This is relatively amusing, if you don’t mind listening to lao wai speaking shaky Chinese. My view is that this is actually a good way to learn. It’s comprehensible and it draws your attention to their mistakes. What do you think?
It’s generally easier for learners to understand other lao wai speaking Chinese. I’d be interested to hear your ideas on why that is the case, too.
Ken Carroll
中文 Chinese
Marc Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Yes, it was a great project. We already discussed it some time ago on the forum. And would you believe it? One of the culprits is actually a member!
http://forum.chinesepod.com/vi.....ht=bananas
海宁 / Henning Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Bazza was a lot quicker:
http://forum.chinesepod.com/vi.....ght=banana
Personally I always feel a little uncomfortable when listening to other Laowai speaking Chinese, except when they have reached a really high level like John. Often I cannot tell exactly why, it just feels wrong.
And I do definately *not* understand them better compared to a cleary enunciating native Mandarin speaker (Jenny, Xiaoxia, Aggie, my wife, …).
Most devastating “listening to a Laowai speaking Mandarin” experience ever: Hearing a recording of myself. I was sure it was perfect the moment I spoke. But then I listened.
AuntySue Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Ken, I remember what went through my mind during the early lessons, when I sat there hoping you’d speak your Chinese with less perfection, because I thought about it a lot at the time. Perhaps I even willed you to make some bloopers at the mike, sorry about that! (And sorry to use your pronunciation as an example, I know you’ve re-recorded those nervous early lessons)
So I’d hear Jenny say “?oo” and think well, I know there’s two types of ch sound and two types of sh sound, and for each of them there’s the ones with the r flavour and there’s the spluttery ones. This is definitely a spluttery one but I can’t be sure whether it’s a spluttery ch (q) or a spluttery sh (x). As I was puzzling over it, Ken would repeat the phrase and with a bit of luck it’d be imperfect.
Those imperfections, or unChinesenesses, always leaned towards my brain’s own way of categorising sounds, and put the sound unambiguously into one category or another. I’d think oh, Ken’s saying an Englsh sounding ch so it makes sense now, I have to say the Chinese sounding ch, or q in pinyin. No it cannot not be the x sound, Ken couldn’t possibly have said a distinct ch if it was x but he could make that variation if it was q.
The important thing is that I could work back from that info to the actual Chinese sound. Knowing Ken played the learner, his voice was not the model but the source of information to clarify the model.
In those situations,
1. While only hearing the Chinese accent, there was no way to “hear” it right, nothing worked for me
2. After hearing the English accent, I could suddently hear what the Chinese voice was saying, as if listening to a different recording now
3. The instant I’d gone through all that, I could pronounce the word correctly myself, with the Chinese accent of the model, better than the learner’s accent that had served to disambiguate the sound for me
I think my pronunciation is pretty damn good now, and I couldn’t have fathomed it without some of the insights gained from listening to a slightly less Chinese variation as well.
I’ve had the opposite experience with Spanish. I listened to a Spanish language podcast which had a Spanish speaker and a good student. The student had small pronunciation problems, as all beginners do, and hearing it drove my up the wall and down the other side! What’s more, I feared that listening to this would give me a bad accent in Spanish, so much so that I had to turn it off half way through.
So what’s the difference? Well I once studied a Spanish course for a year, which is a LOT of language when it’s Spanish. I know the sounds of Spanish, they’ve become part of me at one stage of my life, and my brain has pigeon holes for them all. The fact that they haven’t been used for two decades changes nothing. The student was putting sounds into the wrong pigeon holes, and that was painful!
On the other hand, I’m a newbie at Mandarin, heard my first Mandarin word a year ago, still struggling to carve out the many new niches in my brain where all of these new sounds can call home. The Mandarin sounds sit on the periphery of my owned sounds, with warning flags attached to them. Gradually over time they’re finding their own pieces of brain to set up residence, but it’s going to take a long while yet. Without having my own built in auditory filing system for Mandarin, though that doesn’t stop me from pronouncing well myself, any help with the input coding makes it a lot easier and more reliable to hear Mandarin properly.
Bob Mrotek Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
In Windows program accessories (start menu) there is a little program called sound recorder that you can use to make .wav sound files. It is very easy to do. Believe me, you only think you sound good until you try making a recording of your own voice in Chinese. At first I didn’t sound very good but after making a few hundred attempts I think I am getting much better. I listen to Jenny or John say a phrase and then I try to duplicate it until it sounds right. It is amazing how this can help you with pronunciation. I encourage everyone who has never done this to give it a try. All you need in the way of hardware is a cheap little microphone. Good luck!
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Ken says:
It’s generally easier for learners to understand other lao wai speaking Chinese. I’d be interested to hear your ideas on why that is the case, too.
Isn’t it because learners have such small vocabularies and such limited things that they can say, and that they have not yet internalized the tone portion of any particular word (sylable combination) that they are able to understand each other?
I have reached a stage where if I get the tone wrong what I am saying feels wrong. This is especially so with Cantonese, but is starting to happen with Mandarin as well.
Until you have come across enough cases like 打算 and 大蒜 where the tone matters, and you spend time trying to produce the tones well in combination with other sylable/tone combinations, you will not have a good command of the tones, it seems to me, and thus will not be able to deal well with Chinese.
Finally, I have come to the conclusion that the value to be gained from hearing other people’s mistakes is not that high. You can compare your own pronunciation to that of native speakers and get better value.
Jemini Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Ken,
I’m surprised how freely you and others here, use the term Lao Wai to refer to foreigners in China. The term is racist. Every time I hear it said about me(the Chinese always say it behind your back, never to your face), I usually respond with Lao Zhong. That usually stops it.
I also don’t know why some people keep perpetuating the notion that Lao Wai is a term of respect, just because of the Lao in the word. Are Lao Dong xi or Lao Bai terms of respect? No, these are insults just like Lao wai.
This racist term should be fought against.
Here’s an article for those who want to learn more about this term:
http://sanpaworn.vissaventure.com/?id=123
Mashhood Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 8:05 am
My experience was that when i first started learning chinese, it was useful to hear Ken’s poor tones (sorry!) and compare with Jenny’s, and it was also useful to hear Ken’s correct chinese and compare with Jenny’s. However after about 6 months my ears had tuned in sufficently to native speech that i found listening to non-natives more of a distraction rather than a benefit.
John’s chinese would be an exception though.
By the way, i loved the video! i found it very funny!
oh, and i definitely find it easier to understand native speakers, than non-natives, unless their chinese is very good.
David Saunders Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 8:57 am
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the ChinesePod office where I spoke to John on this very topic. I had told him how good I thought it would be to hear a fellow laowai speak on the lower level podcasts, because I, too, have difficulty understanding native speakers. I’m not referring to vocabulary but I fail to understand even what sound they’re saying.
For example, if a native speaker says “wo3 zou3 le” (or any other word with a pinyin z or c), they say is so quickly that I can’t tell if it’s “cou” or “zou” or possibly even another word. Once I memorize a phrase like this, I know what they’re saying, but I’d like to learn how to distinguish what sound they’re making in the first place, which is why I thought listening to another laowai would help.
Back to my conversation with John, he mentioned his speaking on the Upper Intermediate levels but also said that’s it’s good not to have this laowai speech “crutch” at the early levels. I wasn’t sure I agreed with him at the time, but I believe I now understand where he was coming from. John seems to have a “jump headlong” approach into learning the language, and I’m referring to his learning not his teaching/lesson planning… I think John learned by total immersion and that included listening only to native speakers until his mind grasped the “Chinese sound”. Since our conversation, I’ve still been a bit shaky on wanting that crutch, but overall I believe I’m better off without it. It may be more difficult to learn the native sound, and it may take longer, but I think it will be worth it in the eventual quality of my understanding and speech in the long run.
chinesepod Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Jemini,
I’d caution against looking for racism where there isn’t any. The term lao wai may have had somewhat derogatory connotations in the past, but no longer. As I understand it, it functions at more or less the same level as the word ‘foreigner’ does in English. In some contexts, calling someone a foreigner may sound less than welcoming, but it’s not a racist term. Depending on how we use the word, of course, it can suggest something unpleasant, but I don’t see it as intrinsically insulting.
Ken
Michael Butler Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Compared to Gaijin in Japanese, and the oft-used Waiguoren in the Taiwanese version of Mandarin I for one feel that Laowai is positively welcoming in comparison.
I suggest that instead of looking at the language roots you do a survey of how it feels to be called by this name and the how Chinese “feel” when they use this name.
In terms of a foreigner speak being more comprehensible, I would have to say that it is probably a function of the words used (foreigners tend to use a less idiomatic, much more simplified vocabulary), the speed of the speech (probably slower, with words being less “connected” or having greater spacing between word units) and the familiarity of one’s own natively colored phonemes. This last I realized was important when I found that French accented Chinese, while foreign, was less comprehensible to my ears that English accented Chinese.
Paul Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 11:55 am
“It’s generally easier for learners to understand other lao wai speaking Chinese.” - This is probably due more to the fact that they are speaking at a slower speed than a native speaker.
Very creative video ! I got to give them credit. They did make more than a few pronunciation errors…but overall not a bad effort. I certainly couldn’t have performed any better.
BTW…I thought the woman in the video had the best grasp of Mandarin pronunciation (based on my limited Mandarin learning experience).
Lantian Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
VARIETY - I think it’s good to mix it up a bit, the most important thing is to keep things interesting and the mind engaged.
In the podcast format, since we can’t ask questions and interrupt in real-time I find Ken’s questions, pronunciation, clarification, etc., very helpful. It was often like he would be asking questions just for me. I pleaded a year ago, I plead now — Ken and John as occasional guest co-hosts in the upper-intermediate and advanced shows.
Cleaning this up, sanitizing it, or going all-native/indigenous/China born/Chinese/Chinese-as-a-first language person has many opposite and I think not particularly helpful effects, for a variety of reasons.
To be quite frank, having a laowai/ non-native Chinese /non-ethnic/other-race/foreigner/alien/Irish parade King that lives in Shanghai in the mix has kept me more engaged than any of the BLCU materials or other similar Chinese-made materials.
(I’m just teasing Jemini, don’t know that there’s an easy fix to changing the vocabulary of 1.3 billion people. But I do agree with Ken that the majority of Chinese use it in the manner he describes. It is not akin to the ‘n’ word in U.S. vernacular)
What AuntySue said “1. While only hearing the Chinese accent, there was no way to “hear” it right, nothing worked for me” I think this is so SO TRUE.
People forget that as adults we’ve already somewhat ‘wired’ our brains a certain way. There are various opinions in how malleable this is, but from my experience there is wide individual variation. Some people can hear the ‘music’ in the sounds and reproduce them. Others, not so much.
With this in mind, it is a DETRIMENT to a learning material to not help clarify. There are a variety of approaches: full immersion (speak no English for 3-6 months), have a Ken as a model-with-challenges, have a John that can explain the sounds and give tips.
I guess I’m coming to the conclusion that just having Chinese people explain to me Chinese sounds isn’t really the best approach. (and yah I’ve tried this approach too)
It is an enticing hope that if ‘one could just listen to real Chinese’ then all of a sudden magic will happen. Learners often get too caught up in looking for the authentic, especially when they don’t have a wealth of materials. But the mind needs to go through a process, and Cpod should produce materials that are a bridge, not just a shining jewel of Queen’s Chinese.
In a post a long long time ago, Ken echoed a common frustration, that of learning more vocabulary. These days I feel like I am picking it up quite adequately, maybe even quickly…and I’m not 5 years old. I learn or expose myself to some via Chinesepod, but I don’t remember it there or acquire it there. I acquire it when I am outside listening to others talk, in conversations, or other readings, seeing or hearing the words on t.v.
My point is that I learn the word first, and it doesn’t matter if Ken says it or Jenny. But I do need to ‘learn’ the word, what it means, how it’s used in a sentence, maybe even if it’s a verb or noun. So much of the challenge of adult language learning is our need, desire to compress acquisition of language and vocabulary into a relatively short time frame. For this I need English, I need someone to explain things explicitly, I like exposure to mistakes and common questions.
And although it’s not always possible, the best path is usually if I first heard the word in some real-world context, and then full explanations were given on Cpod, then I had further exposures.
3% Straight memorization to brain and use in speech
10% First heard the word on Cpod and then later exposed to it
30% Heard the word outside, explained in Cpod, more exposure
20% Words I hear, then look up in a dictionary, more exposure
10% Someone used a word to insult me, flatter me, trick me
5% Words that people just keep saying all the time
5% Reading without looking up
5% Writing typos and wrong hanzi in Cpod comments
5% People explicitly explaining a word or correcting my usage
7% Statistical SWAG’ing. (Other people’s stats WILL differ!)
My acquisition, accent, and ability has all come from use, constant and repeated exposure, and time for my brain to adapt. Not from the Chinesepod hosts. I don’t sound like Ken, Jenny, Connie, John, or LeGuan.
Wow, that was a lot of writing. I guess it’s a warm afternoon and I don’t feel like doing much else. Thanks for reading!
Colleen Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Bob Mrotek,
Thanks sooooo much for pointing that out! All these years of me wasting time on my laptop and I’d NEVER seen that feature! And it won’t even be wasting time, it will be studying:)
PS. make sure you listen to the sat show this week
John Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
David Saunders,
I’m glad to hear you came around to my way of thinking. I’m not trying to torture you, honest!
Ken and Jenny are there to pronounce the word slowly and clearly, but I think it’s always good to keep your goal native speaker speech.
A lot of you were complimenting my pronunciation, and I’m flattered, but I assure you that my Mandarin also has its own imperfections. Just like you all, I cringe when I hear a recording of my Chinese. (This makes reviewing past podcasts kind of rough!)
I think halfway decent “foreigner Chinese” is easy to understand, but there’s definitely a spectrum there. In the same way, native speakers can be really hard to understand if they don’t enunciate well or have some kind of local accent.
Oh, and I have to back up Ken — laowai (老外) is not a racist term, nor is it a term of respect. It can be used by unfriendly people, but so can a lot of words. (more of my opinion on this)
Ron In DC Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I’ve loved this discussion. I watched this potentially Oscar-winning vid and did, indeed, found found it relatively easy to comprehend compared to other Chinese classics with native speakers.
I don’t know whether it’s because of slower speed or the English-speaker accent, but I do the actors they are speaking good Mandarin. I’m not exactly sure whether incorporating such training has benefit.
Yes, I agree with Colleen, Bob. That .wav utility is something I didn’t know about and will be very useful in my work and play, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to listen to myself speak Chinese yet
Laowai is not a racist term simply because it’s not inherently related to race. It’s easy to understand the foreigner distinction in China because, for so many years, it was a closed society. And it would be difficult to argue that it is diverse today.
Immigration to English-speaking countries has been strong for many years and, even with that, in speaking for my country, the US, there is no lack of anti-immigrant sentiment. Imagine China’s cultural environment.
Racism is a very serious, ugly issue and I’m virtually sure that it exists in China. However, ‘laowai’ is not at all an inherent instance of racism and care should be used in making such a charge, lest the meaning becomes diluted.
rb
Ron In DC Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
previous post correction:
‘…..but I do know that the actors speak good Mandarin…..’
my vote for an posting edit function
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Jemini says:
I’m surprised how freely you and others here, use the term Lao Wai to refer to foreigners in China.
You know, I have been called a 鬼佬 behind my back, and referred to as a 鬼 to my face, in Chinatown in SF and elsewhere, and these days it is a badge of honor.
Frankly, I think the outrage over racism is all faux posturing. There are more important things to deal with in the world, and once the speaker knows I understand and can converse with them in Cantonese, we laugh about it. Indeed, terms like 鬼佬, 鬼婆, 鬼妹 and 鬼仔 are useful in discussions when you want to be specific about things, as are ABC (Australian, American, Austrian … born Chinese), BBC, CBC etc.
kmk Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Richard,
I really hope you don’t use 黑鬼 and 黄鬼 in your conversations.
That would be BAD !
Jemini Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Stephanie says it like I should have:
Stephanie 23.06.06
Connotations of words are informed by their use. When the word “nigger” was first used, white people didn’t mean anything by it either. But as time went on, the USE of the word “nigger” shaped the connotation. So it is with laowai. When I walk down the street and in 15 minutes get 5 people yelling laowai at me and then sniggering about it with their friends, how does it make me feel? The people who call me “laowai” never want to make conversation. They are always passers-by, lookers-on, and they almost always have a crowd of friends with them to impress. They could yell “banana” the same way at me and eventually “banana” would become a derogatory or insulting word. Rarely has anyone said “laowai” to my face. They say it after you have walked past them. People who are our friends never call us laowai. Parents have corrected their children in front of us when their children call us laowai. White people used to think “nigger” was an okay word to use – they had to be taught not to use it. So with Chinese. My Chinese friends will insist that it is not a bad word. After I explain to them my personal experiences with the word, they tend to agree with me. When I hear the word “laowai” I hear “nigger” Never have I felt that way about any other Chinese word.
Clever Dick Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Jemini,
There is a City politician here in New York City who wants to ban the “N” word. (I’m not permitted to spell it out in full since I’m a white person and only black folks are permitted to use that “N” word openly and amongst each other).
Personally, I think the idea of having a law to ban the use of “laowai” should also be considered in China. And I’m not suggesting the penalty for using the word should be a simple slap on the wrist either, like they do in Singapore for spitting on the sidewalk.
Because when someone says “laowai” to a foreigner, it is like spitting on their very self-worth as a human.
I would say impose the same penalty as the Chinese have for being a member of the evil Falun Gong. Off with their heads !
Clever Dick Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Here’s the link to the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor.....406625.stm
Ron In DC Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
I don’t know what the penalty is in Singapore for spitting in the street, but if there could be the same penalty in Beijing. I’d be soooo happy
Sahr Johnny Says:
March 30th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
The term “laowai” in China and “gwailo” in Cantonese are so ingrained in the Chinese consciousness that trying to fight it is like trying physically rid Chinese people of their Confucian values. It’s there, it’s used, it can be used derogatively and endearingly depending on how the person saying views the laowai in question. So get over it. Fighting it is a losing battle.
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 31st, 2007 at 1:11 am
kmk said:
I really hope you don’t use 黑鬼 and 黄鬼 in your conversations.
That would be BAD !
You just used them. Was that bad?
Jemini said:
The people who call me “laowai” never want to make conversation. They are always passers-by, lookers-on, and they almost always have a crowd of friends with them to impress.
I think this demonstrates that you have a thin skin. I got over being worried about what people say about a long time ago.
Should we ban words like moron, fuck-wit, dick-head, etc, because some people would be offended by being called that as well?
Richard Sharpe Says:
March 31st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
kmk said:
I really hope you don’t use 黑鬼 and 黄鬼 in your conversations.
That would be BAD !
Actually, I don’t recall having heard 黑鬼 or 黄鬼. I have heard 黑人 though. I guess that 黄鬼 is pretty obvious, but I would have thought it was more likely used by English speaking people. Since I am married to a Chinese woman I am unlikely to use such a term.
Mike in Ewshot Says:
April 1st, 2007 at 4:03 pm
When I try to play this I only get a couple of seconds and then it finishes.
Ken Carroll Says:
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 am
Mike,
I get that all the time with Youtube - don’t you?
Ken