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Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

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Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#51
post #35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale1.htm I would imagine.

That was the least helpful page ever ... but thanks, it pointed me in the more helpful direction of Wikipedia. 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…

Out of curiosity, any plans to develop your American accent (I assume you're in the USA)?

I'm not saying you don't count as fluent unless you have a perfect accent. But I am surprised how few foreigners, having mastered English grammar and vocabulary, don't take that final step (leaving none the wiser about their foreign origin).

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#52
I learned Mandarin as a young adult, living in Taiwan and taking classes for about 10 hours per week. It took about 6 months to get to the level of vocabulary that Mark is using, and another 6 months to get to the point where I could handle a job interview.

Mandarin syntax is surprisingly easy, with no articles or weird things like irregular verbs or messy conjugations. The tones throw people off, and the written characters are extremely difficult to learn (for Westerners; Japanese, who have exposure to Chinese characters, do quite well at reading and writing). Fortunately, there is a Romanization/phonetic system called pinyin that makes it quite easy to get started with pronunciation and tones.

Yes, Mark is speaking with a very heavy accent and needs to work on his tones. But the fact that Mark was able to get to this level without living in China (he says he’s only visited 4 times, although it sounds like he’s able to practice with family members, including his wife’s paternal grandmother) is very impressive. I think it would be fair for many Chinese citizens to ask, if the busy CEO of a major American company who seldom visits China can learn Mandarin, why do many foreign businesspeople who have lived in China for years fail to learn the language?

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the least helpful page ever ... but thanks, it pointed me in the more helpful direction of Wikipedia. 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…

Out of curiosity, any plans to develop your American accent (I assume you're in the USA)? I'm not saying you don't count as fluent unless you have a perfect accent. But I am surprised how few foreigners, having mastered English grammar and vocabulary, don't take that final step (leaving none the wiser about their foreign origin).

I've spent a lot of time in the US recently and it's normalised my accent a lot. It's become undefinable. People back home tell me I don't sound like them when I speak, but that I don't sound quite American either.

Americans make fun of how I pronounce certain words (which actually helps a lot in normalising my accent), but they can't place the accent either. Nobody guesses that I'm slavic, a lot of people ask if I'm Brazilian or from some random European country.

A large part of the confusion probably stems from the fact I use colloquialisms and even colloquial speech patterns, like, correctly.

With prolonged stays in the US my accent is going to normalise further, but I think that getting completely rid of it would require some sort of accent coach. So far the only motivation for doing so is that being told "Wow your English is so good!" is getting annoying. I was proud when people told me that ten years ago, but it feels silly now.

But a big benefit of maintaining my foreigner status is the freedom it affords me. I can use British slang, Aussie slang, East coast slang, West coast slang, even Canadian slang and nobody minds or finds it odd. Whereas if I sounded like somebody who grew up in California and used a British turn of phrase, it would sound hella weird.

And, obviously, I feel a certain level of smugness when I use British words that Americans don't understand because then I get to call them plebes and mock them with my larger vocabulary. (Americans get really upset when a foreigner is better at something than they are, it's funny)

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#54

Does anyone has some experience with this, i speak Dutch, German, English (Germanic languages) and French (Latin language). I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?

I learned a few languages in school: French, Afrikaans, Xhosa, South Sotho. Been learning Mandarin on my own over the past year (using Pimsleur).

The main difference is the tonal system, reading it it sounds easy, but training your ear to pick it up takes time. It's hard to follow an audio when you're not picking up the nuances of the tones in context.

The language structure is kinda logical, so far. I haven't reached tenses or multiple clauses yet.

I found some pronunciation similar to French, for me ren (Zh: people) is similar sounding to rien (Fr: nothing)

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#55
post #33

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.

Well it's not that strange; in many EU countries most people also only speak their own language. I'm not sure it's more normal in the EU to speak two languages than the US. I'm from the Netherlands so I have a skewed perspective on all it considering all the people I know speak 3-5 languages well enough to hold a non casual conversation. 20% is rather a tiny % for my taste anyway, so not difficult to be an bigoted European as the chances of running into a non 1st / 2nd gen American who speaks two languages is just not very high. And seems tv-shows / films want to push that idea a bit more by, whenever someone blurts out a foreign sentence, making it grammatically wrong and pronunciation wise a complete joke (no-one would recognise it as the target language if they didn't say it explicitly). Not that i'm saying tv shows are a good reflection of how it is, but a lot of people don't know any different... (Same vice versa by the way).

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#56
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my time in France, most people of my age where pretty frustrated that they didn't learn foreign languages properly at school and tried to compensate. For people in international companies, learning new languages on the job is also very normal, almost all companies have programs for that.

The vast, vast majority of employees working for American companies, even in an international deployment, don't tend to learn more than a few dozen catch phrases (Hello, Good Bye, How are you doing, where is the toilet, take me to the airport, etc...) for the country they are deployed to - they just hope everyone will speak english to them. I'm wondering if Mark is the first Fortune 500 CEO to ever learn a different…

I wonder how good Carlos Ghosn's Japanese is? He seems to have studied it.
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