小馬 is very good, but I had to chuckle a bit when he said his Chinese was close to native level in his recent video with Matt(Matt vs Japan). Matt, on the other hand, has pretty much achieved native-level Japanese.
Yeah I've been watching Matt's videos for a while, and I agree with a lot of his learning theory and method (not all of it though haha). And I just went and watched the video that you mentioned😆
I'm not Chinese, but I grew up surrouded by it. My father worked in a Chinese country and travelled constantly, and my classmates and friends were largely Chinese. I had picked up quite a bit of Mandarin at a young age, and was told by my Chinese friends that I had a good accent. When I watched Xiaoma for the first time, one of the first things that I noticed was that his pronunciation was very American. He still speaks more Chinese than me and it's very impressive, but I'm surprised that after so much time and exposure, his accent is noticeably worse than mine.
I think the key is you grew up surrounded by it, and he didn't. People who learn later in life usually have more trouble with accents, even if they work at it hard enough to obtain superior vocabulary/grammar.
similar to you I grew up in brazil speaking portuguese until 5yo, but lost almost all of it by not using it for the next 40 years. but even now with my almost nonexistent portuguese I instantly hear accent in any non-brazilian no matter how advanced they are. I think the ear you develop for it at early childhood is somehow completely separate from the actual proficiency.
He probably started speaking and reading before he'd listened to enough of the language to build a clear mental model of how it SHOULD sound, and hence he made some bad habits that he never got rid of because every time he speaks he reinforces the same incorrect pronunciation.
Xiaoma has some older videos and in those times his pronunciation was more spot on. At the time he was in Beijing so thats probably why since he was surrounded by it 24/7. It probably got more "americanized" when he went back to the US.
Hey, give him some slack! It's still very impressive and most people have an accent when speaking a foreign language, including you and me. The point with Xiaoma is that he is inspiring and charismatic for people who are intimidated by foreign languages. So what if he does it with an American accent? By being judgemental, those RUclipsrs might turn off those who would love to learn a foreign language but have mental barriers about it... I speak 7 languages but all with an accent, albeit slight, except for my native one.
I like Xiaoma mostly because he shows the importance of going out and practicing language skills with native speakers and not being embarrassed to have mediocre or beginners skills. His videos are a little cheesy and have titles that seem a little sus and clickbait, but getting out and speaking a new language can feel so embarrassing for people who don’t feel fluent and I think he encourages people to try.
He's a low-level wannabe and a lier. You can hear right away how mediocre his Chinese in all facets is. Yet, he brags with those clickbait titles. Probably, his audience is dumb hence he cashes in all this views. I really like this teacher for calling out that BS. He could've simply said that his level is so-so but to improve you need to practice and he he's got balls to do that. Otherwise, it's just an embarrassment what he is to the native Chinese who think that so many laowai are just big mouth and no substance.
he definitely has more than beginner skills haha my skills are mediocre..He definitely isn’t native level like he has apparently said but he is clearly fluent and speaks with the american chinese accent
@@xanderx8289 yeah but his titles are supposed to be clickbait. He wouldn't have found the same success with titles like "white guy impresses locals with mediocre at best Chinese"
@@tigoid I agree. Which speaks to how dumb people are. Generally, I don't care about who does what on the internet. The problem arises when Chinese start to think that all laowai only brag about stuff being mediocre at best (Trump is the living impersonation of that). I feel more and more auch attitude
I’ve watched a few of his videos and he does use the work perfect a lot, I think he probably does this just because it brings in the views more. Like someone who isn’t a native speaking “perfect” Chinese sounds more interesting then a title saying “A non native speaker speaking pretty good Chinese in public” , it doesn’t really hit the same. I hope that makes sense lol
Yeah I think the same. He seems like an intelligent guy, so he probably knows that his Chinese is not "perfect" but for RUclipss sake it definitely makes the video more flashy.
To be fair, non native speakers often have better knowledge of some things like formal grammar than many native speakers. I mean, that means squat all, but it can be impressive, and having to learn it means they can talk about it better. But the actual language isn't based on what's "proper" so much as what people say.
Simply saying "American man speaks to local Chinese people in Chinese" would be sufficient, but adding "perfect" to something is adding an air of arrogance and opens up himself to criticism that he probably would not receive had he not used the word "perfect".
@@owlblocksdavid4955 That reminds me of a clip of SerpentZA who talked to a local and impressed him with his Chinese that was more proper than the local's. And he was still thought of as a foreigner. But he eventually moved to America for many reasons.
@@JonathanQiao yeah I don't think you understand how the RUclips algorithm work. People love shocking videos and titles like that definitely brings in a lot of views. It may not be perfect to a linguist but on a conversational level it is very close to being a native speaker
An interesting breakdown of Xiaomanyc's Chinese skills. Listening to him (I've saw a couple of his videos months ago) he sounded like he had an accent, but I couldn't put my finger on what was making him sound non-Chinese. It was good to see a breakdown that shows specifically what it was that made him sound foreign to Chinese ears. Thanks.
@BIGFOOOOOT EXACTLY!!! real subtitles would be - yes yes yes i want 2 2 2 2 yes yes yes thank you thank you thank you - can you show me the way the way the way? oh nice nice nice nice so it’s to the left left left oh yes yes yes thanks thanks thanks
6:52 This is perfect and sums up what I have seen explained so many times and never really grasped. These videos are great! I can’t believe they are free! Thank you so much Rita, I support you.
Wow Rita your Chinese pronounciation is just... Wow wow wow. I know a lot of Chinese people, from Beijing and from the North China areas, and neither they can speak Chinese so correctly and beautifully like you do... Also your English is so good you are just amazing that's not obvious I really take an inspiration from you! 1:56 that 很 was too perfect I really listened to a lot of Chinese people and teachers and you say that too accurate I want to speak like you that's my dream I am going to work so hard on my pronounciation I will do whatever it takes to master it! Thank you so much for your video and your whole Channel! 你是最棒的！
I'm glad someone made this video. I am not a native Chinese speaker, but started learning from the time I was 9 and it always bugged me how American his Chinese pronunciation sounds but everyone called it perfect. Thanks for making this in-depth analysis!
Aside the clickbait-ish titles, his effort to learn Mandarin and engaging Chinese culture as an American is really commendable. As an Asian who's self taught Mandarin, Xiaoma is one of the many Mandarin speaking foreigners who really inspired me to keeping up with my Chinese learning. Many thanks to you for providing us with the insight, we finally knew that despite his claim, there were still some subtle areas about his proficiency in Mandarin that you could observe as a native speaker and a professional Mandarin teacher.
9:06 "whether your spoken language is intelligible to natives might depend on: 1. if they have enough motivation to understand what you are saying, 2. if they have the ability to ignore the incorrectness in your speech and figure out what you are saying, 3. if your mistakes are systematic and they hear you speak enough" (I think :D)
It'd be more accurate for this guy to change all the titles saying perfect to fluent. He clearly has an accent, but he speaks fluently. I guess saying perfect gets more views, though.
I mean Britain and NA has very different accents. So yes when they speak Chinese... if their pronunciation isn't very good, then they will usually end up speaking Chinese using their native accents. I had a Russian friend that would speak Chinese using his Russian accent.
I just got the awesomest idea yet: do you think you could analyze your husbands chineseee nexttt?? I know you won’t find any mistakes and it would be a great learning video because I love his Beijing accent!
I could hear his non-native accent, for example he’s been pronouncing the Jie in “Jie Zou Gan” incorrectly. Not sure if it’s the tone of the “j” consonant though.
I'm not that concerned with sounding as native as possible. So I first thought this video wouldn't be something for me. But then I kept watching and found out this is really helpful with just pronounciation in general. As a native dutch speaker from belgium (it's a big difference in pronounciation from the dutch from the netherlands) my english was often described as being to soft. In all my languagelearning i tried to overly pronounce to compensate for this comment. Now it turns out I can make it more easy for myself and keep certain habbits of speaking soft consonants in mandarin chinese. trying to pronounce mandarin chinese suddenly became so much more easy. and I also suddenly understand mandarin better as I'm no longer trying to find certain sounds in speach that are barely pronounced anyways. (as I'm learning on my own at the moment, things like this are very helpful)
Yeah some sounds could be so difficult for speakers of a certain language, whereas it could be super easy for others! It really depends on what your mother tongue is and which part of the mouth muscles you have used. Happy to know that this video helps to ease your Chinese learning haha
Just out of curiosity, @Blueberrymint, how do you pronounce words like "completely", "competent", etc? Most Dutch speakers from the Netherlands nasalize the first syllable -- and they do the same in English. The funny thing is that they have *no* idea that that is a typical trait of a Dutch accent! I don't know if that's also the case with the Flemish. You might also have trouble with certain geminated consonants -- not that it matters for Chinese, of course. Do you pronounce "harddisk" differently from "hardisk"? You can get away with that most of the time in English but I think it really matters if you ever try to learn Japanese. Let's see, what else is there... Yes! The -n/-ng in pinyin. If you are like me and most other Indo-European speakers, you pronounce them completely. If you (I/we) want to sound better you (I/we) should not complete them. The tongue should (most of the time) just get really close to the palate without touching it + the tongue should largely be relaxed. If you sound like you have Down's Syndrome you are just about there! (They have bigger tongues that don't quite fit in their mouths.) I remember my frustration in the beginning of my Chinese journey because I could clearly hear things in Chinese phonology that weren't mentioned in the beginner's textbooks and the -n was one of them. I was so happy when I found a paper by, I think, Victor Mair that described that and several other "under-documented" parts of Chinese phonology. I have yet to come across a good explanation of when to use glottal stops in Mandarin, though. I can clearly hear it sometimes when people speak and I don't have a clue about the rules yet (apart from it being one of the ways to realize the third tone).
I got a similar lightbulb moment from the zh, ch, sh vs, z, c, s tongue placement tip. as native finn we only have one 's' and differentiating between those 6 consonants was incredibly difficult. no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't hear the difference. but it was like the pronunciation tip unlocked it for me and now I suddenly hear the difference. I think before my brain was 'correcting' them to sound similar (the McGurk effect) because it 'knew' what to 'hear', but once it got the correct model for what it should hear it suddenly became so much easier.
@@RitaChinese I could perfectly understand your Beijinglish btw, it's not that hard as soon as your ear gets accustomed to certain sound patterns xD So I'd say that strong accent is a nono, but a slight one does not impede communication as much... or does it?
His titles are definitely clickbaity, but I admire his dedication to languages in general. Learning Navajo or Yoruba for a couple of weeks and immediately throwing himself into the native communities and having short conversations to practice. When it comes to the "perfect" adjective in his videos, I think he's taking advantage of the fact that most people who watch his video are NOT fluent in Mandarin and therefore to us it does sound "perfect".
"A Jack of all trades is a master of none." - Says me, someone who plans to learn 40 languages (but not in 2 weeks; in the rest of my life if I live long enough for it to be possible). My goal is to be fluent in several, and decent in most, such as ANCIENT EGYPTIAN. :-)
His Navajo was atrocious. I barely understood him at times. His clickbait title made it sound like he would be more impressive than he actually was in his video. I was very underwhelmed. He really struggled with Navajo tones. But I gave him props for even trying to speak my people's language.
Listening to your analysis is amazing. First, he is to be congratulated and encouraged for such an accomplishment, his Chinese is wonderful. He is fortunate to have your analysis now to help take his Chinese speaking skills to the next level.
You have no idea how much this reinvigorated me to pick back up my Mandarin studies. My motivation is there again. Thanks for making this video and being such a great teacher. You made me want to learn again with this one video.
3:00 That’s curious. Overcompensation, maybe? Given that, in a lot of cases, the English ”G”, ”D”, and ”B” are pronounced voiceless, as Dr. Geoff Lindsey demonstrates, in his RUclips-video: ”Speech is really SBEECH!”.
This is a very effective video, and I subscribed immediately! In addition to giving a very clear and concise evaluation of Xiaomanyc’s Chinese, you cover some aspects of language learning that are absolutely vital!👏 Language related videos have become quite popular on RUclips as a form of entertainment. In the comment sections of these videos, people often say they feel inspired to learn a new language. I think it’s really important to contextualize the “success” (views/likes) of such videos, and to stay focused on our personal language learning goals.
Thank you for liking my content and subscribing to my channel🙌 It's great that language-related videos are being inspiration for Chinese learners and people who are curious about the other side of the planet! And what I'm trying to do is to make fun videos that can help Chinese learners really improve their understanding of Chinese language at the same time from a more professional perspective, which is not easy haha. Glad you find it useful! 😊
I really appreciated a lot of this! Breaking down the accent was so interesting - I've always wondered where those "sh" pronunciations come from when it comes to the "x", for example! Thank goodness I had such a rockstar tutor for so long ... ;) I also really appreciated the notes on speed and fluency. There's definitely a feeling that those two things are more important than genuine ability in things like pronunciation or accuracy. I think it's good to keep an eye on all of these factors and more! Awesome video, as always!
Haha I always miss our class and just the time we spent together, Alex!! 😄❤ And we actually discussed the tricky concept of "fluency" one time at the Liangmaqiao shopping mall, yeah? The vague meanings of words are just part of languages I guess, but we always can try to clarify some of the words that we talk about so much😆
Anyone promoting cultures getting together and communicating, learning about each other, breaking down barriers, is a good thing. Who cares about the minutiae. The joy on someone’s face when you can speak their language. Incredible. I would give anything to speak Chinese. I have 0 capability for learning other spoken languages, but took ASL, because it was visual, and loved it. Cudos to Mr. NYC.
It’s because his video titles claim that he’s blowing the minds of prejudiced people with his “perfect Chinese”. It might be “great for a foreigner” but judged from a point of view not biased by the idea of low expectation/different standards because he’s white, it’s honestly a chore to listen to when his tones/enunciation are off. People tell him his Chinese is great because they are being polite and because it’s more than they expect from a “foreigner”, and that’s part of what’s holding him back from further improvement. Also most of the Chinese people he speaks to are not native Mandarin speakers, and they themselves don’t speak Mandarin well at all. Look, don’t get me wrong, his Chinese is good, very impressive for someone who is self taught as an adult. But definitely nowhere near the standards of his hyperbolic clickbaity titles.
Exactly. A lot of ABCs who do speak Chinese quite fluently always get criticized for just having a slight/barely noticeable American accent, even if they're comprehension is fine and what they're saying is understandable. It frustrating watching Xiaoma claim he speaks perfect Chinese sometimes since he makes many of the same mistakes as ABCs, but is praised for his Chinese . Of course, it's not to say that he doesn't deserve any praise, because learning a second language is very difficult. Not to mention he's at a level where he can talk about a lot of advanced topics, but it's still very obvious he's not a native speaker when you listen to him.
First of all, his Mandarin is not perfect. Secondly, it is better to stay humble instead of saying constantly about himself that he is a perfect Mandarin speaker.
Rita is so on point. Most Chinese in New York praise Xiaoman's Chinese speaking because they are already used with the American speaking tone/accent that they ignore the proper or correct pronounciation of Xiaman's Chinese. I grew up in Singapore and studied at a Chinese school from age 5 but my Chinese accent have a slight difference and my Chinese friends here in the Philippines think my Chinese is better than theirs 🤣. Thank you Rita for this video.
Xiaoma IS fluent. But he does not SOUND native. Just like this amazing youtuber youre watching now. She IS fluent. But she still has a native Chineze accent. Fluency =/= perfection. It means being able to understand and talk about complex topics. (And able to be understood back). So just like how this teacher is not 'perfect' at English, she still is amazing. Same for Xiaoma.
It’s been a couple of years since I watched his videos but his Chinese is not that great. It’s American fluent but by European or Asian standards, it’s really not even “okay”.
@@A-ID-A-MEg. when an American kid draws a stick figure, he hears oh wow you are going to be the next Picasso. When a European/Asian produces the same, he hears you are going to have to try a little harder next time. Americans generally have an inflated sense of what good is in regards to their own abilities. I know because I fell victim to the same American upbringing. When my Swiss host family told me “it was fine/okay”, I felt as if I had gotten punched in the gut. My host mom had to “translate” that a Swiss “okay”/“fine” is an American “fabulous.”
@@A-ID-A-M read what I wrote again, where did I refer to Americans having inherently inferior abilities? Americans are brought up with an inflated sense of their own abilities. While the likes of Xiaoma would call a 50% score perfect, others would think it’s failing and not something to brag about. I’m just pointing out a cultural difference here.
He tried to learn French, it sounded really weird, I mean I don't speak French myself, but I know how it's supposed to sound, I've seen quite a few French movies in my days.
He speaks with an American accent. The Anglo-Saxon culture ended in 1066 with the Norman conquest. Nobody speaks Chinese with a one thousand year old accent from the early middle ages.
The part titled "fast" really resonated with me. I'm learning Portuguese after years of Spanish and I love the language...it's the tones that trip me up. I spend so much time on getting the tones down, that I don't speak quickly at all. I'm trying to be easy on myself because it's been less than 3 months and I'm basic conversational lol. You mentioning focus on muscle memory for tone and pronunciation made me feel better about where I am right now with the language.
I want one! I think I found it on Amazon -- but it is out of stock :( www.amazon.com/Mini-Mouth-Motor-Finger-Puppet/dp/B07QP9D3S5 (From Super Duper Publications)
@@RitaChinese Honestly I had a lot of trouble hearing some of those differences, even listening to them a couple times. I guess that's why we tend to make them!
Yea it is very interesting listening to the nuances. Not trying to attack the lady in this video but it is clear to me that similarly to Xiaoma's Chinese, her English accent also fails to sound native due to subtle pronunciation differences. Although her English vocabulary and fluency does seems very good.
@@RitaChinese Honestly, you still sounded very Chinese...and Xiaoma sounded very American. Really nailing down an accent is ridiculously, even for just a few words. (And those consonants *do* sound almost the same, no matter what your lying ears tell you. "Blødt d" (soft d) and "l" in Danish sound almost the same and are pronounced in almost the same way no matter how much my lying ears tell me they sound completely different. We are native speakers of Chinese and Danish so our brains have created these distinct categories where there are really only subtle gradations. I can hear how "incredibly wrong" your -l and -n sounds are, but, honestly, you aren't far from saying them right. It's like a slightly wrong finger position on a fretless string instrument and not like hitting the wrong key on the piano.)
@@alistairhampton8629 Yep, her grammar and vocabulary are very good. Her pronunciation is... very Chinese. She is much, much better than most native Chinese speakers, though. I don't think they are told about vowel lengths and stress patterns until university so it's not really her fault. I noticed that she almost always gets the consonant clusters right if they are syllable initial and she sorta gets them right if they are syllable final. That must have taken an _ungodly_ number of hours to learn. Her speech also isn't at all the typical chopped-up "wan! sy! la! be(l)! at! ze! tai!" speech native Chinese often have, both because Chinese works like that and because English was (is) often taught be having the whole class shout the words like that. Overall, I'm quite impressed. I wish my Chinese was a tenth as good...
Im my humble for westerner have a current perfect chinese its relevant to learn in backstage the classical chinesse to have the understanding of the evolution by chinese through concrete history in this case mandarin or beijingnese.❤❤❤❤
Very interesting video; an in depth analysis can be done on how the pronunciation of certain consonants shifts towards the closest English values. As a Chinese American, I believe Mandarin spoken by Chinese Americans sometimes shifts towards the English values for consonants and vowels, but not consistently. In this sense, it's intermediate. Chinese who were born in China and later immigrated to the US usually have some idea of a "native Mandarin Chinese accent" V.S. "American-born Mandarin Chinese accent" V.S. the accent of a foreigner learning Mandarin, even if they have no linguistics background and can't explain exactly what sounds different. Another vowel difference is that the vowel in English "luck" is the sound denoted by the IPA symbol /ʌ/, while the vowel in Mandarin 樂 "lè" is more like the sound denoted by the IPA symbol /ɤ/, which is higher in the mouth. The vowel in 安 and 他 is also typically in a more central position in between "hat" and "car" in General American.
That's a great point! With bilingual speakers there always tends to be this sort of back and forth battle between the two languages, which ends up affecting pronunciation, grammar, word choice, etc. What I've noticed is that whatever is the language that's used most often will end up influencing the "weaker" language more, like the ”aw" sound in car/hat affecting the pronunciation of 安/他. That being said, it actually happens with anyone learning a second/foreign language as well. The fact that you're aware of it means that you should be able to have a solid grasp on it! And focusing on these little differences can really help people master pronunciation on both ends as well! 💪
He’s an American who speaks mainly to Chinese Americans, so it follows his accent reflects this intersection. Many second generation Chinese Americans say his Mandarin is better than theirs. He gets many similar complements from ‘native speakers’ in his videos, not sure if the is a testament to Chinese courtesy or drift of the Chinese accent in America.
Yeah, I think that's a valid observation she missed. I am no fan of his persona. However, his American Mandarin is great and in no way inferior to other Chinese-Americans. He aims to imitate the Beijing accent, and it works for the most part, but not without some hiccups. Definitely fluent, not proficient. He lacks in areas like idiomatic expressions but makes up for it with his fluent and communicative boy-next-door style.
I work with Mandarin speakers in our Hong Kong and Dongguan offices. Their English is not great, but since I've listened to them long enough, I can understand what they're trying to say just fine. Language is cool like that. You learn to communicate with the people in your life even with language barriers.
Yup...I give chinese colleagues that speak english a ton of credit. Those two languages are worlds apart. Im learning chinese and I would be a toddler to a native speaker.
Hello Rita, as a passionate learner of Chinese language I must say, that I really like your analytic approach of tones and pronunciation. Learning Chinese for over a decade now I am still far from perfect tones and pronouncing words and sentences correctly. Due to my personal experience, in order to be understood, grammar and word choice is most important. Even lacking correct tones can make up for this, I have no problem to be understood by locals even in remote areas. And as 老外 a foreign accent can be beneficial in some situations. 范老师j讲完课辛苦了😅
I mean most English speakers who are from the US don't even have perfect English. The most important part is he is trying harder than most and everyone he speaks it too are amaze and can understand him
@@beanieman4892 Xiaoma's Chinese is really good without a doubt, but my point is that he shouldn't use the term "perfect" to describe his Chinese. (I'm Chinese btw, I know how challenging it is to learn a new language and I definitely do admire Xiaoma's hard work)
@@veggiedog2183 yes but theres tons of Chinese people who he speaks to that says his Chinese is perfect also even stating he is better than them. I'm not saying it is perfect or not but what you think is perfect is based off your opinion . Alot think it is and even say it in his videos. But I understand where you are coming from
@@veggiedog2183 Remember, he is mostly speaking to people in the US. Some probably have been away from China for decades...so they probably speak Chinese with an American accent at this point...may even have forgotten plenty of Chinese. And, really, big deal that he has an American accent! Is it different than people from different parts of China all speaking Mandarin? Whether he is understandable is all that really counts. The girl in this video is criticizing, though she says she is not...and a Chinese teacher from a different part of China might totally disagree with what she is saying. Better that she spend some time to get rid of her own Chinese mispronunciations of English!
Just like english, it is my second language,BUT there are so many different ways of speaking it depending on one's nationality and words sounds completely different, i had to work out how to understand british accent, Australian, american southern accent, scottish accent, german accent, french, chinese so many asians, etc... I guess we just get used to it, once you are exposed enough
2:30 Surprinsingly, I don't forget to to pronounce the "h" in mandarin chinese compared to in english for which I sometimes do that. When I see "h" in pinyin, I think about a spanish "j".
I've always felt queasy when watching Xiaoma's videos for two reasons. 1) He doesn't seem to care about others' privacy. I remember a specific video where he posted a video of a woman roasting him in mandarin before he switches. I'm sure she was a fine woman, but he made her look bad in front of millions of people. 2) It seems like his primary purpose is to show off rather than inspire. I'll admit he's motivating, but every "learn *this language* in 30 days" video is unrealistic for pretty much everyone (including him) if you want to go beyond conversational level. Learning a language is a journey that lasts a lifetime.
@@gunfighter3609 I'm not choosing good guys or bad guys. If you read the entirety of the comment, you'll see my argument. I consider myself to be a private person and get sick to my stomach when people don't respect the privacy of others :)
@@gunfighter3609 e Exactly :) I don't know if you're referring to her or me being disrespectful, but as an English teacher with students from China, I found many of her explanations to be quite useful to indicate some differences in our pronunciation. I enjoyed her criticism and don't think she approached it in a rude way. If people never corrected my pronunciation, I would never improve in my second language, so I think there's a difference between being rude and critical. Sorry if I came across as rude to you. I didn't mean it to be. Just wanted to state my feelings :)
I find him more entertaining than as a legitimate guide if I am serious about learning a language. But it’s impressive how fast he picks up different languages and shocks natives. But almost every RUclipsr will turn some people off at the end of the day
I don't know any Chinese, but you did such a good job of illustrating the differences! Even someone, like myself, that is outside the know can easily understand and hear the differences. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your comment! My English is definitely far from perfect. And I’m looking forward to working on it when I have a bit more time and finally get rid of my Invisalign! 😅 Learning languages is a lifelong journey, and there’s always room for improvement💪💪
@@RitaChinese They really are almost invisible. I think this is the third or fourth of your videos I've seen and I didn't notice your braces until 5 minutes into this one.
very underrated channel! i'm in the process of polishing my french and picking up either arabic, japanese, or mandarin as a third, and your insight helped a lot :)
Amazing video. Very detailed and insightful. XiaomaNYC started learning Spanish and immediately created videos where he said he spoke perfect Spanish. I watched the first ones he created and he sounded to me like a person suffering from aphasia. Keep in mind that this is when as Spanierds we are very used to foreigners trying daily to speak our language and usually being very open to help them with their learning journey and to justify their mistakes over and over again "because they are foreigners". Native English speakers are specially bad at it, too so we tend to be more flexible when judging them as well ...but the fact that he claimed to be fluent when speaking so horribly was such a dissapointment that I have never watched one of his videos again. In my view his actions are fraudulent and irresponsible towards his viewers.
Not to say that his chinese is bad, he is great. But to claim that he speaks perfectly is a huuuuuuge overstatement. Speaking fast =/= speaking perfectly. This issue is way too common for people who claim to be "polyglot".
Gracias Santiago! I haven't watched his Spanish videos, but I might go check them out. I'm learning Spanish myself right now, and it's so tough! I have noticed though, that native Spanish speakers tend to be really nice and slow down their speech/speak clearly. Anyway, regardless of what level someone's at, there's always room for improvement! 💪
His Spanish is atrocious, to say the very least. I mean, I don't expect him to be able to speak really fluent Spanish after learning for a couple of months, even if it's possible to do so. But he should tone his Spanish video titles down a little bit.
@@viniciusmotta8169 ha...and keep in mind, most of that Spanish footage is EDITED hahaha...so, he is making sure to only display the best footage. And, much of it was probably very rehearsed too..lol
Accent is usually not an indication of how well you use the language. Some of the people who I've heard using English well don't sound close to native in accent. Yet they have a very strong command of the language and they use the language better than many natives, in my opinion.
Hey, Rita! You've mentioned in one of your videos that you've got a student that speaks a Slavic language as a native language. Maybe we may one day watch a video like that on common Slavic pronunciation blunders..?😭
That's a great idea, Laurent! I've been paying attention to it, but I still need more experiences working with more Slavic native speakers to have something more solid for putting up a video and talking about it! It's definitely kept in my mind!
@@sazuna8435 I guess the standard stuff: not pronouncing 'h', adding extra vowels at the end where they have no business being, always ultrashort vowels except when indicating hesitation, not knowing how to aspirate their plosives, ... And two common ones for Indo-Europeans: forcing our natural prosodies unto Chinese, where they don't belong, and completing our -n/-ng (making the tongue touch the palate at the end + not relaxing most of the tongue).
@@RitaChinese Hi Rita, I'm trying to learn Polish because it is my wife's native language. It is so difficult for me so I appreciate anyone who has learned or is learning another language. Thanks for your video😎
His Chinese is far from perfect and this would be even more noticeable if he spoke slowly. If you want to listen a foreigner who can speak really good Chinese you can search for 大山.
I like this video because it sheds light on something I always felt was a bit off about Xiaoma's videos and his high claims which didn't sit well with me
Awesome video! Very helpful especially for an ABC Mandarin speaker with an American accent like me lol. Hoping to improve my Mandarin so I can better communicate with my family members.
Rita probably one of the very best teacher i found on youtube.. Please keep the good work up. Hopefully in the future we don't have to listen to strangely sound chinese spoken by non-native western ppl in the movie.
Many foreigners living in England NEVER learn to pronounce words correctly. I'd imagine it's the same for English speakers with Chinese. It's difficult to completely set lifelong habits aside.
Hi Rita. This was very helpful. I am teaching myself Mandarin but it has been a struggle. I had an embarrassing moment yesterday at the eye doctor. She was Chinese and I greeted her with Xiawu hao. But her response was "what did you say?". I told her I was saying good afternoon and then she said it and it sounded so much different. I apologized to her. Listening to this video also showed me how bad my pronunciation is especially with those letters you discussed. I need to find someone (with patience) to practice with. For now I will subscribe to your channel to see if it helps. Thank you, Baobo.
Hi Robert! Thank you for your comment, and yeah the pronunciation, tones in particular, could be the most tricky part of Chinese learning, and it just affects communication with natives so much if you don't get a hang of it. I suggest you to listen to Chinese-speaking videos more carefully, and hope my videos would help a bit as well. Keep it up💪👍
I was struck by the similarity. Rita's English is heavily accented so is it fair to criticize anyone else's accent? I like some accents. For me the English spoken by upper class Indians is so much more pleasing than say a country twang. Can people understand you is the question?
@@donnavickers6058 Rita's English is I think much less accented than the one of the guy in the video. Actually many of her sentences have almost no accent at all.
@@donnavickers6058 Yes, Rita' English is heavily accented but I would hardly call this video a criticism on Xiaomanyc's Chinese. She's mainly giving some constructive feedback on how to improve. And most importantly, she never claimed to have "perfect" English. Xiaomanyc on the other hand throws out the word "perfect" in most of his videos.
It's actually very hard for most people to overcome their native language default settings because every language uses the muscles of the tongue, mouth, throat and lips differently. Very few people can sound unrecognisably native when they haven't grown up speaking their target language from childhood... Chinese native speakers have the same issues with foreign languages. When you learn a new language, you have to rebuild muscle and mobility in the new language's positions from scratch. Of course, you also have to be able to hear the difference too... If you can't hear the difference between what you're saying and the correct pron from a native speaker, then you need to sit down and watch Chinese TV (or whatever your target language is) for a few months (or years...) to train your ear. If your teacher isn't a native speaker, then you may just be copying all your teacher's pronunciation mistakes...! If that goes on long enough, your mistakes will fossilise... Also, if you try to speak too fast too soon, it's very easy to slip up and revert to the factory settings..!
It's definitely possible tho. I've met non-native speakers that could speak my native language perfectly (and they learned it as adults). All you have to do is find out how to pronounce all the sounds correctly (and by that I mean the correct tongue/jaw/lip positions and not just the sounds themselves. This is extremely difficult since we don't have x-ray vision), learn the correct intonation of the language (all languages use a specific intonation but learners often ignore this. For example, in English sentences are divided into thought groups where the most prominent words are stressed while the less important ones receive weaker stress. Plus words at the end of statements tend to be pronounced with a falling pitch) and of course train your muscle memory like you said
I worked with a woman with a similar accent to the Beijinglish, haha. It was quite clear to me. "Whether your spoken language is intelligible to natives might depend on: 1. If they have enough motivation to try to understand what you are saying 2. If they have the ability to ignore the incorrectness in your speech and figure out what you are saying 3. If your mistakes are systematic, and they hear you speak enough"
Excellent. You really understand these matters on a deep level. I hope you make a video on Orient Pearl. Clearly, her American accent is heavy, but i wonder what level her vocab is. She says that her level is one of the highest a foreigner can reach. She does come across trust worthy and level headed, so unlike many clickbaity youtubers (xiaoma), I think she is pretty genuinely advanced.
I will! She's on my list, and I'll probably make a video about her in the coming weeks! She's definitely spent a lot of time studying more advanced expressions. 👍
What a great video. You're the first person I know who puts a lot of emphasis on the pronounciation and explains how tones are formed. I also thinks you should learn that correctly from the start. 👍
TBH XiaoMa's pronunciation of "h" I didn't hear much difference, a lot of Chinese including myself pronounce just like him (btw I'm Malaysia born Chinese). But the main issue that he has is, he uses the wrong words in many occasions like you've pointed out, but that can be improve over time.
There's a difference between being fluent and sounding like a native. As a native English speaker, I've heard people from all over the world speak English fluently, while still recognizing a foreign accent in their speech. If you can produce gramattically correct sentences in natural time with a native's vocabulary and make yourself understood to native speakers, you're fluent. Within any English speaking country therre are regional accents, but everyone is equally fluent. Mandarin is a tonal language, so mistakes of tone can change meaning, but if native listeners understand you when you speak, that's fluent.
There isnt. Shes actually wrong about the consonants. Its the vowels that xiaoma is getting wrong. However how you say that vowel can effect how someone might hear that consonant. In both chinese and korean, their consonants are practically intelligble. And they cant even hear the fact that they are switching the pronunciation of their consonants. More koreans than chinese. A lot of m words get pronounced with a b sound but they themselves cant hear it. "What we dont know what youre talking about." Just like most japanese cant tell the difference between an l and r. The h sound is the same and has nothing to do with tongue movement. If its anything like korean, its the over stressing of the consonants and the over thinking of the vowels that xiaoma's doing. English and european languages in general make clear, direct consonant sounds. We dont often drop them off or lisp it. And thats what koreans do. And chinese too. In some accents the L sound is like their N sound. Because chinese and korean make their consonants very lispy and wispy, they distinguish the correct consonant more from how sharply/softly you say it rather than clear distinction that exists in european languages. Chinese has hundreds of less syllabic phonemes than we do. Any phonemic syllable in chinese exists somewhere in an english word. Whereas chinese struggle in english because we have more phonemic syllables that dont even exist in chinese. Most chinese are born with a gene that makes it easier to distinguish tones as well meaning clear cut consonants was never a necessity when forming their language. They can say things more lispy and softly whereas in english, m and b are definitely different consonants and would never be interchangable or the n and l sound or the k and g sound. Or the s and ssh sound.
@@LilyUnicorn There is a broad spectrum of h-sounds in Mandarin but she is demonstrating the typical one. Xiaoma uses the typical American English h sound most of the time (but he gets it right most of the time in the clip where he is reading). She is also right about the other consonants although she is bad at imitating their American (mis)pronunciation.
Think of the difference between a normal h pronounced by a native English speaker -- and the h pronounced by most Russians when speaking English. The Mandarin h is supposed to sound like the latter, although there is a broad spectrum of native pronunciations. A few pronounce it like an English/German/Danish/Norwegian h, most like the Russians, and some even "harder", like in the European Spanish (Castillian) name "Jorge" or the Dutch g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ru-%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4.ogg Rita is right about the different tongue position and about tensing muscles in the back of your mouth to say make that sound.
Re 9:05, I wonder if maybe many English speakers ask "does it matter if I have an accent" because we're already SO accustomed to hearing "Bejinglish" and other heavily accented and even outright grammatically incorrect English in every day life, due to English being an incredibly common second language. Then we (mistakenly) generalize that "If I can easily understand Chinese Accented English and French Accented English, and Filipino Accented English, then surely the same is true in reverse, right?"
I think that 小马 is under a lot of pressure to 'perform' in his videos. And also, what makes him impressive to a lot of people on RUclips, and especially English speakers trying to learn Chinese, is that he has gotten much more proficient than most English speakers ever could hope to. Chinese is a rough language to try to learn, and most people don't succeed very well with it--that is the sad reality. So when we see someone who is very proficient, we tend to idealize that person, because so few westerners really become proficient (especially not from self-study). I give him the credit he deserves. But his Chinese is certainly not perfect, I don't expect it to be. It's just better than 99.5% of Chinese learners.
I'm almost hesitant to suggest LeLe Farley since he's a political comedian that got kicked out of China, but he's been called one of the best Western speakers by natives and western speakers alike. Of course, there's also Dashan 大山。Both very entertaining. Thanks for this video. Love the mouth puppet. Definitely subscribed.
When I learn a language, I spend a lot of time on pronunciation while recognizing that I'm going to have an accent, however minimal. Even more, I learn to speak it with good grammar and good usage. Native speakers can tell I've taken the trouble to learn their language correctly and they appreciate the respect I'm showing them. That's the main thing.
Xiao Ma's Chinese level is very good. As of the pronunciation, most of Chinese from South China is struggling on standard mandarin pronunciation. As a foreigner, I think his level is already very good. Regarding the title of his videos "perfect", the "perfect" is a relative concept, to normal American, his Chinese level is almost "perfect".
Relative to a child, I am a very tall person, so it's a bit of a pointless way of framing Xiaoma's overuse of the word 'perfect' to describe his videos. Honestly, I'd be less annoyed if he didn't label all his videos of him speaking languages other than Chinese in which he has really poor fluency in as 'perfect' when they're clearly not. I get the whole doing it for the algorithms argument, but you have to draw the line somewhere with the clickbait and content you product because it's disrespectful if not dishonest to imply another culture's language could be learned in any manner approaching native fluency in under a month like he does regularly. Those reaction videos reek of him profiting off of unsuspecting people at that point, though I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he gives back to those communities in some way
@@TaraCheetarachii Yep. And I'm 189cm and not that tall (for a Dane). Xiaoma also rubs me the wrong way because it feels like he is bragging and showing off (and not really caring about invading other people's privacy).
One other thing i would like to explore is the native Chinese accent in NYC, would the influence of the NYC english accent change pronunciations even for a native speaker.
People usually don’t realize it, but learning to speak through reading is one of the major obstacles why people develop bad habits in speaking or suffer from poor pronunciation. If you want to sound better, simply break the habit of learning to speak through reading. Spaced repetition of audio material is the way to go for better pronunciation and a native like accent. (e.g. Glossika, Pimsleur) Having said that, to develop a native like accent, one has to invest hundreds, hundreds of hours to achieve it unless you are an outlier. Accent reduction is not for the lighthearted or for the casual learner. For example, I am going through my fifth round of accent reduction in Russian. People say I have a very light accent, but to me I still have a long way to go even after years of study though I have lost the track of time I have spent for it...
That is so true! And a great catch! I'm curious how you count "a round" of your accent reduction process. Is there a specific system that you are using?
@@RitaChinese Fan laoshi hao. A round for me simply corresponds to a period of time in my life that I acquire a spesific set of skills so that I get better at a given language compared to the previous level. Sometimes it takes only six months, sometimes several years. Without going into too much details, Round 2 was when I was in Russia undoing my Russian from round 1, and it was so discouraging! I still remember that whenever I spoke, people's faces changed as if they were eating something sour. Round 3 was reinforcing what I had learnt in round 2 with audio material. It was only at the end of round 3 when I finally started receiving some positive feedback. Round 4 was individual attacks on spesific soft sounds and especially stress which is particularly crucial in Russian. Only during round 4, I started hearing other people's accents and more importantly stopped worrying whether or not I would have communication problems due to my accent. (If your stress is on the wrong syllable, people who are not accustommed to speaking with foreigners will simply have a hard time understanding you). For all practical reasons, I could stop at this point. But having come this far, Now I am trying to develop a more native-like accent working on fossillized problems in stress, reduced sounds in word pairs, and the rhytym of the language while trying to use more native like expressions. Glossika is my main choice of weapon while backed up with authentic material by native speakers for native speakers. I hope that made sense.
@@lacivertumutkazankaya2042 Wow I'm always so impressed and inspired by language learners like you who keep motivated and keep honing their language skills. Even better if you find powerful tools and efficient methods. Seems you're doing great👍👍
@@RitaChinese 谢谢老师 :-) I really love languages. As a member of your channel, I would like to thank you for sharing such great content with us. I have recently started HSK 4 and find your videos very useful.
@@lacivertumutkazankaya2042 You know you have "arrived" when people stop complimenting you :) I am planning to use Praat when it's time to go through my first serious accent reduction for Chinese (maybe when I can read 2000 characters and get 80% of the dialog in a Mainland soap opera). Are you using similar tools? Or just the "voice memo" app on your phone? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praat
I'm always jealous that people are brave enough to shoot videos in Chinese! I really don't dare!😅 But yeah, the heavy accent is a big issue. I had a classmate from the US, I think his vocabulary was much better than mine, but almost nobody (apart from some other foreigners) understood him, because of the exact things you mentioned. But I'm shocked that some teachers would say that zh,ch,sh and j,q,x are the same 😅
The place of articulation for them are the same, which is true, but consonants are defined by their (1) place of articulation and (2) manner of articulation. She is explaining the differences in the manner of articulation.
C'mon your Chinese is wayyy better than a lot of people making videos on social media, Xiaomi! 😆 Yeah I can imagine that - there always are language learners who emphasize reading and writing too much than their listening and speaking. There needs to be a balance!
@@RitaChinese Hahaha thanks! Maybe one day I will do some, so you can "roast" me as well. Hehe. I'm really grateful for your videos and help, I've been working on my "jue/que/xue" pronunciation. And also thanks to this video I've noticed my "h" might not be that great either!
For real! When I first start learning, the difference between these sounds was very hard for me to hear. It was even heard to duplicate. Unfortunately one of the early videos I watched totally ignored mentioning the tongue positions, and only focused on lip position. It was such a game changer once I finally found out!
Notice that he spends a lot of time in restaurants. My Italian is perfect talking about food with a waiter, but if he were a philosophy professor my subjunctive would definitely be found wanting.
Love you Rita... One small (no BIG) suggestion is to SLOW DOWN COMPARISONS. People, particularly beginners and people who process a bit slower than others NEED TIME to absorb and digest comparisons. Example: Right now I'm paused on dajia comparison. On each side you have Pinyin, characters and English translation; In other words SIX ELEMENTS TO READ AND THEN DISCERN THE DIFFERENCE. **BUT OFTEN THE COMPARISON OF BOTH SIDES LASTS LESS THAN 2 SECONDS**... and LESS THAN ONE SECOND after the second (comparison) example is revealed! There just isn't enough time to read, let alone process the differences. Even slowing the video down to .75 really didn't help much. MY ADVICE TO MOST CHINESE ONLINE TUTORS... **SLOW EVERYTHING DOWN A BIT... AND *PAUSE* AFTER almost every EXAMPLE DISPLAY!!!** You can do that in a final edit, or even repeat. Remember to teach the student, not (just) the subject. JMO
I reckon he probably discovered at some point that he gets A LOT more views when he says "PERFECT" as opposed to "fluent" in his titles. Because even me as a non-native Chinese speaker can very clearly hear that he has a very strong non-native accent.
小馬 is very good, but I had to chuckle a bit when he said his Chinese was close to native level in his recent video with Matt(Matt vs Japan). Matt, on the other hand, has pretty much achieved native-level Japanese.
Yeah I've been watching Matt's videos for a while, and I agree with a lot of his learning theory and method (not all of it though haha). And I just went and watched the video that you mentioned😆
Would disagree on the second part of this…
@@menonalevi6984 h-hhow is a certain language gay?
@@menonalevi6984 Chinese even so more
@@menonalevi6984 Found the 12 year old
I'm not Chinese, but I grew up surrouded by it. My father worked in a Chinese country and travelled constantly, and my classmates and friends were largely Chinese. I had picked up quite a bit of Mandarin at a young age, and was told by my Chinese friends that I had a good accent. When I watched Xiaoma for the first time, one of the first things that I noticed was that his pronunciation was very American. He still speaks more Chinese than me and it's very impressive, but I'm surprised that after so much time and exposure, his accent is noticeably worse than mine.
I think the key is you grew up surrounded by it, and he didn't. People who learn later in life usually have more trouble with accents, even if they work at it hard enough to obtain superior vocabulary/grammar.
similar to you I grew up in brazil speaking portuguese until 5yo, but lost almost all of it by not using it for the next 40 years. but even now with my almost nonexistent portuguese I instantly hear accent in any non-brazilian no matter how advanced they are. I think the ear you develop for it at early childhood is somehow completely separate from the actual proficiency.
He probably started speaking and reading before he'd listened to enough of the language to build a clear mental model of how it SHOULD sound, and hence he made some bad habits that he never got rid of because every time he speaks he reinforces the same incorrect pronunciation.
Xiaoma has some older videos and in those times his pronunciation was more spot on. At the time he was in Beijing so thats probably why since he was surrounded by it 24/7. It probably got more "americanized" when he went back to the US.
Hey, give him some slack! It's still very impressive and most people have an accent when speaking a foreign language, including you and me. The point with Xiaoma is that he is inspiring and charismatic for people who are intimidated by foreign languages. So what if he does it with an American accent? By being judgemental, those RUclipsrs might turn off those who would love to learn a foreign language but have mental barriers about it... I speak 7 languages but all with an accent, albeit slight, except for my native one.
I like Xiaoma mostly because he shows the importance of going out and practicing language skills with native speakers and not being embarrassed to have mediocre or beginners skills.
His videos are a little cheesy and have titles that seem a little sus and clickbait, but getting out and speaking a new language can feel so embarrassing for people who don’t feel fluent and I think he encourages people to try.
He's a low-level wannabe and a lier. You can hear right away how mediocre his Chinese in all facets is. Yet, he brags with those clickbait titles. Probably, his audience is dumb hence he cashes in all this views. I really like this teacher for calling out that BS.
He could've simply said that his level is so-so but to improve you need to practice and he he's got balls to do that. Otherwise, it's just an embarrassment what he is to the native Chinese who think that so many laowai are just big mouth and no substance.
he definitely has more than beginner skills haha my skills are mediocre..He definitely isn’t native level like he has apparently said but he is clearly fluent and speaks with the american chinese accent
@@xanderx8289 yeah but his titles are supposed to be clickbait. He wouldn't have found the same success with titles like "white guy impresses locals with mediocre at best Chinese"
@@tigoid I agree. Which speaks to how dumb people are. Generally, I don't care about who does what on the internet. The problem arises when Chinese start to think that all laowai only brag about stuff being mediocre at best (Trump is the living impersonation of that). I feel more and more auch attitude
@BIGFOOOOOT I feel the same with Spanish, it triggers my heart…Porque no habla perfectamente para nada 👎🤦♂️
I’ve watched a few of his videos and he does use the work perfect a lot, I think he probably does this just because it brings in the views more. Like someone who isn’t a native speaking “perfect” Chinese sounds more interesting then a title saying “A non native speaker speaking pretty good Chinese in public” , it doesn’t really hit the same. I hope that makes sense lol
Yeah I think the same. He seems like an intelligent guy, so he probably knows that his Chinese is not "perfect" but for RUclipss sake it definitely makes the video more flashy.
To be fair, non native speakers often have better knowledge of some things like formal grammar than many native speakers. I mean, that means squat all, but it can be impressive, and having to learn it means they can talk about it better. But the actual language isn't based on what's "proper" so much as what people say.
Simply saying "American man speaks to local Chinese people in Chinese" would be sufficient, but adding "perfect" to something is adding an air of arrogance and opens up himself to criticism that he probably would not receive had he not used the word "perfect".
@@owlblocksdavid4955 That reminds me of a clip of SerpentZA who talked to a local and impressed him with his Chinese that was more proper than the local's. And he was still thought of as a foreigner. But he eventually moved to America for many reasons.
@@JonathanQiao yeah I don't think you understand how the RUclips algorithm work. People love shocking videos and titles like that definitely brings in a lot of views. It may not be perfect to a linguist but on a conversational level it is very close to being a native speaker
You should have Xiaoma as a guest and have a conversation and go over some things as he speaks many languages and is quite friendly .
COVID*
@@yourstruly2205 internet* webcam*
@@imprezabob *there’s no way to see the genuine interaction in that*
@@yourstruly2205 Only morons and obese/vulnerable people are still afraid of this now endemic respiratory virus.
@@yourstruly2205 CONvid*
An interesting breakdown of Xiaomanyc's Chinese skills. Listening to him (I've saw a couple of his videos months ago) he sounded like he had an accent, but I couldn't put my finger on what was making him sound non-Chinese. It was good to see a breakdown that shows specifically what it was that made him sound foreign to Chinese ears. Thanks.
My huge pleasure! This is exactly why I've been doing these video series😊🙌 Glad it helps!
@@RitaChinese Thanks. I'm not really convinced that I can speak Chinese, but I am enjoying your videos.
I always thought that his Chinese sounded accented as well, but not speaking Chinese myself, I couldn't articulate why.
you can definitely hear his accent, but he speaks fast. so I'm still jealous.
@BIGFOOOOOT EXACTLY!!! real subtitles would be
- yes yes yes i want 2 2 2 2 yes yes yes thank you thank you thank you
- can you show me the way the way the way? oh nice nice nice nice so it’s to the left left left oh yes yes yes thanks thanks thanks
@@TheNUIHEO he has a speech impediment
@@vincentlytle2810 only in foreign languages right?
@@TheNUIHEO you can hear it in his English
@@vincentlytle2810 I call BS 🤷🏻♂️
6:52 This is perfect and sums up what I have seen explained so many times and never really grasped.
These videos are great! I can’t believe they are free! Thank you so much Rita, I support you.
Haha thank you for your support, Dereko(?)!!
Wow Rita your Chinese pronounciation is just... Wow wow wow.
I know a lot of Chinese people, from Beijing and from the North China areas, and neither they can speak Chinese so correctly and beautifully like you do... Also your English is so good you are just amazing that's not obvious I really take an inspiration from you!
1:56 that 很 was too perfect I really listened to a lot of Chinese people and teachers and you say that too accurate I want to speak like you that's my dream I am going to work so hard on my pronounciation I will do whatever it takes to master it!
Thank you so much for your video and your whole Channel!
你是最棒的！
I'm glad someone made this video. I am not a native Chinese speaker, but started learning from the time I was 9 and it always bugged me how American his Chinese pronunciation sounds but everyone called it perfect. Thanks for making this in-depth analysis!
Aside the clickbait-ish titles, his effort to learn Mandarin and engaging Chinese culture as an American is really commendable.
As an Asian who's self taught Mandarin, Xiaoma is one of the many Mandarin speaking foreigners who really inspired me to keeping up with my Chinese learning.
Many thanks to you for providing us with the insight, we finally knew that despite his claim, there were still some subtle areas about his proficiency in Mandarin that you could observe as a native speaker and a professional Mandarin teacher.
9:06 "whether your spoken language is intelligible to natives might depend on: 1. if they have enough motivation to understand what you are saying, 2. if they have the ability to ignore the incorrectness in your speech and figure out what you are saying, 3. if your mistakes are systematic and they hear you speak enough"
(I think :D)
It'd be more accurate for this guy to change all the titles saying perfect to fluent. He clearly has an accent, but he speaks fluently. I guess saying perfect gets more views, though.
Next level: can Chinese people tell if a person is from Britain or North America based on their Mandarin accent?
@ry睿 真的吗？很有意思吧！
I mean Britain and NA has very different accents. So yes when they speak Chinese... if their pronunciation isn't very good, then they will usually end up speaking Chinese using their native accents. I had a Russian friend that would speak Chinese using his Russian accent.
Well, it’s too easy to tell. I can even tell an Aussie, Canadian and American!
They both have English accents to be fair... I'm pretty sure it's easier to differentiate Italian accent Mandarin and British accent Mandarin.
I just got the awesomest idea yet: do you think you could analyze your husbands chineseee nexttt?? I know you won’t find any mistakes and it would be a great learning video because I love his Beijing accent!
I could hear his non-native accent, for example he’s been pronouncing the Jie in “Jie Zou Gan” incorrectly. Not sure if it’s the tone of the “j” consonant though.
@@DaisyZhangAI maybe who knows! But I think he deserves the title “best American Chinese speaker!”
Hahah believe it or not, you are not the first one asking for an analysis of Chris's Chinese😆😆 I'll def think about it now!!
哇是吗，我再好好听听去😄
I'm not that concerned with sounding as native as possible. So I first thought this video wouldn't be something for me. But then I kept watching and found out this is really helpful with just pronounciation in general. As a native dutch speaker from belgium (it's a big difference in pronounciation from the dutch from the netherlands) my english was often described as being to soft. In all my languagelearning i tried to overly pronounce to compensate for this comment. Now it turns out I can make it more easy for myself and keep certain habbits of speaking soft consonants in mandarin chinese. trying to pronounce mandarin chinese suddenly became so much more easy. and I also suddenly understand mandarin better as I'm no longer trying to find certain sounds in speach that are barely pronounced anyways.
(as I'm learning on my own at the moment, things like this are very helpful)
Yeah some sounds could be so difficult for speakers of a certain language, whereas it could be super easy for others! It really depends on what your mother tongue is and which part of the mouth muscles you have used. Happy to know that this video helps to ease your Chinese learning haha
Just out of curiosity, @Blueberrymint, how do you pronounce words like "completely", "competent", etc? Most Dutch speakers from the Netherlands nasalize the first syllable -- and they do the same in English. The funny thing is that they have *no* idea that that is a typical trait of a Dutch accent! I don't know if that's also the case with the Flemish.
You might also have trouble with certain geminated consonants -- not that it matters for Chinese, of course. Do you pronounce "harddisk" differently from "hardisk"? You can get away with that most of the time in English but I think it really matters if you ever try to learn Japanese.
Let's see, what else is there... Yes! The -n/-ng in pinyin. If you are like me and most other Indo-European speakers, you pronounce them completely. If you (I/we) want to sound better you (I/we) should not complete them. The tongue should (most of the time) just get really close to the palate without touching it + the tongue should largely be relaxed. If you sound like you have Down's Syndrome you are just about there!
(They have bigger tongues that don't quite fit in their mouths.)
I remember my frustration in the beginning of my Chinese journey because I could clearly hear things in Chinese phonology that weren't mentioned in the beginner's textbooks and the -n was one of them. I was so happy when I found a paper by, I think, Victor Mair that described that and several other "under-documented" parts of Chinese phonology. I have yet to come across a good explanation of when to use glottal stops in Mandarin, though. I can clearly hear it sometimes when people speak and I don't have a clue about the rules yet (apart from it being one of the ways to realize the third tone).
I got a similar lightbulb moment from the zh, ch, sh vs, z, c, s tongue placement tip. as native finn we only have one 's' and differentiating between those 6 consonants was incredibly difficult. no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't hear the difference. but it was like the pronunciation tip unlocked it for me and now I suddenly hear the difference. I think before my brain was 'correcting' them to sound similar (the McGurk effect) because it 'knew' what to 'hear', but once it got the correct model for what it should hear it suddenly became so much easier.
@@RitaChinese I could perfectly understand your Beijinglish btw, it's not that hard as soon as your ear gets accustomed to certain sound patterns xD So I'd say that strong accent is a nono, but a slight one does not impede communication as much... or does it?
His titles are definitely clickbaity, but I admire his dedication to languages in general. Learning Navajo or Yoruba for a couple of weeks and immediately throwing himself into the native communities and having short conversations to practice.
When it comes to the "perfect" adjective in his videos, I think he's taking advantage of the fact that most people who watch his video are NOT fluent in Mandarin and therefore to us it does sound "perfect".
"A Jack of all trades is a master of none."
- Says me, someone who plans to learn 40 languages (but not in 2 weeks; in the rest of my life if I live long enough for it to be possible). My goal is to be fluent in several, and decent in most, such as ANCIENT EGYPTIAN. :-)
@@scintillam_deiyou went to Egypt then mate? In that country there’s a few speakers who speak a dialect close enough
His Navajo was atrocious. I barely understood him at times. His clickbait title made it sound like he would be more impressive than he actually was in his video. I was very underwhelmed. He really struggled with Navajo tones.
But I gave him props for even trying to speak my people's language.
Listening to your analysis is amazing. First, he is to be congratulated and encouraged for such an accomplishment, his Chinese is wonderful. He is fortunate to have your analysis now to help take his Chinese speaking skills to the next level.
You have no idea how much this reinvigorated me to pick back up my Mandarin studies. My motivation is there again. Thanks for making this video and being such a great teacher. You made me want to learn again with this one video.
3:00 That’s curious. Overcompensation, maybe? Given that, in a lot of cases, the English ”G”, ”D”, and ”B” are pronounced voiceless, as Dr. Geoff Lindsey demonstrates, in his RUclips-video: ”Speech is really SBEECH!”.
This is a very effective video, and I subscribed immediately! In addition to giving a very clear and concise evaluation of Xiaomanyc’s Chinese, you cover some aspects of language learning that are absolutely vital!👏
Language related videos have become quite popular on RUclips as a form of entertainment. In the comment sections of these videos, people often say they feel inspired to learn a new language. I think it’s really important to contextualize the “success” (views/likes) of such videos, and to stay focused on our personal language learning goals.
Thank you for liking my content and subscribing to my channel🙌 It's great that language-related videos are being inspiration for Chinese learners and people who are curious about the other side of the planet! And what I'm trying to do is to make fun videos that can help Chinese learners really improve their understanding of Chinese language at the same time from a more professional perspective, which is not easy haha. Glad you find it useful! 😊
Your content is among the best in the Mandarin Chinese RUclips sphere. Excellent job
Thank you for your kind words!! More is in making😄🙌
The nav graphic at the bottom is amazing. I have never seen this before, is it unique to this channel?
So based.
I really appreciated a lot of this! Breaking down the accent was so interesting - I've always wondered where those "sh" pronunciations come from when it comes to the "x", for example! Thank goodness I had such a rockstar tutor for so long ... ;) I also really appreciated the notes on speed and fluency. There's definitely a feeling that those two things are more important than genuine ability in things like pronunciation or accuracy. I think it's good to keep an eye on all of these factors and more! Awesome video, as always!
Haha I always miss our class and just the time we spent together, Alex!! 😄❤ And we actually discussed the tricky concept of "fluency" one time at the Liangmaqiao shopping mall, yeah? The vague meanings of words are just part of languages I guess, but we always can try to clarify some of the words that we talk about so much😆
Anyone promoting cultures getting together and communicating, learning about each other, breaking down barriers, is a good thing. Who cares about the minutiae. The joy on someone’s face when you can speak their language. Incredible. I would give anything to speak Chinese. I have 0 capability for learning other spoken languages, but took ASL, because it was visual, and loved it. Cudos to Mr. NYC.
It’s because his video titles claim that he’s blowing the minds of prejudiced people with his “perfect Chinese”. It might be “great for a foreigner” but judged from a point of view not biased by the idea of low expectation/different standards because he’s white, it’s honestly a chore to listen to when his tones/enunciation are off.
People tell him his Chinese is great because they are being polite and because it’s more than they expect from a “foreigner”, and that’s part of what’s holding him back from further improvement.
Also most of the Chinese people he speaks to are not native Mandarin speakers, and they themselves don’t speak Mandarin well at all.
Look, don’t get me wrong, his Chinese is good, very impressive for someone who is self taught as an adult. But definitely nowhere near the standards of his hyperbolic clickbaity titles.
Exactly. A lot of ABCs who do speak Chinese quite fluently always get criticized for just having a slight/barely noticeable American accent, even if they're comprehension is fine and what they're saying is understandable. It frustrating watching Xiaoma claim he speaks perfect Chinese sometimes since he makes many of the same mistakes as ABCs, but is praised for his Chinese .
Of course, it's not to say that he doesn't deserve any praise, because learning a second language is very difficult. Not to mention he's at a level where he can talk about a lot of advanced topics, but it's still very obvious he's not a native speaker when you listen to him.
First of all, his Mandarin is not perfect. Secondly, it is better to stay humble instead of saying constantly about himself that he is a perfect Mandarin speaker.
I’m sure he just throws “perfect” in there to catch people’s attention and get more views.
CAP.
I'm Italian and I'm learning Mandarin. I can't even explain how helpful are your videos! 谢谢你！
Rita is so on point. Most Chinese in New York praise Xiaoman's Chinese speaking because they are already used with the American speaking tone/accent that they ignore the proper or correct pronounciation of Xiaman's Chinese.
I grew up in Singapore and studied at a Chinese school from age 5 but my Chinese accent have a slight difference and my Chinese friends here in the Philippines think my Chinese is better than theirs 🤣.
Thank you Rita for this video.
Xiaoma IS fluent. But he does not SOUND native. Just like this amazing youtuber youre watching now. She IS fluent. But she still has a native Chineze accent. Fluency =/= perfection. It means being able to understand and talk about complex topics. (And able to be understood back). So just like how this teacher is not 'perfect' at English, she still is amazing. Same for Xiaoma.
It’s been a couple of years since I watched his videos but his Chinese is not that great. It’s American fluent but by European or Asian standards, it’s really not even “okay”.
@@gct436 lol wym European or Asian standards
@@A-ID-A-MEg. when an American kid draws a stick figure, he hears oh wow you are going to be the next Picasso. When a European/Asian produces the same, he hears you are going to have to try a little harder next time. Americans generally have an inflated sense of what good is in regards to their own abilities. I know because I fell victim to the same American upbringing. When my Swiss host family told me “it was fine/okay”, I felt as if I had gotten punched in the gut. My host mom had to “translate” that a Swiss “okay”/“fine” is an American “fabulous.”
@@gct436 So I dont understand... youre saying Americans are inherently worse at things than Europeans or Asians?
@@A-ID-A-M read what I wrote again, where did I refer to Americans having inherently inferior abilities? Americans are brought up with an inflated sense of their own abilities. While the likes of Xiaoma would call a 50% score perfect, others would think it’s failing and not something to brag about. I’m just pointing out a cultural difference here.
Xiaomanyc speaks Chinese with a very strong anglo-saxon accent.
yea soo true * Has no f*** g idea *
@@captaincool6268 Your jealousy is showing
Yes true
He tried to learn French, it sounded really weird, I mean I don't speak French myself, but I know how it's supposed to sound, I've seen quite a few French movies in my days.
He speaks with an American accent. The Anglo-Saxon culture ended in 1066 with the Norman conquest. Nobody speaks Chinese with a one thousand year old accent from the early middle ages.
Wow! This helped a lot, especially with the pronunciation，explained it well. Thank you 👍
The part titled "fast" really resonated with me. I'm learning Portuguese after years of Spanish and I love the language...it's the tones that trip me up. I spend so much time on getting the tones down, that I don't speak quickly at all. I'm trying to be easy on myself because it's been less than 3 months and I'm basic conversational lol. You mentioning focus on muscle memory for tone and pronunciation made me feel better about where I am right now with the language.
That artificial mouth that you use is so handy in teaching the pronunciation. I have never seen any one using that before!
I want one!
I think I found it on Amazon -- but it is out of stock :(
www.amazon.com/Mini-Mouth-Motor-Finger-Puppet/dp/B07QP9D3S5
(From Super Duper Publications)
This is so funny 😂 I love how you recreate how “Americans” may pronounce things
I tried😆😆
@@RitaChinese Honestly I had a lot of trouble hearing some of those differences, even listening to them a couple times. I guess that's why we tend to make them!
Yea it is very interesting listening to the nuances. Not trying to attack the lady in this video but it is clear to me that similarly to Xiaoma's Chinese, her English accent also fails to sound native due to subtle pronunciation differences. Although her English vocabulary and fluency does seems very good.
@@RitaChinese Honestly, you still sounded very Chinese...and Xiaoma sounded very American. Really nailing down an accent is ridiculously, even for just a few words.
(And those consonants *do* sound almost the same, no matter what your lying ears tell you. "Blødt d" (soft d) and "l" in Danish sound almost the same and are pronounced in almost the same way no matter how much my lying ears tell me they sound completely different. We are native speakers of Chinese and Danish so our brains have created these distinct categories where there are really only subtle gradations. I can hear how "incredibly wrong" your -l and -n sounds are, but, honestly, you aren't far from saying them right. It's like a slightly wrong finger position on a fretless string instrument and not like hitting the wrong key on the piano.)
@@alistairhampton8629 Yep, her grammar and vocabulary are very good. Her pronunciation is... very Chinese. She is much, much better than most native Chinese speakers, though. I don't think they are told about vowel lengths and stress patterns until university so it's not really her fault. I noticed that she almost always gets the consonant clusters right if they are syllable initial and she sorta gets them right if they are syllable final. That must have taken an _ungodly_ number of hours to learn. Her speech also isn't at all the typical chopped-up "wan! sy! la! be(l)! at! ze! tai!" speech native Chinese often have, both because Chinese works like that and because English was (is) often taught be having the whole class shout the words like that.
Overall, I'm quite impressed. I wish my Chinese was a tenth as good...
Im my humble for westerner have a current perfect chinese its relevant to learn in backstage the classical chinesse to have the understanding of the evolution by chinese through concrete history in this case mandarin or beijingnese.❤❤❤❤
Very interesting video; an in depth analysis can be done on how the pronunciation of certain consonants shifts towards the closest English values. As a Chinese American, I believe Mandarin spoken by Chinese Americans sometimes shifts towards the English values for consonants and vowels, but not consistently. In this sense, it's intermediate. Chinese who were born in China and later immigrated to the US usually have some idea of a "native Mandarin Chinese accent" V.S. "American-born Mandarin Chinese accent" V.S. the accent of a foreigner learning Mandarin, even if they have no linguistics background and can't explain exactly what sounds different. Another vowel difference is that the vowel in English "luck" is the sound denoted by the IPA symbol /ʌ/, while the vowel in Mandarin 樂 "lè" is more like the sound denoted by the IPA symbol /ɤ/, which is higher in the mouth. The vowel in 安 and 他 is also typically in a more central position in between "hat" and "car" in General American.
That's a great point! With bilingual speakers there always tends to be this sort of back and forth battle between the two languages, which ends up affecting pronunciation, grammar, word choice, etc. What I've noticed is that whatever is the language that's used most often will end up influencing the "weaker" language more, like the ”aw" sound in car/hat affecting the pronunciation of 安/他. That being said, it actually happens with anyone learning a second/foreign language as well. The fact that you're aware of it means that you should be able to have a solid grasp on it! And focusing on these little differences can really help people master pronunciation on both ends as well! 💪
Please keep making videos 🙏🏻 your lessons are truly amazing and helpful.
Thank you!! Will do for sure😄🙌💪
He’s an American who speaks mainly to Chinese Americans, so it follows his accent reflects this intersection. Many second generation Chinese Americans say his Mandarin is better than theirs. He gets many similar complements from ‘native speakers’ in his videos, not sure if the is a testament to Chinese courtesy or drift of the Chinese accent in America.
Yeah, I think that's a valid observation she missed.
I am no fan of his persona. However, his American Mandarin is great and in no way inferior to other Chinese-Americans. He aims to imitate the Beijing accent, and it works for the most part, but not without some hiccups. Definitely fluent, not proficient. He lacks in areas like idiomatic expressions but makes up for it with his fluent and communicative boy-next-door style.
Here for foreigners being corrected when they go round claiming they can speak native level Chinese
I work with Mandarin speakers in our Hong Kong and Dongguan offices. Their English is not great, but since I've listened to them long enough, I can understand what they're trying to say just fine. Language is cool like that. You learn to communicate with the people in your life even with language barriers.
Yup...I give chinese colleagues that speak english a ton of credit. Those two languages are worlds apart. Im learning chinese and I would be a toddler to a native speaker.
Hello Rita, as a passionate learner of Chinese language I must say, that I really like your analytic approach of tones and pronunciation. Learning Chinese for over a decade now I am still far from perfect tones and pronouncing words and sentences correctly. Due to my personal experience, in order to be understood, grammar and word choice is most important. Even lacking correct tones can make up for this, I have no problem to be understood by locals even in remote areas. And as 老外 a foreign accent can be beneficial in some situations. 范老师j讲完课辛苦了😅
9:05 was an amazing perspective... thank you
I always get annoyed when Xiaoma says that his Chinese is perfect. like, he's nowhere near perfect.
I mean most English speakers who are from the US don't even have perfect English. The most important part is he is trying harder than most and everyone he speaks it too are amaze and can understand him
@@beanieman4892 Xiaoma's Chinese is really good without a doubt, but my point is that he shouldn't use the term "perfect" to describe his Chinese. (I'm Chinese btw, I know how challenging it is to learn a new language and I definitely do admire Xiaoma's hard work)
@@veggiedog2183 yes but theres tons of Chinese people who he speaks to that says his Chinese is perfect also even stating he is better than them. I'm not saying it is perfect or not but what you think is perfect is based off your opinion . Alot think it is and even say it in his videos. But I understand where you are coming from
@@veggiedog2183 Remember, he is mostly speaking to people in the US. Some probably have been away from China for decades...so they probably speak Chinese with an American accent at this point...may even have forgotten plenty of Chinese. And, really, big deal that he has an American accent! Is it different than people from different parts of China all speaking Mandarin? Whether he is understandable is all that really counts. The girl in this video is criticizing, though she says she is not...and a Chinese teacher from a different part of China might totally disagree with what she is saying. Better that she spend some time to get rid of her own Chinese mispronunciations of English!
To me are funny his clickbait titles xd
Just like english, it is my second language,BUT there are so many different ways of speaking it depending on one's nationality and words sounds completely different, i had to work out how to understand british accent, Australian, american southern accent, scottish accent, german accent, french, chinese so many asians, etc... I guess we just get used to it, once you are exposed enough
2:30 Surprinsingly, I don't forget to to pronounce the "h" in mandarin chinese compared to in english for which I sometimes do that.
When I see "h" in pinyin, I think about a spanish "j".
That’s super helpful! 👍👏
I've always felt queasy when watching Xiaoma's videos for two reasons. 1) He doesn't seem to care about others' privacy. I remember a specific video where he posted a video of a woman roasting him in mandarin before he switches. I'm sure she was a fine woman, but he made her look bad in front of millions of people. 2) It seems like his primary purpose is to show off rather than inspire. I'll admit he's motivating, but every "learn *this language* in 30 days" video is unrealistic for pretty much everyone (including him) if you want to go beyond conversational level. Learning a language is a journey that lasts a lifetime.
Wait, so she was being rude to him and roasting him, but he is the bad guy? Lol wut
@@gunfighter3609 I'm not choosing good guys or bad guys. If you read the entirety of the comment, you'll see my argument. I consider myself to be a private person and get sick to my stomach when people don't respect the privacy of others :)
@@patrickfrancis7560 kinda like I get sick to my stomach when people don't respect others in general
@@gunfighter3609 e
Exactly :)
I don't know if you're referring to her or me being disrespectful, but as an English teacher with students from China, I found many of her explanations to be quite useful to indicate some differences in our pronunciation. I enjoyed her criticism and don't think she approached it in a rude way. If people never corrected my pronunciation, I would never improve in my second language, so I think there's a difference between being rude and critical.
Sorry if I came across as rude to you. I didn't mean it to be. Just wanted to state my feelings :)
I find him more entertaining than as a legitimate guide if I am serious about learning a language. But it’s impressive how fast he picks up different languages and shocks natives.
But almost every RUclipsr will turn some people off at the end of the day
I don't know any Chinese, but you did such a good job of illustrating the differences! Even someone, like myself, that is outside the know can easily understand and hear the differences. Keep up the good work!
0:58 that you won’t find anywhere else! This is so trueeeee. This is my favorite channel learning channel!
Awww thank you so much, Markus!! SO happy that my videos have been helpful😄🙌💪
Super cool! This was an awesome breakdown to help me learn new languages in general! Thank you!
I enjoy seeing you commenting on American-accented Mandarin in Chinese-accented English. Lol.
Thanks for your comment! My English is definitely far from perfect. And I’m looking forward to working on it when I have a bit more time and finally get rid of my Invisalign! 😅 Learning languages is a lifelong journey, and there’s always room for improvement💪💪
I was about to comment the same. However, she has never claimed to speak English without an accent ;)
@@RitaChinese They really are almost invisible. I think this is the third or fourth of your videos I've seen and I didn't notice your braces until 5 minutes into this one.
very underrated channel! i'm in the process of polishing my french and picking up either arabic, japanese, or mandarin as a third, and your insight helped a lot :)
Amazing video. Very detailed and insightful.
XiaomaNYC started learning Spanish and immediately created videos where he said he spoke perfect Spanish. I watched the first ones he created and he sounded to me like a person suffering from aphasia.
Keep in mind that this is when as Spanierds we are very used to foreigners trying daily to speak our language and usually being very open to help them with their learning journey and to justify their mistakes over and over again "because they are foreigners". Native English speakers are specially bad at it, too so we tend to be more flexible when judging them as well ...but the fact that he claimed to be fluent when speaking so horribly was such a dissapointment that I have never watched one of his videos again. In my view his actions are fraudulent and irresponsible towards his viewers.
Not to say that his chinese is bad, he is great. But to claim that he speaks perfectly is a huuuuuuge overstatement. Speaking fast =/= speaking perfectly. This issue is way too common for people who claim to be "polyglot".
Gracias Santiago! I haven't watched his Spanish videos, but I might go check them out. I'm learning Spanish myself right now, and it's so tough! I have noticed though, that native Spanish speakers tend to be really nice and slow down their speech/speak clearly. Anyway, regardless of what level someone's at, there's always room for improvement! 💪
Yeah, he majorly exaggerates things and he isn't a man of high integrity. He will say anything for clicks
His Spanish is atrocious, to say the very least. I mean, I don't expect him to be able to speak really fluent Spanish after learning for a couple of months, even if it's possible to do so. But he should tone his Spanish video titles down a little bit.
@@viniciusmotta8169 ha...and keep in mind, most of that Spanish footage is EDITED hahaha...so, he is making sure to only display the best footage. And, much of it was probably very rehearsed too..lol
Accent is usually not an indication of how well you use the language. Some of the people who I've heard using English well don't sound close to native in accent. Yet they have a very strong command of the language and they use the language better than many natives, in my opinion.
jajaja vamos🙌🙌
Hey, Rita!
You've mentioned in one of your videos that you've got a student that speaks a Slavic language as a native language. Maybe we may one day watch a video like that on common Slavic pronunciation blunders..?😭
That's a great idea, Laurent! I've been paying attention to it, but I still need more experiences working with more Slavic native speakers to have something more solid for putting up a video and talking about it! It's definitely kept in my mind!
@@RitaChinese what about French ? 😍
@@RitaChinese I guess Czech/Slovak speakers should have no trouble with r-...
@@sazuna8435 I guess the standard stuff: not pronouncing 'h', adding extra vowels at the end where they have no business being, always ultrashort vowels except when indicating hesitation, not knowing how to aspirate their plosives, ...
And two common ones for Indo-Europeans: forcing our natural prosodies unto Chinese, where they don't belong, and completing our -n/-ng (making the tongue touch the palate at the end + not relaxing most of the tongue).
@@RitaChinese Hi Rita, I'm trying to learn Polish because it is my wife's native language. It is so difficult for me so I appreciate anyone who has learned or is learning another language. Thanks for your video😎
His Chinese is far from perfect and this would be even more noticeable if he spoke slowly. If you want to listen a foreigner who can speak really good Chinese you can search for 大山.
I like this video because it sheds light on something I always felt was a bit off about Xiaoma's videos and his high claims which didn't sit well with me
You did xiaomanyc dirty, you roasted him as bad as it can get :D imitating his accent was just plain savage but so accurate haha
hungarians also have "ü", pronounced almost the same way :)
Yes! Exactly! He has a very clear foreign accent. It was driving me crazy that I could so clearly hear it and nobody else seemed to notice it.
People who have heard and learned a decent amount of Mandarin should be able to tell haha
Awesome video! Very helpful especially for an ABC Mandarin speaker with an American accent like me lol. Hoping to improve my Mandarin so I can better communicate with my family members.
That's an awesome motivation! And glad you find my content helpful! 加油加油💪😄👏
Rita probably one of the very best teacher i found on youtube.. Please keep the good work up. Hopefully in the future we don't have to listen to strangely sound chinese spoken by non-native western ppl in the movie.
Many foreigners living in England NEVER learn to pronounce words correctly. I'd imagine it's the same for English speakers with Chinese. It's difficult to completely set lifelong habits aside.
@Andre Hpunkt Aren't you edgy.
Hi Rita. This was very helpful. I am teaching myself Mandarin but it has been a struggle. I had an embarrassing moment yesterday at the eye doctor. She was Chinese and I greeted her with Xiawu hao. But her response was "what did you say?". I told her I was saying good afternoon and then she said it and it sounded so much different. I apologized to her. Listening to this video also showed me how bad my pronunciation is especially with those letters you discussed. I need to find someone (with patience) to practice with. For now I will subscribe to your channel to see if it helps. Thank you, Baobo.
Hi Robert! Thank you for your comment, and yeah the pronunciation, tones in particular, could be the most tricky part of Chinese learning, and it just affects communication with natives so much if you don't get a hang of it. I suggest you to listen to Chinese-speaking videos more carefully, and hope my videos would help a bit as well. Keep it up💪👍
@@RitaChinese Xie xie
I expected that his Chinese was, on the whole, similar to Rita's English - conversant, understandable, but obviously strongly accented.
I was struck by the similarity. Rita's English is heavily accented so is it fair to criticize anyone else's accent? I like some accents. For me the English spoken by upper class Indians is so much more pleasing than say a country twang. Can people understand you is the question?
@@donnavickers6058 Rita's English is I think much less accented than the one of the guy in the video. Actually many of her sentences have almost no accent at all.
@@donnavickers6058 Yes, Rita' English is heavily accented but I would hardly call this video a criticism on Xiaomanyc's Chinese. She's mainly giving some constructive feedback on how to improve. And most importantly, she never claimed to have "perfect" English. Xiaomanyc on the other hand throws out the word "perfect" in most of his videos.
Speech fluency in any language not only includes pronunciation, tone and intonation,
but phrasing and relative lengths of spoken syllables.
It's actually very hard for most people to overcome their native language default settings because every language uses the muscles of the tongue, mouth, throat and lips differently. Very few people can sound unrecognisably native when they haven't grown up speaking their target language from childhood...
Chinese native speakers have the same issues with foreign languages. When you learn a new language, you have to rebuild muscle and mobility in the new language's positions from scratch. Of course, you also have to be able to hear the difference too... If you can't hear the difference between what you're saying and the correct pron from a native speaker, then you need to sit down and watch Chinese TV (or whatever your target language is) for a few months (or years...) to train your ear. If your teacher isn't a native speaker, then you may just be copying all your teacher's pronunciation mistakes...! If that goes on long enough, your mistakes will fossilise...
Also, if you try to speak too fast too soon, it's very easy to slip up and revert to the factory settings..!
It's definitely possible tho. I've met non-native speakers that could speak my native language perfectly (and they learned it as adults). All you have to do is find out how to pronounce all the sounds correctly (and by that I mean the correct tongue/jaw/lip positions and not just the sounds themselves. This is extremely difficult since we don't have x-ray vision), learn the correct intonation of the language (all languages use a specific intonation but learners often ignore this. For example, in English sentences are divided into thought groups where the most prominent words are stressed while the less important ones receive weaker stress. Plus words at the end of statements tend to be pronounced with a falling pitch) and of course train your muscle memory like you said
@@pia_mater Absolutely!
I worked with a woman with a similar accent to the Beijinglish, haha. It was quite clear to me.
"Whether your spoken language is intelligible to natives might depend on:
1. If they have enough motivation to try to understand what you are saying
2. If they have the ability to ignore the incorrectness in your speech and figure out what you are saying
3. If your mistakes are systematic, and they hear you speak enough"
Excellent. You really understand these matters on a deep level.
I hope you make a video on Orient Pearl. Clearly, her American accent is heavy, but i wonder what level her vocab is. She says that her level is one of the highest a foreigner can reach.
She does come across trust worthy and level headed, so unlike many clickbaity youtubers (xiaoma), I think she is pretty genuinely advanced.
I will! She's on my list, and I'll probably make a video about her in the coming weeks! She's definitely spent a lot of time studying more advanced expressions. 👍
What a great video. You're the first person I know who puts a lot of emphasis on the pronounciation and explains how tones are formed. I also thinks you should learn that correctly from the start. 👍
I can't understand a word in Chinese, but I like these videos haha
Your illustration between American and Chinese accents is hilarious. They sound exactly the same to me.
TBH XiaoMa's pronunciation of "h" I didn't hear much difference, a lot of Chinese including myself pronounce just like him (btw I'm Malaysia born Chinese).
But the main issue that he has is, he uses the wrong words in many occasions like you've pointed out, but that can be improve over time.
There's a difference between being fluent and sounding like a native. As a native English speaker, I've heard people from all over the world speak English fluently, while still recognizing a foreign accent in their speech. If you can produce gramattically correct sentences in natural time with a native's vocabulary and make yourself understood to native speakers, you're fluent. Within any English speaking country therre are regional accents, but everyone is equally fluent. Mandarin is a tonal language, so mistakes of tone can change meaning, but if native listeners understand you when you speak, that's fluent.
2:00 i seriously don't understand a difference there on the "h" examples
There isnt. Shes actually wrong about the consonants. Its the vowels that xiaoma is getting wrong. However how you say that vowel can effect how someone might hear that consonant. In both chinese and korean, their consonants are practically intelligble. And they cant even hear the fact that they are switching the pronunciation of their consonants. More koreans than chinese. A lot of m words get pronounced with a b sound but they themselves cant hear it.
"What we dont know what youre talking about."
Just like most japanese cant tell the difference between an l and r.
The h sound is the same and has nothing to do with tongue movement. If its anything like korean, its the over stressing of the consonants and the over thinking of the vowels that xiaoma's doing. English and european languages in general make clear, direct consonant sounds. We dont often drop them off or lisp it. And thats what koreans do. And chinese too. In some accents the L sound is like their N sound. Because chinese and korean make their consonants very lispy and wispy, they distinguish the correct consonant more from how sharply/softly you say it rather than clear distinction that exists in european languages.
Chinese has hundreds of less syllabic phonemes than we do. Any phonemic syllable in chinese exists somewhere in an english word. Whereas chinese struggle in english because we have more phonemic syllables that dont even exist in chinese.
Most chinese are born with a gene that makes it easier to distinguish tones as well meaning clear cut consonants was never a necessity when forming their language. They can say things more lispy and softly whereas in english, m and b are definitely different consonants and would never be interchangable or the n and l sound or the k and g sound. Or the s and ssh sound.
@@LilyUnicorn There is a broad spectrum of h-sounds in Mandarin but she is demonstrating the typical one. Xiaoma uses the typical American English h sound most of the time (but he gets it right most of the time in the clip where he is reading). She is also right about the other consonants although she is bad at imitating their American (mis)pronunciation.
Think of the difference between a normal h pronounced by a native English speaker -- and the h pronounced by most Russians when speaking English. The Mandarin h is supposed to sound like the latter, although there is a broad spectrum of native pronunciations. A few pronounce it like an English/German/Danish/Norwegian h, most like the Russians, and some even "harder", like in the European Spanish (Castillian) name "Jorge" or the Dutch g.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ru-%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4.ogg
Rita is right about the different tongue position and about tensing muscles in the back of your mouth to say make that sound.
Language learners need some humility. You can only get by as the "white guy shocks people" guy for so long.
Especially when someone better comes along, like...
The man has 3M suscribers, it has worked well enough for him so far.
Re 9:05, I wonder if maybe many English speakers ask "does it matter if I have an accent" because we're already SO accustomed to hearing "Bejinglish" and other heavily accented and even outright grammatically incorrect English in every day life, due to English being an incredibly common second language. Then we (mistakenly) generalize that "If I can easily understand Chinese Accented English and French Accented English, and Filipino Accented English, then surely the same is true in reverse, right?"
Hearing the analysis of American-Accented Mandarin by a speaker of Chinese-Accented English is exactly what RUclips was made for!
6:08 I've heard that about Russian "ю" as well even though the sound is common in Germanic languages
I think that 小马 is under a lot of pressure to 'perform' in his videos. And also, what makes him impressive to a lot of people on RUclips, and especially English speakers trying to learn Chinese, is that he has gotten much more proficient than most English speakers ever could hope to. Chinese is a rough language to try to learn, and most people don't succeed very well with it--that is the sad reality. So when we see someone who is very proficient, we tend to idealize that person, because so few westerners really become proficient (especially not from self-study). I give him the credit he deserves. But his Chinese is certainly not perfect, I don't expect it to be. It's just better than 99.5% of Chinese learners.
Rita you are just so cute and smart. I love watching and listening to you speak!
I'm almost hesitant to suggest LeLe Farley since he's a political comedian that got kicked out of China, but he's been called one of the best Western speakers by natives and western speakers alike. Of course, there's also Dashan 大山。Both very entertaining. Thanks for this video. Love the mouth puppet. Definitely subscribed.
When I learn a language, I spend a lot of time on pronunciation while recognizing that I'm going to have an accent, however minimal. Even more, I learn to speak it with good grammar and good usage. Native speakers can tell I've taken the trouble to learn their language correctly and they appreciate the respect I'm showing them. That's the main thing.
Xiao Ma's Chinese level is very good. As of the pronunciation, most of Chinese from South China is struggling on standard mandarin pronunciation. As a foreigner, I think his level is already very good.
Regarding the title of his videos "perfect", the "perfect" is a relative concept, to normal American, his Chinese level is almost "perfect".
Relative to a child, I am a very tall person, so it's a bit of a pointless way of framing Xiaoma's overuse of the word 'perfect' to describe his videos. Honestly, I'd be less annoyed if he didn't label all his videos of him speaking languages other than Chinese in which he has really poor fluency in as 'perfect' when they're clearly not. I get the whole doing it for the algorithms argument, but you have to draw the line somewhere with the clickbait and content you product because it's disrespectful if not dishonest to imply another culture's language could be learned in any manner approaching native fluency in under a month like he does regularly. Those reaction videos reek of him profiting off of unsuspecting people at that point, though I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he gives back to those communities in some way
@@TaraCheetarachii Yep. And I'm 189cm and not that tall (for a Dane). Xiaoma also rubs me the wrong way because it feels like he is bragging and showing off (and not really caring about invading other people's privacy).
One other thing i would like to explore is the native Chinese accent in NYC, would the influence of the NYC english accent change pronunciations even for a native speaker.
Omg! I'm so happy to be featured in your video! 谢谢你， 我很高兴啊😯！
Haha thank you for your great question, Laurent! 👏❤️😄
PLEASE rate Kenan Heppe!! ❤
His Chinese Tongue Twisters are AMAZING!!
People usually don’t realize it, but learning to speak through reading is one of the major obstacles why people develop bad habits in speaking or suffer from poor pronunciation. If you want to sound better, simply break the habit of learning to speak through reading. Spaced repetition of audio material is the way to go for better pronunciation and a native like accent. (e.g. Glossika, Pimsleur) Having said that, to develop a native like accent, one has to invest hundreds, hundreds of hours to achieve it unless you are an outlier. Accent reduction is not for the lighthearted or for the casual learner. For example, I am going through my fifth round of accent reduction in Russian. People say I have a very light accent, but to me I still have a long way to go even after years of study though I have lost the track of time I have spent for it...
That is so true! And a great catch! I'm curious how you count "a round" of your accent reduction process. Is there a specific system that you are using?
@@RitaChinese Fan laoshi hao. A round for me simply corresponds to a period of time in my life that I acquire a spesific set of skills so that I get better at a given language compared to the previous level. Sometimes it takes only six months, sometimes several years. Without going into too much details, Round 2 was when I was in Russia undoing my Russian from round 1, and it was so discouraging! I still remember that whenever I spoke, people's faces changed as if they were eating something sour. Round 3 was reinforcing what I had learnt in round 2 with audio material. It was only at the end of round 3 when I finally started receiving some positive feedback. Round 4 was individual attacks on spesific soft sounds and especially stress which is particularly crucial in Russian. Only during round 4, I started hearing other people's accents and more importantly stopped worrying whether or not I would have communication problems due to my accent. (If your stress is on the wrong syllable, people who are not accustommed to speaking with foreigners will simply have a hard time understanding you). For all practical reasons, I could stop at this point. But having come this far, Now I am trying to develop a more native-like accent working on fossillized problems in stress, reduced sounds in word pairs, and the rhytym of the language while trying to use more native like expressions. Glossika is my main choice of weapon while backed up with authentic material by native speakers for native speakers. I hope that made sense.
@@lacivertumutkazankaya2042 Wow I'm always so impressed and inspired by language learners like you who keep motivated and keep honing their language skills. Even better if you find powerful tools and efficient methods. Seems you're doing great👍👍
@@RitaChinese 谢谢老师 :-) I really love languages. As a member of your channel, I would like to thank you for sharing such great content with us. I have recently started HSK 4 and find your videos very useful.
@@lacivertumutkazankaya2042 You know you have "arrived" when people stop complimenting you :)
I am planning to use Praat when it's time to go through my first serious accent reduction for Chinese (maybe when I can read 2000 characters and get 80% of the dialog in a Mainland soap opera). Are you using similar tools? Or just the "voice memo" app on your phone?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praat
The H sound you describe might be just specific to the North East of China. Southern is very different, at least
I'm always jealous that people are brave enough to shoot videos in Chinese! I really don't dare!😅 But yeah, the heavy accent is a big issue. I had a classmate from the US, I think his vocabulary was much better than mine, but almost nobody (apart from some other foreigners) understood him, because of the exact things you mentioned. But I'm shocked that some teachers would say that zh,ch,sh and j,q,x are the same 😅
The place of articulation for them are the same, which is true, but consonants are defined by their (1) place of articulation and (2) manner of articulation. She is explaining the differences in the manner of articulation.
C'mon your Chinese is wayyy better than a lot of people making videos on social media, Xiaomi! 😆 Yeah I can imagine that - there always are language learners who emphasize reading and writing too much than their listening and speaking. There needs to be a balance!
@@DaisyZhangAI Thanks for your comment, but not sure how it's related to my comment?
@@RitaChinese Hahaha thanks! Maybe one day I will do some, so you can "roast" me as well. Hehe. I'm really grateful for your videos and help, I've been working on my "jue/que/xue" pronunciation. And also thanks to this video I've noticed my "h" might not be that great either!
For real! When I first start learning, the difference between these sounds was very hard for me to hear. It was even heard to duplicate. Unfortunately one of the early videos I watched totally ignored mentioning the tongue positions, and only focused on lip position. It was such a game changer once I finally found out!
哇~ Great video, just found you through Reddit. Really insightful and helpful tips! 多谢老师🙏
哈哈不客气！ So happy that you find my videos helpful😄🙌💪
Notice that he spends a lot of time in restaurants. My Italian is perfect talking about food with a waiter, but if he were a philosophy professor my subjunctive would definitely be found wanting.
Love you Rita... One small (no BIG) suggestion is to SLOW DOWN COMPARISONS. People, particularly beginners and people who process a bit slower than others NEED TIME to absorb and digest comparisons. Example: Right now I'm paused on dajia comparison. On each side you have Pinyin, characters and English translation; In other words SIX ELEMENTS TO READ AND THEN DISCERN THE DIFFERENCE. **BUT OFTEN THE COMPARISON OF BOTH SIDES LASTS LESS THAN 2 SECONDS**... and LESS THAN ONE SECOND after the second (comparison) example is revealed! There just isn't enough time to read, let alone process the differences. Even slowing the video down to .75 really didn't help much. MY ADVICE TO MOST CHINESE ONLINE TUTORS... **SLOW EVERYTHING DOWN A BIT... AND *PAUSE* AFTER almost every EXAMPLE DISPLAY!!!** You can do that in a final edit, or even repeat. Remember to teach the student, not (just) the subject. JMO
She: Nǐ hǎo
He: Knee how
First time watching your channel - AMAZING!
Welcome Evan! Glad you like my content😄🙌
Cuz saying white guy impresses people with DECENT mandarin doesn't have a good ring to it.
One of your video showed up on my recommended videos and now I'm watching all of them.
haha welcome! Glad it did😄🙌
What do you think of Chris ( Laoma)..to me he sounds pretty spot on :)
I think Chris’s pronunciation is definitely among the best non-native speakers’!!
@@RitaChinese Please analyse Chris' Chinese
Rip
@@RitaChinese he cant speak Mandarin without Beijing accent ig
@@minidwarfdude9230 Laoma Chris is not the same person as Laoshu btw
I reckon he probably discovered at some point that he gets A LOT more views when he says "PERFECT" as opposed to "fluent" in his titles. Because even me as a non-native Chinese speaker can very clearly hear that he has a very strong non-native accent.
love the linguistics, wish more people were aware of these things