(I choose Mandarin, because as someone would no doubt point out, there is in fact more than one Chinese language.)
It’s a funny thing about sounds in languages. If you don’t pick them up as a young child, you forever lose that window in time to do so. I remember in one college class I had, the teacher played a video of a Native American using a sound native to that language. And most of the people in the class literally didn’t hear a thing. Just one girl seemed to hear it, which apparently was quite impressive.
The Chinese Language is really quite unique. Many subtle accents are heard on the words by the native speakers, when western speakers, like Americans, only hear one. (Perhaps that is just as well, because some native Mandarin speakers can’t hear certain English sounds, ironically…)
My question is, can a native English speaker ever overcome this difficulty, and truly learn Chinese, and truly hear all its sounds? I remember my pediatrician was bragging when I was in high school, one of his sons went to China with the goal of learning Chinese. But he never explained what ultimately came of the venture.
So can a native speaker of English–or any other speaker of a foreign language in a similar situation (like a Chinese speaker, for example, learning English) ever truly overcome this difficulty? Or even partially, for that matter (I will add, for the sake of completeness)?
Chinese not being related to English at all (unline Dutch, French, German, etc.), it may take more hours to reach a certain level of proficiency, and the amount of time also depends on your aptitude for picking up foreign languages, but I’m sure you would be OK after 1000–2000 hours.
ETA As for hearing “subtle accents”, they have these things called sound recordings you can use for listening practice, plus an instructor can help you rid yourself of any foreign accent (any language class forces you to express yourself, not merely listen).
ETA2
They didn’t hear anything? It was ultrasonic or something?
It’s true that Mandarin Chinese makes subtle distinctions in sound that are hard for non-Mandarin speakers to hear, but it’s far from unique in this respect. Many languages, like the Chinese language, are tonal - distinguishing syllables by the relative tone of voice used to produce them. Some African languages use a vareity of clicking sounds that are quite alien to anyone who doesn’t speak the language.
A non-native Mandarin speaker can, with considerable time and effort, learn to understand the language well enough to communicate.
What does seem to be impossible, or at least very difficult, for a non-native speaker who starts learning as an adult, is to learn a language well enough to not have a noticeable foreign accent when speaking.
Eons ago, my then GF and I visited friends of hers at a ski resort. They were husband/wife and were both ski instructors.
I was riding up the chair lift with the husband, and asked him if he can tell at a glance who grew up skiing vs. coming to skiing later in their youth.
He said, “Absolutely. The person who started later may become a phenomenal skier, but there will often/always be a moment where they have to think before they act, and you can spot that if you know what you’re looking for.”
That’s always been my understanding about language. It’s the difference between fluent and bilingual:
I lived in China for 8 years and my Mandarin is…OK, but nowhere near where I thought it would be for that time, so I agree it is a very difficult language for people starting from English.
But in terms of the OP, the answer is of course yes.
Firstly, note that tone and accent are two different things. Certainly there are people who could speak fluent Chinese, even to the level of presenting Chinese TV shows, but have an obvious accent to native Mandarin speakers (and who, to my ears, enunciate more clearly than native speakers… ).
But secondly, there are people who go even beyond that level of fluency. I knew of a few adult learners who managed to master the accent so well that my Chinese friends assured me that, were they to hear them over the phone, they would have no clue that they weren’t Chinese-born.
< aside >
It’s an interesting question as to what is the difference between these two types of fluency – is it a different approach to learning and communication, or is there an innate difference between people who pick up, versus retain, accents?
There’s a ton of Youtube videos with English speakers surprising the locals by speaking Cantonese or Mandarin. This is the first one I found. You can look down and find many other examples. I don’t know how good they are, not being a native speaker myself, but it does seem to impress the locals, at least:
His Chinese is good, but not perfect as the youtube title would have it, and I tend to find these kinds of “surprising the locals” videos a bit mean-spirited.
The one you’ve linked is not so bad, but still several people in that video will feel a little embarrassed and confused by him pretending not to even know “fork” one minute, and speaking fluent chinese the next.
I think you have expressed similar sentiments about this kind of video before, so I’m not having a go at you, just venting about this style of video.
Oh, I didn’t take any offense. There’s a ton of these types of videos, and I’m sure there must be some less LOOK AT ME I SPEAK A TONAL LANGUAGE FLUENTLY! Just trying to show that it is, of course, possible.
A more delicate one is Chinese Cooking Demystified – probably the best and most respectful and well-researched Chinese cooking channel for Westerners. I’ve never seen Chris (one of the people who run it) do a bit where he’s speaking extended Mandarin, but he seems to have a good grip on the language when I’ve seen him speak.
I feel like that’s not at all true. Harder to learn later in life, sure, impossible, I very much doubt it.
Not that I’ve ever looked into it, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any noise that humans of one culture can make while humans of another culture somehow can’t hear.
That doesn’t seem like a thing.
And, like some of your other threads, your memory of this isn’t a cite.
Yep, I’m skeptical too.
Though I will say I’ve experienced the thing of two different sounds to a native speaker, that I have played over and over at high volume, and I can’t hear any difference at all.
I’ve always found the double standard a bit annoying, too; nobody bats an eye when a Chinese-American walks into Burger King and orders in good English.
What I’m thinking is perhaps there are certain sounds that get lopped into the same sound when “hearing it as an English speaker.” For example, Polish has two types of “sh” and “ch” sounds. Most English speakers will hear those sounds as allophones and may have difficulty hearing the difference. Same with stuff like aspirated-p vs non-aspirated-p. Or even /e/ and /eɪ/, like in the Spanish name Jose, which does not end with an “ay” diphthong, but American speakers seem to always hear it as such.
I’m guessing it’s something in that general ballpark.
Sure, I have no problem with someone that doesn’t speak a given language or isn’t fluent in it or whatever, simply not picking up some very minor differences between very similar sounds. But Jim said “the teacher played a video of a Native American using a sound native to that language. And most of the people in the class literally didn’t hear a thing.”
I didn’t read that as “we couldn’t tell the difference between two words”, I read it something more like “it looked like they were just mouthing the words”.
I pictured it more like someone blowing a whistle and all the dog’s ears perk up while no one else heard anything.
If the OP was suggesting that his untrained ears couldn’t pick up the difference between two different sounds, that’s a bit different than what he said, but at least it would make sense.
I used to work as an interpreter for American teachers in Taiwan. One of the biggest struggles was getting them to recognize differences in tone that were below their detect-a-difference threshold. It was akin to asking someone with only a broad concept of color (red, yellow, blue, green) to recognize the difference between ‘normal magenta’ and a slightly-darker tone of magenta. It wasn’t for lack of effort on their part at all, it was just that tones are usually only easy to recognize when you’ve been steeped in them in your formative years. A few of these Americans had a knack for it, but most struggled mightily. (Sadly, there were some horrific language miscommunications/misunderstandings between them and local Taiwanese as a result of tone butchering - or hilarious, depending on how you see it.)
It should be noted while we are talking tones that they are often poorly-taught. This is not an implied diss of @Velocity of course .
I’m just saying that some of the introductory videos and books on Mandarin give rules of thumb like “The second tone sounds like a questioning inflection” which might be fine for day 1 of learning, but can set up bad speaking habits for people who take that as the last word and don’t realize how rough an approximation that is.
And sometimes the flawed teaching goes beyond introductory books. As this article alludes, the third tone is sometimes taught badly even by native speakers.
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