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How to say it "the chinese way" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4884 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 8 06 March 2015 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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So obviously, this problem sort of solves itself (probably not fully) after living in China for a good 3-5 years at least. I am talking about the "it doesn't sound authentic Chinese" challenge.
You know, you say something with totally correct grammar, completely acceptable vocabulary, and fully adherent word order... but "that's not how we Chinese would say it". Now this phenomenon happens in all languages, I constantly correct French, German, and Spanish speakers when they try to say things in English: even though their sentences are fully correct, the structure somehow doesn't feel totally natural. But with Chinese it is taken to a whole other level. Which is why I humbly believe the most well-suited people to help me out are those that learned Chinese as adults, and Chinese who learned English as adults, because they had to go through the process of figuring out how to say certain things to sound more "authentic" in the target language. So I guess I am asking for the expertise of those who have been there. Now, I'm not near the stage yet where I should be thinking of this: I am still at the stage where I want to be just understood, so I'm worried about WHAT I am saying, not HOW I am saying it. I am making progress though, my vocabulary is growing rapidly and I have slightly more confidence in my grammar patterns, and in 4-6 months I should have some rudimentary fluency (that is "broken" fluency of basic speech, which is a notch and a half below basic fluency). Then I would like to start thinking about how to say things in a more Chinese way. So... do successful learners have any general advice about this? I'm not necessarily looking to be told "you need to use 麻, or 啊, or 哦， or 呢" more often... Or to create more topic structures, to use negative positives all the time (不错， 不好看， 不少), or to cut down on the use of 我. I know those tricks, and many others. Mastering them should help me a lot of course. I guess I am asking for advice on how to formulate phrases, and I am wondering where do successful learners of Chinese, or Chinese learners of English, feel that the biggest differences between both languages are when it comes to saying things a certain way. I am not looking for perfection here, nor would I seek it, I am non-Chinese and that is how it is. But if I can make an extra effort to make my incipient Chinese speaking slightly more colloquial and less "foreign", then I would like to try. I hope all of the above made sense. Thank you for your time! Edited by outcast on 06 March 2015 at 4:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 8 06 March 2015 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Hang around with the Chinese for long enough and you'll be able to copy the way they talk
after a while. I can say "都可以" blindly now. But eventually it doesn't really matter. In China, unless you are already of Asian extraction, you're going to be a foreigner anyway. It'll come with time. Also, notice how people say things, and you'll find out how to do it quickly enough. This is the kind of thing you learn last and it's the one that takes the most time. I can't do it in French or Russian very well and no one will dispute that I speak either of those very well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5243 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 06 March 2015 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure what kind of advice you're after, but here's one that might help.
I work out what 口頭禪s I have in my L1, words and phrases that I use a lot out of habit but don't necessarily mean what I really mean or even mean anything at all, and I work out what I'm really trying to express with those 口頭禪s. Then, when I speak in my L2 and inevitably formulate ideas in my L1 first, I pay attention not to translate my L1 口頭禪s literally into my L2. Better still, I try to formulate my ideas in a barebone form. Example. Let's say my L1 was English, and I tend to say "I tend to" when I actually mean "I often". Then when I speak in my L2, I bear that in mind, I don't say "(L2) 我傾向V" or "(L2) J'ai la tendence de V", but instead, I say "(L2) 我常常V" or "(L2) Je V souvent". In any case, I think you'd have problems only if you speak your L2 by translating from your L1 using grammar and vocabulary you learned from textbooks; you consider what you can say as what grammer you have learned (you equate your speaking ability with your knowledge of grammar rules). If, instead, you speak your L2 by mimicking natives, and you consider what you can say as what you have heard natives say, you shouldn't have the problem of speaking "unnatively". (Gee, my English is terrible today, and yet I'm giving advice?! LOL) - Edited by smallwhite on 06 March 2015 at 7:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4379 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 8 06 March 2015 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
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In any language, there are regional variations. Even with English there are certain phrases that are British,
Australian & N. American. Such as filling up your car with petrol at the petrol station instead of the gas station. Even in England, you'd hear news broadcast in a standardized BBC accent but in reality you can hear the Scottish accent in the north which is distinct from those living in Birmingham, Yorkshire, London, etc. In China there are regions and different places have their local dialects. If you live in specific cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc.), there would be certain words & phrases that are used more often. The last time I travelled in China I was in a farming village in Guangdong province. The locals can speak some variations of Cantonese along with Mandarin. People travelling from neighbouring Hong Kong & Macau would have no trouble talking in Cantonese. I was at a stand where a local farmer was selling fruit. In no time started a conversation with a few Chinese students from another province in Mandarin. Although I do come from Canada, but having the same ethnicity I would normally blend in even if my Chinese is not 100% grammatically correct. Don't assume Mandarin is the language with 1 standard used throughout China. I'm sure there are local TV shows you can pick up words & phrases more specific to 1 region of the country. While in Canada, I once came across a taxi driver who was from the Punjab in India and lived in Hong Kong for 5 years. He picked up enough Cantonese to communicate fluently although he was not at the native level. When describing Hong Kong he said something like "好食唔好住". People from Hong Kong would pick up the context of what he said easily. 好食 is the Mandarin equivalent of 好吃. 唔好 is the Mandarin equivalent of 不好. The first part refers to Hong Kong having a lot of good food including fine restaurants. The second part refers to Hong Kong not being a good place to live because of the high population density and the fact that most people live in apartments with very small units. Even within the US you find New Yorkers, Bostonian, etc. with their local variations of English. Chinese is the same. Getting grammatically sentences is the starting point. Suppose you are living in Shanghai, think about certain things you would do or eat that would set you apart from someone from another part of the country such as Beijing for instance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gio_gogo Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3546 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 8 06 March 2015 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry for being blunt, but are you sure your grammar is perfect? You might find "Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language" useful. It is mainly aimed at linguists, but it is packed with examples. You might find it particularly useful if (all taken from the book): 1) you don't understand the difference in meaning between: 四川人不怕辣; 湖北人辣不怕; 湖南人怕不辣。 2) you think B1 is appropriate in this context (it isn't): A: 我要买到巴黎的票。 *B1: 你到对的地方来了。 B2: 你来对地方了。 B3: 这个地方你来对了。 3) you think B1 is appropriate in this context (it isn't): A: 你要在什么地方结婚? *B1: 我在杭州要结婚。 B2: 我要在杭州结婚。 4) you think A is appropriate (it isn't) *A: 我喝醉了, 就在马路边睡了。 B: 我喝醉了, 就睡在马路边了。 5) you would say A (wrong) instead of B: *A: 妈妈买了一件毛衣给我。 B: 妈妈给我买了一件毛衣。 6) you don't understand the difference in meaning between: A: 来人了。 B: 人来了。 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 8 06 March 2015 at 10:42am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread isn't about perfect grammar but cultural adaptation though...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3827 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 7 of 8 06 March 2015 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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From the recent language courses, try Glossika - even the early phrases are totally colloquial (and thus do not make much sense to a beginner). Warning: Taiwanese style Chinese. Besides that, I think for learning to speak like Chinese this course is good.
For the rest, if your main focus is SPOKEN language, don't read books and newspapers, just listen to stuff - TV series, movies, what not. Read blogs or forums in Chinese, if you must read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4379 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 8 of 8 08 March 2015 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Without knowing the specifics, it is not possible to come to a single conclusion about your Chinese. Some
people have made audio recordings of themselves speaking for up to 5 minutes posted these online for critique. Chris Parker who was from the UK and lives in Beijing for a few years posted a few videos on YouTube. Polyglots including Moses McCormick, Luca Lamparielo, Steve Kaufmann, Tim Donner and Benny Morris all have videos of themselves speaking Chinese online. Even Mark Zuckerberg the Facebook founder has a video of himself talking Chinese during an interview in Beijing. After listening to a video, it would be easy to find problems with intonation, grammar, choice of vocabulary, etc. Part of your problem may be your grammar, use of vocabulary or pronunciation or all of these. When you are learning to pronounce words & phrases by Pinyin phonetics, certain letters tend to be a bit confusing to a beginner such as "Q" as substitute for "CH" such as "Qing" instead of "Ching", "Z" as a substitute for "J" such as "Zhu" instead of "Jhu". When it comes to pronunciation, I normally use the online dictionary: www.mdbg.net and click on the audio button in the dialog box after a character to hear what it sounds like. When it comes to news, I prefer online editions. There are news articles that are online for free instead of by monthly subscription through a newspaper site. Although I can read most of the characters in a printed edition of the newspaper, I do find it much easier to look up characters when you can just Copy & Paste them to a computer or online dictionary. For TV shows, I started with: 中国达人秀. This is the Chinese equivalent of "America's Got Talent" and "Britain's Got Talent" except that the show is already off the air. You can find reruns of the show online. The format is basically the same so it is very easy to pick up and fun to watch. The other 2 shows I like include: 鲁豫有约 with a lot of moving human stories and 外国人在中国 about foreigners living in China. The other shows I can pick up through tudou.net or youku.net. Many of these have Chinese captions but only some may have English subtitles. There are so many shows available you won't be able to watch them all. I also watched a few Chinese drama series from Singapore. These are usually in 20 episodes so it would take me just 2 weeks to finish 1 series (45 minutes an episode without the commercials). The Singapore accent is similar to the Taiwan accent except that they do occasionally use English loan words such as: 啊窿 (ah long) for "loan shark" borrowed from the English "loan", 巴士 (bāshì) for bus instead of 公车 and 德士 (déshì) for taxi instead of 租车 (zūchē) in standard Chinese. The other is 冲凉 (chōngliáng) for "take a bath" which is often used in place of 洗澡 (xǐzǎo). The good thing about drama series from Singapore is that many of them have English subtitles. There is 1 show for learning Mandarin from Singapore: Say It! 好好说慢慢讲. Half of the dialogue is in English and the other half in Chinese so the show is easy to follow. Edited by shk00design on 08 March 2015 at 7:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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