when he says that Chinese is hard. It's not so much that he tells jokes as that he has an encouraging, sympathizing audience (but what do I know, maybe there are jokes later).