A recommendation for speaking with native speakers..

[Mijin]

This is super noob advice and I am sure many will roll their eyes at this. 

 

But for people like me who are creatures of habit, it took me a long time to realize that there are certain stock phrases, that poor speakers rely on for too long, and actually negatively affect their learning. I'm thinking of: "What is that called?" (那是什么） and "Can you repeat that?" （再说一遍）.

 

The reason is these things often break up the flow of a conversation and are somewhat lazy. Better is to let someone correct you; better practice for you and better flow for the conversation (no-one wants to be your teacher, but it's human nature to want to correct you).

 

So if you are wondering what the purple fruit is, then just say that. Or something like "Can you pass me the purple fruit" or "Is that purple fruit locally grown" or whatever. You get more practice and they will not be able to resist telling you the correct noun in the process.

 

And instead of "Can you repeat that?" try to guess what they said and tell them your guess.

If you absolutely have no idea what their sentence meant, then try to repeat back what you think you heard especially if part of that is a slurry of "si si si si". They might find it funny, but they will very clearly repeat the part you didn't get, and explain it. You get a much better response than you would from 再说一遍 in my experience.

 

Heck, I even try to avoid "什么意思" these days, even though even native speakers use it extremely frequently. It's better practice for me to take a stab at what a word means, and have the other person correct me.

 

I'm not saying *never* use such phrases, just be aware when you do.

 

Agree / disagree?

[ChTTay]

”那你的意思是...” is a helpful starting pointing for repeating back what you think someone means. 

 

Agree that listening carefully can be helpful as it’s often one or two words that throw you. If you can remember wha they are you can actually enquire about them rather than have the whole sentence repeated.

 

I personally rarely find myself asking someone to repeat something. Mostly it’s asking the meaning of a word or repeating what I think they mean in a different way. 

 

I actually assumed this would be a thread asking how you can speak to people rather than just advice. On that front, I was gonna say talk to people who either a) can’t run away easily (taxi driver, shop worker) or b) are retired / bored.   

[roddy]

A really useful one is 叫什么来着 - gives the impression you totally knew the word a minute ago, it just slipped your mind. 

[ChTTay]

35 minutes ago, roddy said:

叫什么来着

我想说什么来着  is also good if you need a breather to remember how to say something ?

[Mijin]

1 hour ago, ChTTay said:

I actually assumed this would be a thread asking how you can speak to people rather than just advice. On that front, I was gonna say talk to people who either a) can’t run away easily (taxi driver, shop worker) or b) are retired / bored.   

 

Well I would find that advice useful myself

Here in Shanghai it seems I am only ever speaking to people who A) Are young and switch to English at some point or B) Are old / retired and speak mandarin as a second language, with a thick accent.

I've resigned myself to travelling every weekend to get more useful practice...

[Flickserve]

These are my most fluent phrases....