Why is her Mandarin Rubbish?

[rezaf]

You are right. There is a Professor from Fujian in our university and even the Chinese students don't understand some of the things he is saying. The good thing about Shanghai is that one is exposed to lots of Chinese people from different places. I'm learning the technique of "guessing from the context" to understand them.

[ThePeaMonster]

It's funny how native Chinese can overlook n/l-mistakes, missing retroflexes, even s- and x-mixups, but not tones, get the tones wrong and you will be instantly misunderstood.

It's in fact perfectly logical. Tones are very robust, ie. they are almost never lost or obcured by noise. You just don't mishear tones, as long as you can hear the voices, you also hear the tones. That's why you absolutely must learn them if you want to understand and be understood.

[yialanliu]

It's in fact perfectly logical. Tones are very robust, ie. they are almost never lost or obcured by noise. You just don't mishear tones, as long as you can hear the voices, you also hear the tones. That's why you absolutely must learn them if you want to understand and be understood.

Agreed, it's pretty logical.

[Takeshi]

Not really. Lots of regional dialects (like of Mandarin) have different tones compared to the standard. Though I suppose it might be a bit confusing for different people from different areas to be speaking in their local dialect.

[yialanliu]

Not really. Lots of regional dialects (like of Mandarin) have different tones compared to the standard. Though I suppose it might be a bit confusing for different people from different areas to be speaking in their local dialect.

Yes, regional dialects have different tones.

That wasn't what was argued, but rather if you screw up the tones, when speaking mandarin, that is the root to why people can't understand you.

Similar to how in English if I removed the vowels, you should still be able to read the sentence. If I remove the consanents, you can't. Or if I scramble the words but leave the first and last letter in place, you're fine, but if I scramble the first and last letter you're not fine.

[roddy]

I'd love to see some links to further reading on how tones aren't obscured by noise. Sounds made-up to me.

[yialanliu]

Don't know about the noise, but the tone thing is true with regards to confusing people with bad tones, not s/sh or g/no g.

[SumChoi]

She sounds like a native Cantonese speaker but I can definitely see why people are laughing at her Mandarin. I think it would've been better for her to just speak Cantonese and rely on a Mandarin translator to rely what she has to say. But I do admire her confidence and bravery when speaking in Mandarin. Now, I wonder if she knows she's not that good.

[JustinJJ]

I just stumbled across this thread. I thought her mandarin sounded fine since I could understand it, I couldn't understand the Mao Ze Dong video though but the recording quality was poor.

 

I don't think she needed a translator, her voice just sounded a bit 'cute' like a Korean.

[hedwards]

Since this one has been dug up, I'll put my 2分 in on it.

 

The reason why I'd be inclined to think her Mandarin is poor is that even without listening to the actual words she's using and evaluating the tones and such, her intonation seems to be way off from any Mandarin I've ever heard. I'm not sure if that's an intonation pattern from Cantonese or if it's just that she's spending more time choosing her words, but I can't recall ever having heard that particular intonation pattern in any part of China I've been to. (For reference that's mainly Gansu province, Hunan Province and a small amount of time in Guangdong)

 

As far as the comment earlier in the thread about Cantonese accented Mandarin, it happens a lot more than people probably realize. From what I understand, it's probably the most common in HK where you have foreigners living for many years before studying any form of Chinese. Accent is something that's generally picked up subconsciously and one can definitely pick up a Cantonese accent without learning Cantonese that then results in Cantonese mispronunciation of Mandarin words. I know that in my case my Mandarin has similar issues at times because I was learning in many different regions of China and picking up the accents from the local dialects.

 

As for foreigners and tolerance, that's definitely true once they get to a certain level. Early on there's little or no understanding of what is and isn't significant and often times newbies won't even hear all the sounds. But, because we're not as tied into how things should be, we're a bit freer to see connections that native speakers wouldn't notice. Just look at all the creative and innovative uses of English around tourism spots. "Don't trample the grass" is not something that a native speaker is likely to write, but it's arguably more accurate than the typical "keep off the grass." 

 

For those interested, I know that Chris Lonsdale talks about all of those points in his book The Third Ear.

 

As a side note, accent is the result of an older part of the brain than the rest of language, accents occur in basically any animal that has isolated populations. This is why I tend to dislike the idea of focusing on accent at the same time as the other aspects of language as it's a completely different part of the brain and is something that shouldn't take too much thinking once you've got it.

[Flickserve]

This is interesting to me as a Cantonese second language speaker learning Mandarin.

Her Cantonese from one of the clips sounds a bit rough. She wouldn't get a job as a newscaster in Cantonese.

Her Mandarin has a heavy Cantonese style in it. Plenty of people in HK speak similarly, a lot speak better, some even worse. AT that time, I think she hadn't had a lot of training in Mandarin. Many HK people who are not overly concerned with pronunciation speak with their version of Mandarin as a slight variation of Cantonese. I think the situation is far different with HK schools now where children are speaking more Mandarin and better Mandarin (though still many have Cantonese accents to varying degrees ).

No doubt she is very comfortable with a large vocabulary range because she speaks Chinese (Cantonese ) and studied Chinese. She's obviously done a lot of interviews and public speaking.

Whether it matters or not? Many people in China won't worry about hearing this type of Mandarin because there are so many variations of accented Mandarin in China. Probably a lot will have difficulty understanding some of her "Mandarin". I have colleagues who speak Mandarin like her

From a personal point of view, I hope I can be closer to standard Mandarin with my pronunciation which would be Anglo Canto accented. Something I will have to accept.