I had a brief conversation with Kevin Rudd in Melbourne last year. His Mandarin language level and knowledge of China are above that of most Westerners. I told him that I was from Shaanxi Province.He explained to the people next to him that although the pronunciation was the same, it was Shaanxi instead of Shanxi. He was the first foreigner I met who knew the difference between the two provinces.
The guy on the right didn't pronounce pronunciation correctly. 😏 But by the way, Xiao Ma did live and study for several years in Beijing, but he also knows Cantonese and some other dialects, and his channel is not only about China, but he goes to all sorts of ethnic markets and uses his market language skills in I don't know how many languages.
As a 1.5 generation Chinese-American, I was very impressed by the Australian prime minister. It's not just about his accent, grammar, and fluency of expression, but about his listening comprehension. Viewers who don't speak Chinese may not be able to tell, but that interviewer was using extremely complex pedantic vocabulary and sentence constructions. The fact that he was able to respond on topic at all was crazy! My husband, who is a 1.5 generation immigrant like myself and who speaks Chinese fluently with a Beijinger accent, would not have understood a single thing that lady said. On a side note, the comment about what constitutes "fluency" is an interesting one. I have graduate degrees in French and teach French at the university level, and I consider myself to speak five languages at varying levels, so this is a question that is very dear to my heart. Personally, I think the things that define me as native and fluent in English and Chinese are that 1) I don't overthink to make sure I'm correct, 2) I don't get nervous before talking, 3) I have zero fears that the person I'm talking to will switch languages because they don't find me "worthy" 4) I have zero fears that me stumbling over one word or hesitating over one sentence will make them think I'm less competent, 5) I can understand everything even if they're super quick and casual and I can't make out every syllable, and 6) native speakers never think I'm not native. My French is not nearly at that level and yes, I agree that qualifying oneself as "fluent" when you don't feel it can be hard. This said, I've learned to still call myself fluent in front of non-speakers because what they mean by "fluent" is whether I'm able to hold a conversation without context, without planning, without a dictionary, and without making the native interlocutor feel like they're pulling teeth to communicate, and that I can do. I have better grammar and better sentence structures than a lot of native speakers, and I have decent pronunciation. I also know for a fact that there are hordes and hordes of people who call themselves fluent who are MUCH less fluent than I am, and so I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not call myself fluent. For the same reason, I put "near-native" on my CV because my colleagues and classmates whose level is not too different from my own all do so, and again, I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not put it as such. If anyone calls me out on it, I have no problem with just telling them the truth.
I am confused by your first point? The interviewer was using semi-formal language but certainly not something I would expect a fluent speaker to not be able to understand. Her vocabulary was somewhat advanced but the sentence constructions and pronunciation were very standard imo.
I agree, even for a native speaker since we're talking politics you would probably need a middle school or above vocabulary to understand and respond to her answer. He probably speaks at a high school, maybe college level vocab/grammar wise which is very impressive. That's just based off the clips int he video though.
@@Hay8137g He's pretty God level in my opinion. That interviewer was using extremely pedantic vocabulary and literary sentence constructions. The fact that he was able to respond on topic at all was crazy! My husband, who is a 1.5 generation Chinese-American and who speaks Chinese fluently with a Beijinger accent, would not have understood a single thing she said.
And I'm a Chinese descendant who was born in Indonesia and still live here... but I can NOT speak or write Chinese. "Thanks" to the extremely China-phobic government at that time (Soeharto's New Order regime) which outlawed anything Chinese-related including Chinese words, Chinese new year celebration and so on. Now Indonesia is more open but discrimination still exists here and there. Also "thanks" to Soeharto for introducing hatred towards Chinese people.
@@learnchinesenow Fun show!! I was so excited to hear you include Xiaoma in your fun gameshow! It was a blast to watch! Entertaining and Educational! I have watched a ton of Xiaoma videos and he has functional knowledge of several Chinese dialects as well as a bunch of other languages, a genuine Polyglot! I am stoked you guys have this channel and doing fun videos and interviews like this!! more more MORE! Please! XieXie Ni!!
I live in 广西 guangxi china right now, studying mandarin. And it's absolutely true that the Chinese don't care so much about accents and tones. Where I live, mandarin is almost a second language haha most people here grow up speaking a dialect (zhuang hua). So they no one cares that my accent and tones are off haha it's refreshing
Hi i’m a native chinese speaker (grew up speaking both mandarin and english at home). Kevin Rudd’s tonal pronunciation isn’t very accurate and the speech wasn’t written particularly well - but the interview was very impressive, he has good vocab and to be able to converse at that level is pretty good. He also has a slight Beijing accent when speaking haha so technically his accent is more “standard” than mine 😂 he and Xiaoma are the two best here imo.
Well done in recognizing and appreciating the enthusiasm and optimism displayed by these celebrities as they make an effort to communicate in the language.
John Huntsman is definitely better than John Cena. Huntsman is a former ambassador to China, and I've heard him speak Chinese in other settings. He could respond in an interview. John Cena''s speeches were rehearsed and probably in multiple takes.
Yeah that's what I thought as well. It's pretty obvious Huntsman actually knows how to speak Mandarin. He was just probably a bit rusty and needed some time to think. The clips shown were way too short, but even so, I think it's ridiculous to think Cena was better than him....
Dialects are never inferior to standard Mandarin. They are just different languages with no army and navy, unfortunately. Imagine if Cantonese had become the common language in China, the same would be said of non-native speakers of Cantonese.
We watched a few videos from this channel back when I was in high school so I was sad to see it died off. Now I'm all grown up and it's so cool to see it revived!
Cantonese is a legitimate version of the Chinese language (leaving aside the argument about whether there is any such thing as “Chinese” as a single language, rather than as a designation of a family of languages). A Cantonese speaker is speaking “Chinese”.
Chinese isn't even a language until like around 20 or 30 years ago. It's like saying Canadian or American is a language. Chinese government made people switch to thinking that Mandarin is Chinese so "Chinese" became a language only in the last 20 or 30 years. Mandarin is one of many Chinese languages. Its' history is much shorter than Cantonese and many other dialects of "Chinese". Even Cantonese has many dialects within it and I speak and understand 6 or more of them.
@@thelias91 I wouldn't call them variations, more like dialects. I understand Xiao Nam Cantonese. I speak and understand Shiqi Cantonese. I speak and understand Guangzhou/Hong Kong Cantonese. There's so many that I don't even know which ones I might or might not understand. I understand some Toi Shan, but I don't know if I'd even classify that as a Cantonese dialect (it probably is). There are also many types of Guan Xi Cantonese dialects so it's not just Guangdong. I think I might understand Nam Ning Cantonese, but there's words here and there that differ. I lived lived and travelled throughout China and there's just so many local dialects/languages that if you don't use the common Mandarin or common Cantonese (like Guangzhou/HK dialect), it'll be very hard for all to understand one another. In North America where I grew up, it's different accents and not different dialects. I think we can all understand one another's English no matter what our accents are (like a New Yorker's accent is different from a LA person's accent, but we could easily understand each other). The same thing can't be said about dialects. When accents become so far apart, they kind of become like dialects. It's kind of hard to understand (sometimes) the English of South Africans. They speak perfect English, but it sometimes almost sounds like another language.
Yeah stop calling it Chinese it’s Mandarin Chinese. Cantonese almost became official language except after one vote. They should know all the classic literature was in Cantonese not Taiwanese mandarin
@@baiqi44 you have no knowledge of history of the Chinese language and here to spread presumptuous rumours. Mandarin is from 北方官话 (Bei fang guan hua / Northern governing dialect) which can be traced throughout the Chinese history ever since there is a court. There are many regional versions of 官话 (Guan hua) and these are forms of official language for governing communication, since people from different regions speak different dialects and it would be difficult to understand each other should there be no unified ways to communicate. In a nutshell, government officials and scholars in China, for thousands of years, will have to come together and discuss business with each other and report to the emperor. In year of 1728, emperor 雍正 (Yong zheng) designated 北方官话, AKA Mandarin to be the only official dialect for the entire court. 1923 the then government 中华民国政府 unified 北方官话 and 白话, standardized Mandarin. 1932 Mandarin is being recognized as one of the 6 working languages in United Nations. And in 1955 Mandarin is reinforced to be recognized and further standardized as the official Language of China. 30 years ago from now is 1994, and as far as I know, Mandarin is being recognized as the official language of China looooooooonge before 1994.
It's refereshing to see yourself being humble. There are many RUclipsrs who speak conversational Mandarin, using wrong tones and grammar, but often claiming to be Fluent, Native Level or even speaking "Perfect Chinese".
At the same time, they designated themselves "experts" at the start of the video. Their ratings are at odds with some of the native speakers who've weighed in in the comments.
I saw Shen Yun once, many years ago, not realising that it was run by a cult. Seeing it as just a cultural acrobatics show, it was beautiful and great and I enjoyed it at the time. Later learning about Falun Gong and their beliefs soured my memories of the show.
That is a real shame, however don't you think that the fact you had a good experience at the show perhaps mean that your original impression of Falun Gong was good and maybe Falun Gong isn't actually like the propaganda you heard about it later? I have practiced Falun Gong for 20 years, it helped my quit smoking and drinking and has really enriched my life. Feel free to ask me anything about it. Ben
@@learnchinesenow It's been documented that the founder has said and taught some very concerning things, such as homophobic, racist and anti-science views. Whether the members today actually share those views is less relevant to me because the source himself is extremely problematic. I would never want to follow the teachings of someone like that, especially since I myself am part of the LGBTQ community and am in an interracial marriage. In addition to that, I watched a video about a girl (she told this story herself) who had aspirations to become a Shen Yun dancer, but she's now left the religion because her mother fell incredibly ill due to their anti-science beliefs and the family was discouraged to seek medical help and were instead gaslit into believing that they weren't spiritual enough. I'm glad that you were able to quit smoking and drinking and that it has done wonderful things for you, but it is not for me.
Peter Hessler said it well in his "River Town". Chinese would compliment a person's Chinese when the person is a tourist or beginner. Once you pass that stage of being a tourist or beginner, they would give you brutally honest opinions of your pronunciation and mandarin speaking skills.
Lots of respect for Kevin Rudd considering he probably studied in Taiwan over 20-30 years ago and don’t have to use it in his everyday life in Australia.
While I was taking a 3-week Chinese language course at Taiwan’s NTNU, our course teacher happened to be the same lady who also taught Kevin Rudd. Unfortunately, I do not recall our professor’s name anymore but she was considered to be one of the most eminent faculty members and highly respected. She must have retired already because that was at least 8 years ago.
Xiaoma also goes to other kinds of shops besides restaurants....not sure how early that video clip was that you showed. His wife is Chinese, and he currently knows 4 dialects. I have heard him have long conversations with Chinese people, where he is not repeating himself. I think he is a much better Chinese speaker now than he was in his earlier days, but I know you were judging that clip only.
I’m a native speaker. Xiao Ma is actually a beyond-God tier speaker. The clip didn’t show much, but he has hours of videos of him talking to Chinese people. There is a 1-hour video of him interviewing a Chinese guy( the Chinese “Elon musk”) who, in my opinion, has no sense of logic, like many poorly educated. But Xiao Ma was able to make sense of the nonsense and have a conversation with him. Xiao Ma was kind of irritated in the video because it’s hard to have a conversation with the guy he was talking to.
Kevin Rudd has been learning Chinese for almost 50 years. He has a degree in Chinese literature and served as a diplomat in China. But he probably hasn't spoken Mandarin regularly for over 30 years.
My rating as a native Mandarin speaker, based on the clips only, ordered from low to high. ^Shelson: 1/10. ^Mark Zuckerberg: 2/10. Train wreck. No language talent for sure considering by the time he had learned CHN for a while. ^Trump's granddaughter: 3/10, for the same reason given to Zuckerberg, plus her age ^John Cena: 4/10. Much better than Zuckerberg, thus more engaging. ^Sheldon's roommate: 4/10 (based on the one sentence). ^Jon Huntsman: 6/10. ^Vanessa Branch: 8/10. Accomplished, more in terms of pronunciation than vocabulary (hard to tell from the film clips). ^Kevin Rudd: Definitely 10/10. ^Xiao Ma: 10/10.
Calling xiaoma a 10 proves you aint a real chinese person. Or youre a pushover who thinks being able to tell what someones saying most the time makes someone amazingly perfect in the language.
With all due respect to both judges, and accepting their qualifications and experience, the results could possibly have been different if at least one more judge, a native Chinese speaker, were on the panel. I would love to see a video of native Chinese speakers judging the competencies of chinese speaking English. I think we would be giggling as we viewed such a production, as probably Chinese do, when they look at this video.
I did search and, sorry, I could not find a panel of Chinese assessing how well Chinese speak English. Many videos that show that the huge adult majority of Chinese do not speak English. Something I found when I was in China in 2019 anyway.
Yep. Here we've got two people so up their own rear-ends about their own Chinese ability, they think they can judge someone else's from a 10 second clip. My husband is Chinese (born and bred) and he was just laughing at their comments saying how ludicrous they were.
John Huntsman was ambassador to both China and Singapore. He probably picked up a little Chinese...and he played keyboards with Chinese rock bands on TV.
John Huntsman was a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) preaching for 2 years in Taiwan. He learned Mandarin in the United States before he went to Taiwan.
I love your channel! I have been lucky enough to do my degree in international politics at Fudan University, it was a wonderful experience, your channel reminds me a lot of that moment in my life and I confirm what you say in the video! Your channel is great, keep it up!
but in japan where i was born and raised, if u speak english(being japanese), ppl would definitely consider u as a smart ass person😂 so if u speak japanese, english and more langs then ur god here
Great video guys! 小马 is definitely on god tier. He's 100% fluent and can have full conversations. He studied in Beijing for a year and his wife is Chinese as well. He's studied Chinese for many years. He's well into his 30s now but he's kinda got a baby face.
Depending on what you think god means, to me you can still recognize it's a foreigner speaking Mandarin as a second language, so that may put some people that can speak indistinguishable native level at an awkward state.
@play005517 didn't he did a video where someone blindfolded tries to pick out the foreigner. If I'm remembering correctly he didn't get eliminated first and even beat out a few native speakers
@@gregs4400nah, the video wasn’t him vs Chinese native speakers. It was him vs Asian Americans (some dont even speak their mother tongue well). If it was him vs native Chinese speakers, he would be out 100% and the first one too. His Chinese is good for sure but his tones are off often
I would put him at accomplished, but not god tier. He's fluent but doesn't quite speak at a native level yet. A couple native chinese youtubers have done breakdowns on his mandarin and both pretty much agreed that while his mandarin is great, there are a few pronunciation and grammatical mistakes that are commonly made by non-native speakers, so a native speaker will still be able to tell that mandarin isn't his dominant language because he does have a foreign accent.
Honestly, while Xiaoma's Chinese is good without a doubt, his accent is obviously that of a foreigner. In terms of fluency and vocabs though, he is way better than even a native speaker.
Xiaomanyc has a BUNCH of clips on the internet, and you chose the most basic of him ordering food at a restaurant? How is that fair? You're judging his Chinese based on your terrible pick of the context of him speaking it. He has videos of him having deep fluent conversations with Chinese locals, not just of him ordering food. Just look at the one of him in the nail salon. He legit has a full-on conversation about Chinese culture, living in America, etc. Anybody watching that video would say his Chinese is God Tier.
@@m_ron2742with the other languages, he fakes them a bit. But on the most obvious ones are the ones he does cram it for a challenge, so it is understandable. But he undoubtedly has a very efficient system for acquiring a language quickly. He is not just parroting, he does seem to grasp grammar and vocab very fast. I bet he can go from no knowledge to at least a B2 or C1 level in less than a month.
Is this a Falun Gong associated channel? Weird to have a guy from Shen Yun which is a FG outlet and propaganda. I'm perplex because I actually like the channel.
Is there anything wrong with that? I mean Falun Gong is a great practice, its good for health, clears one’s mind etc… Shen Yun is also a world class show that gets booked into some of the world’s best theaters, like Lincoln center in NYC. There are some videos online these days by people who don’t really know what they are talking about, trying to find some conspiracy etc… but there really isnt one, I would recommend go see Shen Yun and find out what its really about for yourself. Ben :-)
@@learnchinesenow Hi Ben, I appreciate your response. FG is classified a cult and not a religion, therefore it is anyone's guess whether its teaching and practices are legitimate and safe. According to the ABC Religion & Ethics, Falun Gong has been portrayed as a “folk devil” that is threatening the safety of the public through its “dangerous” teachings on medicine. It is certainly possible to separate FG's deep ideological and confrontational side of its ideology from the feel good exercises, but Shen Yun is literally a show about condemning China! This is being disingenious, how can one clear one's mind when it tries to fill it with anti-China sentiments? In fact, there is a newspaper called the Epoch Times that circulate in our local Chinatown in Melbourne Australia, and all it ever talks about is condemning China. If FG is a religion, then why does it practice such hateful messages of just one country? It seems extremely biased considering that its headquarters is based in the US, the world's largest warmonger. It is sad that these facts implicate good people who don't know better, what's perplexing is that FG does not support tolerance, which means that academics or anyone who challenge the findings of FG are subjected to personal attacks, threats of litigation and frivolous lawsuits. But why should I feel threatened by a "great practice that's good for health"? So I want to challenge you or anyone to prove that Li Hongzhi can really levitate in the air. I await your response.
@@learnchinesenow You see, I've said nothing about CCP, what does it have to do with them? I have seen extracts of Shen Yun and read reviews of it, do you think it is a happy and feel-good show that people can take away and feel good about China? No. Again, I await anyone who can prove that Li Hongzhi can really levitate in the air as he proclaims to be able to do.
@@learnchinesenow As for videos and articles online that are critical of FG, there are plenty of credible sources. I have both Chinese and Western sources if you are interested.
I’m curious how they would rate me. I have been learning Mandarin for about 15 years and have been living in Taiwan for three and a half years now. I still won’t necessarily consider myself “fluent” though.
Ranks the politician god tier after only hearing him speak in a super political setting. Then doesn’t rank the truly fluent RUclipsr god tier because they only saw him talk in a casual setting. Impeccable logic
damn Kevin Rudd chinese is better than mine as a native chinese. thought its my mother tongue. i think to speaker chinese as a lifestyle vs business setting is really a different skill set. wish i was more hardworking in school.
well its not just business, its politics. Which means needing to know very high level language that would not be common in everyday speach which is even above business, especially if one miss-said word can lead to outrage or worse diplomatic isolation.
Shame you didn’t include the end credit scheme of that Big Bang Theory episode. Sheldon finally tries to unsuccessfully confront said Chinese restaurant owners and the owner rightfully chews him out lol
I agree. Omg! With all the vocabulary in my head, I couldn't even give directions in Chinese. I never thought I would run into a non English speaking Chinese person in NYC. Tbh. I figured I would only focus on movies and scripts, so I can watch Chinese tv without subtitles. How antisocial of me!? I feel ashamed! 😅 I met this lady the other day and suddenly developed a stuttering problem. 😅
I go on bilibili live using google translate voice recognition on people to help my listening, but its not the best... I wonder what is the best voice recognition for chinese, maybe, xunfei or using Whisper AI live.
Yeah idk, this was more about fun than accuracy, i think we got pretty close, but those three Zuck, Huntsman and Cena were all pretty similar. Maybe if we had some longer clips of Huntsman we could make a better assesment
@@learnchinesenow it seems that you are prioritising pronunciation over their vocabular and grammar?? I doubt john cena has greater flurncy than mark zuckerberg
My wife and I do this all the time when we watch shows and movies. As Westerners who have lived in China for over ten years we find it quite funny. Looking forward to a part two. Shows like Firefly, Seinfeld and 30 Rock and movies like Shang-qi and Akwafina come to mind…and just for kicks, why not throw in Mark Henry Rowswell.
From a Chinese person's perspective, and knowing these people: God Teir:XiaoMa Accomplished:Kevin Needs work:John Cena, Arabella, Vanessa, John Hungstman Trainwreck:Mark, Faking it:Sheldon
Would have loved to see a compilation from the tv show Firefly. They basically used Chinese as their version of swearing… They were obviously just saying memorized lines but I would be curious to see how close they did get…
I've always really liked Kevin 07. When I was learning chinese in 2015, my teacher thought he was still PM. Its so good to see him making moves as Australia ambassador to the US and now that the Labor party is back in power hes in the news alot more too.
I'm fairly concerned that the distinction between spoken "Mandarin" and written "Chinese" wasn't made clear at all. There was plenty talks of "Standard Chinese" and "dialects"....but that wording doesn't help.
@@learnchinesenow I suppose you could put it that way. I'm mainlh surprised that it wasn't made very clear, since "Putonghua" should be translated directly to English as 'Mandarin' right? It's been a source of confusion for anyone who doesn't quite understand it. Hopefully that makes sense?
Well I would say in 2024 when someone says “Chinese” you know they mean Mandarin. Perhaps back in the 90’s when most of the Chinese immigrants to the west spoke Cantonese you might be confused. But i think these days its pretty clear
I’m an interpreter educator. I modeled a political speech if you take affect out. It glossed as: “Hi - I’m going to tell you whatever you want to hear so you will vote for me. Here are some buzzwords. I will tell people you don’t like the exact same thing tomorrow”.
As a former student majoring in Chinese language, I would like to point out that the most accurate term to use is "Mandarin" instead of "Chinese" or "Putonghua." This is because there are numerous mutually unintelligible spoken languages classified as "Chinese," including Cantonese, Wu Chinese, and Hokkien, which, by the way, are much closer to ancient Chinese pronunciation.
@yama3148 “Mandarin” is the common term. I guess putonghua is fine too, but notice “Potonghua” is a Chinese term & non-Mandarin speakers may struggle to say that term.
@@maya-kleinnn Strictly speaking, Putonghua, also known as Central Mandarin, is just one subdivision of Mandarin. There are many other subdivisions, such as Southwestern Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin, which are slightly different from Putonghua.
Putonghua is the term used after the Communists took over. Before that people called it Guo-yu. Also, the other things you mentioned, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc…those are DIALECTS, not languages. Huge difference.
I think Jonathan Kos-Read （aka：曹操） speaks mandarin the best among all of them! He went to China in the 1990s and his mandarin sounds EXACLY the same as Beijing locals. He knows the Chinese culture extremely well and acted in a lot of Chinese movies.
Also, I must have been following your channel forever - Ben has a wife and kids? I remember an episode when he said he didn’t know playground vocabulary (the word for slide) because he was young and didn’t have much experience with kids…now his kids are reciting Chinese poems…crazy.
Xiaomanyc is now fluent in various Chinese dialects, even rare Chinese dialects. I'm a 100% sure he should be in god tier. 😆You guys should have watched more videos of him! haha
hes not fluent in various dialects. hes barely conversationally functional in mandarin. find any clip of him without a million jump cuts if you wanna prove me wrong.
I've seen videos of him claiming to speak in cantonese, where he actually hardly speaks any canto in the video 🤷 In one particular video, he claimed to speak canto but spoke almost exclusively in mandarin instead. Maybe he's actually improved his canto since then. I stopped watching him a long time ago cos I got tired of the click-baity video titles in all caps and his claims of "shocking" all the native speakers in every single video.
The thing about native Chinese also speaking non-standard Mandarin should get more attention. Laowai are often held to a higher standard than many Chinese, getting corrected on tones and pronunciation when nobody would ever do that for a local who’s also wrong.
Foreigners get praised but also get corrected because they're assumed to be learning and aiming at accuracy. Locals get let off as just having a regional accent.@@accordiongordon
@@8964TS nahh fam, the chinese aunties and uncles constantly shit on the younger generation of ABCs for not speaking properly. Meanwhile, everyone is deferential to the whiteys so they get a pass
Same, it hurt so bad when my aunt said my Chinese sounded like Mark Zuckerberg lol. I know at this point my Mandarin skills are leaps and bounds above many other Chinese Americans but I still like to keep humble. So now I'm "intermediate" to actual Chinese people, "advanced" to other Asian Americans and people learning mandarin, and "fluent" on my resume.@@accordiongordon
Growing up in US, I try very hard to speak Cantonese and Tosian w/o an American accent. Most native speaker would said I speak pretty good and many thought I was born in China. When visit HK, my relatives would say my tone is a little off. Since I don't speak much Chinese nowadays, I'm sure my tone will be worst.
I have to comment on this. It's a first time I came across this channel and this video made me laugh as it was witty and also smile if you know what I mean in a heart warming way. Thanks.
I started learning Mandarin 40 years ago at the age of 19, and have spent over 16 years in Taiwan (including the last 13). I am very comfortable conversing in Chinese, both verbal and written, and I think I speak Mandarin with a pretty decent (Taiwan) accent. But like Ben, I don't feel comfortable telling people that I am "fluent" in Chinese, and I prefer to just say "I do alright" when asked, and let others be the judge. Frankly, I cringe whenever I hear most any non-native speaker claim they are "fluent". Mandarin is an amazing language, but quite difficult to master as a non-native speaker, especially if you attempt it without substantial time in an immersive environment and intense study. For most who make a serious attempt to learn it, it is a life-long pursuit. And just about anyone who is honest with themself should feel humbled from the journey, and be very hesitant to crow about their ability with the language, no matter how accomplished they may be. At least, that's my opinion.
I feel like you really didn't do Xiaoma justice.. He has tons of content of him in non-repetitive settings with strangers, including shocking natives of distinct regions with his ability of speaking in both Mandarin, Cantonese and various accents like Fuzhounese. Otherwise, nice list!
I think the categories aren’t very representative because although the grammar/pronunciation/tones weren’t the best, it is still impressive that people like John Cena and Mark Zukerburg put a lot of effort into learning Mandarin chinese and have good vocabulary. There also wasn’t that many examples provided for each person so it’s not fair to label these people as ‘train wrecks’ etc. I like the video but it could be improved with more examples from each person, just purely ranking people against each other and not categorising them, and also I’m not sure why xiaoma who is famous for making videos in Chinese would be compared to the other celebrities who are famous for other things but happen to know Chinese.
Wow. I'm a native Mandarin speaker and I'm astonished at how you guys are so off in your ratings! First of all, if you're going to rate, you need to have an adequate sampling to review, not a smattering of lines. Xiao Ma is exceptional, and John Huntsman is certainly better than Trump's granddaughter! Kevin Rudd has great vocabulary and grammar, even if he speaks with an accent.
no real chinese people go around the american side of the internet saying "hey im a native mandarin speaker". youre either a liar or an ABC pretending to know what youre talking about.
If you were speaking to a 10-year-old native Chinese person, would you consider them fluent in Mandarin? The answer is obviously yes. So I think both of you guys would be considered fluent. Here is the definition - Fluency is defined as “being able to speak and write quickly or easily in a given language.” In general, when someone is considered fluent in a language, they have the ability to speak the language near perfect but could require more concentration and time to formulate in-depth thoughts and understand slang terms.
I had a brief conversation with Kevin Rudd in Melbourne last year. His Mandarin language level and knowledge of China are above that of most Westerners. I told him that I was from Shaanxi Province.He explained to the people next to him that although the pronunciation was the same, it was Shaanxi instead of Shanxi. He was the first foreigner I met who knew the difference between the two provinces.
Pronouciation isn't the same.
@@ray881888 他意思是英文😂
What was the occasion? Formal or informal?
The guy on the right didn't pronounce pronunciation correctly. 😏
But by the way, Xiao Ma did live and study for several years in Beijing, but he also knows Cantonese and some other dialects, and his channel is not only about China, but he goes to all sorts of ethnic markets and uses his market language skills in I don't know how many languages.
老乡，我在西安长大的
As a 1.5 generation Chinese-American, I was very impressed by the Australian prime minister. It's not just about his accent, grammar, and fluency of expression, but about his listening comprehension. Viewers who don't speak Chinese may not be able to tell, but that interviewer was using extremely complex pedantic vocabulary and sentence constructions. The fact that he was able to respond on topic at all was crazy! My husband, who is a 1.5 generation immigrant like myself and who speaks Chinese fluently with a Beijinger accent, would not have understood a single thing that lady said.
On a side note, the comment about what constitutes "fluency" is an interesting one. I have graduate degrees in French and teach French at the university level, and I consider myself to speak five languages at varying levels, so this is a question that is very dear to my heart. Personally, I think the things that define me as native and fluent in English and Chinese are that 1) I don't overthink to make sure I'm correct, 2) I don't get nervous before talking, 3) I have zero fears that the person I'm talking to will switch languages because they don't find me "worthy" 4) I have zero fears that me stumbling over one word or hesitating over one sentence will make them think I'm less competent, 5) I can understand everything even if they're super quick and casual and I can't make out every syllable, and 6) native speakers never think I'm not native.
My French is not nearly at that level and yes, I agree that qualifying oneself as "fluent" when you don't feel it can be hard. This said, I've learned to still call myself fluent in front of non-speakers because what they mean by "fluent" is whether I'm able to hold a conversation without context, without planning, without a dictionary, and without making the native interlocutor feel like they're pulling teeth to communicate, and that I can do. I have better grammar and better sentence structures than a lot of native speakers, and I have decent pronunciation. I also know for a fact that there are hordes and hordes of people who call themselves fluent who are MUCH less fluent than I am, and so I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not call myself fluent. For the same reason, I put "near-native" on my CV because my colleagues and classmates whose level is not too different from my own all do so, and again, I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not put it as such. If anyone calls me out on it, I have no problem with just telling them the truth.
I am confused by your first point? The interviewer was using semi-formal language but certainly not something I would expect a fluent speaker to not be able to understand. Her vocabulary was somewhat advanced but the sentence constructions and pronunciation were very standard imo.
I agree, even for a native speaker since we're talking politics you would probably need a middle school or above vocabulary to understand and respond to her answer. He probably speaks at a high school, maybe college level vocab/grammar wise which is very impressive. That's just based off the clips int he video though.
他是外交部长，平时学习的材料和接触的语境肯定也会多涉猎这方面的高级词汇。就像我学英语，知道一堆对母语者都生僻的学术词汇一样XD
采访者的用词并不复杂和难以理解
brag much?
Kevin Rudd has a major degree in Chinese language. Not only does he speak Chinese, he speaks Chinese at an academic level.
我听得出来，确实是这样~！
Well he’s still not native and God Level gweilo or gaijin haha
@@Hay8137g He's pretty God level in my opinion. That interviewer was using extremely pedantic vocabulary and literary sentence constructions. The fact that he was able to respond on topic at all was crazy! My husband, who is a 1.5 generation Chinese-American and who speaks Chinese fluently with a Beijinger accent, would not have understood a single thing she said.
Current OZ PM also speaks Chinese very well
No. He speaks Chinese very badly.
And I'm a Chinese descendant who was born in Indonesia and still live here... but I can NOT speak or write Chinese. "Thanks" to the extremely China-phobic government at that time (Soeharto's New Order regime) which outlawed anything Chinese-related including Chinese words, Chinese new year celebration and so on. Now Indonesia is more open but discrimination still exists here and there. Also "thanks" to Soeharto for introducing hatred towards Chinese people.
Yeah I had a friend from Indonesia who is the same, he went to Taiwan to learn Chinese, was in my class at Taipei National Normal University
@@learnchinesenow I can speak Mandarin "yi dian dian" (a bit) though, but not enough to converse with Chinese people. Better than nothing I guess.
Very true - Chinese people are disincriminated against in Indonesia and blamed for everything.
你们就像被驯化的狼，逐渐忘记了它是一只狼，因为已经不会狼嚎了
Yet Malaysian Malay would love to steal that idea and implement it there.
Xiaomanyc is 33 I think and he has a Chinese wife he lived in Beijing for a year and he's been learning Chinese for more than 10 years I think
Thanks for the info
Ain't that Laoma Chris?
Laoma is much better
@@learnchinesenow Fun show!! I was so excited to hear you include Xiaoma in your fun gameshow! It was a blast to watch! Entertaining and Educational!
I have watched a ton of Xiaoma videos and he has functional knowledge of several Chinese dialects as well as a bunch of other languages, a genuine Polyglot!
I am stoked you guys have this channel and doing fun videos and interviews like this!! more more MORE! Please! XieXie Ni!!
@@senorojc1279ha...kind of similar, but Chris has lived in China for many years.
I live in 广西 guangxi china right now, studying mandarin. And it's absolutely true that the Chinese don't care so much about accents and tones. Where I live, mandarin is almost a second language haha most people here grow up speaking a dialect (zhuang hua). So they no one cares that my accent and tones are off haha it's refreshing
That's right😂
Im American I learned Chinese in Henan when I went to other provinces no one could understand me 😂
@@lilyflower5576 北方省份慢点听是没问题的。南方确实会听不懂
Though Zhuang is a different language not a dialect (I’m putting the discussion of dialect and language aside)
Need to put effort in the tones.
Hi i’m a native chinese speaker (grew up speaking both mandarin and english at home). Kevin Rudd’s tonal pronunciation isn’t very accurate and the speech wasn’t written particularly well - but the interview was very impressive, he has good vocab and to be able to converse at that level is pretty good. He also has a slight Beijing accent when speaking haha so technically his accent is more “standard” than mine 😂 he and Xiaoma are the two best here imo.
I agree , you are right .
Well done in recognizing and appreciating the enthusiasm and optimism displayed by these celebrities as they make an effort to communicate in the language.
John Huntsman is definitely better than John Cena. Huntsman is a former ambassador to China, and I've heard him speak Chinese in other settings. He could respond in an interview. John Cena''s speeches were rehearsed and probably in multiple takes.
Maybe Huntsman just gets nervous in front of the camera
@@learnchinesenow . I guess my point was more about John Cena, whose speech was most likely scripted, rehearsed and in multiple takes.
Yeah that's what I thought as well. It's pretty obvious Huntsman actually knows how to speak Mandarin. He was just probably a bit rusty and needed some time to think. The clips shown were way too short, but even so, I think it's ridiculous to think Cena was better than him....
He also lived two years in Taiwan on a Mormon mission
Cena only knows a couple of words and his accent is horrible.
Dialects are never inferior to standard Mandarin. They are just different languages with no army and navy, unfortunately. Imagine if Cantonese had become the common language in China, the same would be said of non-native speakers of Cantonese.
This is a really great way to express this !
Should have included 大山 from Canada. Hands down God tier.
he is a guru, better than most Chinese...
Yes, but he’s a celebrity FOR speaking Chinese rather than someone famous for something else first.
小馬也是@@8964TS
@@8964TS yeah but same could be said about xiaoma nyc
uuf yep, so many childhood memories
So glad yall revamped this channel. I really enjoy the content that has reignited my interest in language learning and other cultures.
We watched a few videos from this channel back when I was in high school so I was sad to see it died off. Now I'm all grown up and it's so cool to see it revived!
Actually, Mark Zuckerburg didn't say "大家好！hello, everyone!" he said "打架好！fighting is good." LOL
天才
Cantonese is a legitimate version of the Chinese language (leaving aside the argument about whether there is any such thing as “Chinese” as a single language, rather than as a designation of a family of languages). A Cantonese speaker is speaking “Chinese”.
Chinese isn't even a language until like around 20 or 30 years ago. It's like saying Canadian or American is a language.
Chinese government made people switch to thinking that Mandarin is Chinese so "Chinese" became a language only in the last 20 or 30 years. Mandarin is one of many Chinese languages. Its' history is much shorter than Cantonese and many other dialects of "Chinese". Even Cantonese has many dialects within it and I speak and understand 6 or more of them.
@@baiqi44wow which cantonese variations can you understand/speak ?
@@thelias91 I wouldn't call them variations, more like dialects. I understand Xiao Nam Cantonese. I speak and understand Shiqi Cantonese. I speak and understand Guangzhou/Hong Kong Cantonese. There's so many that I don't even know which ones I might or might not understand. I understand some Toi Shan, but I don't know if I'd even classify that as a Cantonese dialect (it probably is).
There are also many types of Guan Xi Cantonese dialects so it's not just Guangdong. I think I might understand Nam Ning Cantonese, but there's words here and there that differ.
I lived lived and travelled throughout China and there's just so many local dialects/languages that if you don't use the common Mandarin or common Cantonese (like Guangzhou/HK dialect), it'll be very hard for all to understand one another. In North America where I grew up, it's different accents and not different dialects. I think we can all understand one another's English no matter what our accents are (like a New Yorker's accent is different from a LA person's accent, but we could easily understand each other). The same thing can't be said about dialects. When accents become so far apart, they kind of become like dialects. It's kind of hard to understand (sometimes) the English of South Africans. They speak perfect English, but it sometimes almost sounds like another language.
Yeah stop calling it Chinese it’s Mandarin Chinese. Cantonese almost became official language except after one vote. They should know all the classic literature was in Cantonese not Taiwanese mandarin
@@baiqi44 you have no knowledge of history of the Chinese language and here to spread presumptuous rumours. Mandarin is from 北方官话 (Bei fang guan hua / Northern governing dialect) which can be traced throughout the Chinese history ever since there is a court. There are many regional versions of 官话 (Guan hua) and these are forms of official language for governing communication, since people from different regions speak different dialects and it would be difficult to understand each other should there be no unified ways to communicate. In a nutshell, government officials and scholars in China, for thousands of years, will have to come together and discuss business with each other and report to the emperor. In year of 1728, emperor 雍正 (Yong zheng) designated 北方官话, AKA Mandarin to be the only official dialect for the entire court. 1923 the then government 中华民国政府 unified 北方官话 and 白话, standardized Mandarin. 1932 Mandarin is being recognized as one of the 6 working languages in United Nations. And in 1955 Mandarin is reinforced to be recognized and further standardized as the official Language of China.
30 years ago from now is 1994, and as far as I know, Mandarin is being recognized as the official language of China looooooooonge before 1994.
It's refereshing to see yourself being humble. There are many RUclipsrs who speak conversational Mandarin, using wrong tones and grammar, but often claiming to be Fluent, Native Level or even speaking "Perfect Chinese".
yep. one of them was even rated in this program lol.
At the same time, they designated themselves "experts" at the start of the video. Their ratings are at odds with some of the native speakers who've weighed in in the comments.
Worst insult from a British I've got so far : spectacularly~~~ spectacularly average 😁
Casually dropping Shen Yun as if it's not the scientology of China
Its not, you should come see it, its a great show
I saw Shen Yun once, many years ago, not realising that it was run by a cult. Seeing it as just a cultural acrobatics show, it was beautiful and great and I enjoyed it at the time. Later learning about Falun Gong and their beliefs soured my memories of the show.
That is a real shame, however don't you think that the fact you had a good experience at the show perhaps mean that your original impression of Falun Gong was good and maybe Falun Gong isn't actually like the propaganda you heard about it later? I have practiced Falun Gong for 20 years, it helped my quit smoking and drinking and has really enriched my life. Feel free to ask me anything about it. Ben
@@learnchinesenow It's been documented that the founder has said and taught some very concerning things, such as homophobic, racist and anti-science views. Whether the members today actually share those views is less relevant to me because the source himself is extremely problematic. I would never want to follow the teachings of someone like that, especially since I myself am part of the LGBTQ community and am in an interracial marriage. In addition to that, I watched a video about a girl (she told this story herself) who had aspirations to become a Shen Yun dancer, but she's now left the religion because her mother fell incredibly ill due to their anti-science beliefs and the family was discouraged to seek medical help and were instead gaslit into believing that they weren't spiritual enough.
I'm glad that you were able to quit smoking and drinking and that it has done wonderful things for you, but it is not for me.
@@learnchinesenow What's Shen Yun?
Peter Hessler said it well in his "River Town". Chinese would compliment a person's Chinese when the person is a tourist or beginner. Once you pass that stage of being a tourist or beginner, they would give you brutally honest opinions of your pronunciation and mandarin speaking skills.
yes its true
Lots of respect for Kevin Rudd considering he probably studied in Taiwan over 20-30 years ago and don’t have to use it in his everyday life in Australia.
After living in Beijing for 2 years I had pretty good 'bar Chinese' and a cracking 'pirate' Beijing accent that cracked up my mainland friends.
Haha yes I learned Chinese in Beijing too and my accent cracks up my Southern Chinese friends 😂
While I was taking a 3-week Chinese language course at Taiwan’s NTNU, our course teacher happened to be the same lady who also taught Kevin Rudd. Unfortunately, I do not recall our professor’s name anymore but she was considered to be one of the most eminent faculty members and highly respected. She must have retired already because that was at least 8 years ago.
For the love of God, normalize your audio levels.
Xiaoma also goes to other kinds of shops besides restaurants....not sure how early that video clip was that you showed. His wife is Chinese, and he currently knows 4 dialects. I have heard him have long conversations with Chinese people, where he is not repeating himself. I think he is a much better Chinese speaker now than he was in his earlier days, but I know you were judging that clip only.
I’m a native speaker. Xiao Ma is actually a beyond-God tier speaker. The clip didn’t show much, but he has hours of videos of him talking to Chinese people.
There is a 1-hour video of him interviewing a Chinese guy( the Chinese “Elon musk”) who, in my opinion, has no sense of logic, like many poorly educated. But Xiao Ma was able to make sense of the nonsense and have a conversation with him. Xiao Ma was kind of irritated in the video because it’s hard to have a conversation with the guy he was talking to.
Kevin Rudd has been learning Chinese for almost 50 years. He has a degree in Chinese literature and served as a diplomat in China. But he probably hasn't spoken Mandarin regularly for over 30 years.
My rating as a native Mandarin speaker, based on the clips only, ordered from low to high.
^Shelson: 1/10.
^Mark Zuckerberg: 2/10. Train wreck. No language talent for sure considering by the time he had learned CHN for a while.
^Trump's granddaughter: 3/10, for the same reason given to Zuckerberg, plus her age
^John Cena: 4/10. Much better than Zuckerberg, thus more engaging.
^Sheldon's roommate: 4/10 (based on the one sentence).
^Jon Huntsman: 6/10.
^Vanessa Branch: 8/10. Accomplished, more in terms of pronunciation than vocabulary (hard to tell from the film clips).
^Kevin Rudd: Definitely 10/10.
^Xiao Ma: 10/10.
It's Sheldon
Calling xiaoma a 10 proves you aint a real chinese person. Or youre a pushover who thinks being able to tell what someones saying most the time makes someone amazingly perfect in the language.
Xiaoma is rubbish.
Your standards are too low.
They just hated vanessa for some reason
Mark was awful, considering his Chinese wife
With all due respect to both judges, and accepting their qualifications and experience, the results could possibly have been different if at least one more judge, a native Chinese speaker, were on the panel. I would love to see a video of native Chinese speakers judging the competencies of chinese speaking English. I think we would be giggling as we viewed such a production, as probably Chinese do, when they look at this video.
Search it on RUclips, there are many videos of native speakers analyzing them, especially Xiao Ma
I did search and, sorry, I could not find a panel of Chinese assessing how well Chinese speak English. Many videos that show that the huge adult majority of Chinese do not speak English. Something I found when I was in China in 2019 anyway.
Yep. Here we've got two people so up their own rear-ends about their own Chinese ability, they think they can judge someone else's from a 10 second clip. My husband is Chinese (born and bred) and he was just laughing at their comments saying how ludicrous they were.
John Huntsman was ambassador to both China and Singapore. He probably picked up a little Chinese...and he played keyboards with Chinese rock bands on TV.
John Huntsman was a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) preaching for 2 years in Taiwan. He learned Mandarin in the United States before he went to Taiwan.
I love your channel! I have been lucky enough to do my degree in international politics at Fudan University, it was a wonderful experience, your channel reminds me a lot of that moment in my life and I confirm what you say in the video! Your channel is great, keep it up!
If u’re Asian, speaking 3 langguages quite common so rarely people impressed. It’s when You speak 4-5 languages fluently then people start to notice
Belgium has the most quadri-lingual speaking people in the world. Many of them speak Dutch/Flemish, German, French, and English.
True! Not easy for non Asians to know this.
but in japan where i was born and raised, if u speak english(being japanese), ppl would definitely consider u as a smart ass person😂
so if u speak japanese, english and more langs then ur god here
Umm it’s not common tho lol
That depends on which country or part of Asia you are talking about. Some are more multilingual than others.
Great video guys! 小马 is definitely on god tier. He's 100% fluent and can have full conversations. He studied in Beijing for a year and his wife is Chinese as well. He's studied Chinese for many years. He's well into his 30s now but he's kinda got a baby face.
Depending on what you think god means, to me you can still recognize it's a foreigner speaking Mandarin as a second language, so that may put some people that can speak indistinguishable native level at an awkward state.
@play005517 didn't he did a video where someone blindfolded tries to pick out the foreigner. If I'm remembering correctly he didn't get eliminated first and even beat out a few native speakers
@@gregs4400nah, the video wasn’t him vs Chinese native speakers. It was him vs Asian Americans (some dont even speak their mother tongue well).
If it was him vs native Chinese speakers, he would be out 100% and the first one too. His Chinese is good for sure but his tones are off often
I would put him at accomplished, but not god tier. He's fluent but doesn't quite speak at a native level yet. A couple native chinese youtubers have done breakdowns on his mandarin and both pretty much agreed that while his mandarin is great, there are a few pronunciation and grammatical mistakes that are commonly made by non-native speakers, so a native speaker will still be able to tell that mandarin isn't his dominant language because he does have a foreign accent.
Honestly, while Xiaoma's Chinese is good without a doubt, his accent is obviously that of a foreigner.
In terms of fluency and vocabs though, he is way better than even a native speaker.
Wait isnt shen yun company run by the the falun gong
Yup
yea
Xiaomanyc has a BUNCH of clips on the internet, and you chose the most basic of him ordering food at a restaurant? How is that fair? You're judging his Chinese based on your terrible pick of the context of him speaking it. He has videos of him having deep fluent conversations with Chinese locals, not just of him ordering food. Just look at the one of him in the nail salon. He legit has a full-on conversation about Chinese culture, living in America, etc. Anybody watching that video would say his Chinese is God Tier.
True but he does fake it with some of the other languages
I agree 100% - should have picked different clips
@m_ron2742 it's not that he fakes it, he just has basic phrases and responses he learns for each of those basic languages.
@@m_ron2742with the other languages, he fakes them a bit. But on the most obvious ones are the ones he does cram it for a challenge, so it is understandable.
But he undoubtedly has a very efficient system for acquiring a language quickly. He is not just parroting, he does seem to grasp grammar and vocab very fast. I bet he can go from no knowledge to at least a B2 or C1 level in less than a month.
Him speaking Italian or Farsi was atrocious. He clearly lies like many online "polyglots"
A video of white people ranking and roasting white people speak mandarin is the last thing I expected on my feed. Good stuff 😂
Is this a Falun Gong associated channel? Weird to have a guy from Shen Yun which is a FG outlet and propaganda. I'm perplex because I actually like the channel.
Is there anything wrong with that? I mean Falun Gong is a great practice, its good for health, clears one’s mind etc… Shen Yun is also a world class show that gets booked into some of the world’s best theaters, like Lincoln center in NYC. There are some videos online these days by people who don’t really know what they are talking about, trying to find some conspiracy etc… but there really isnt one, I would recommend go see Shen Yun and find out what its really about for yourself. Ben :-)
@@learnchinesenow Hi Ben, I appreciate your response. FG is classified a cult and not a religion, therefore it is anyone's guess whether its teaching and practices are legitimate and safe. According to the ABC Religion & Ethics, Falun Gong has been portrayed as a “folk devil” that is threatening the safety of the public through its “dangerous” teachings on medicine.
It is certainly possible to separate FG's deep ideological and confrontational side of its ideology from the feel good exercises, but Shen Yun is literally a show about condemning China! This is being disingenious, how can one clear one's mind when it tries to fill it with anti-China sentiments? In fact, there is a newspaper called the Epoch Times that circulate in our local Chinatown in Melbourne Australia, and all it ever talks about is condemning China. If FG is a religion, then why does it practice such hateful messages of just one country? It seems extremely biased considering that its headquarters is based in the US, the world's largest warmonger. It is sad that these facts implicate good people who don't know better, what's perplexing is that FG does not support tolerance, which means that academics or anyone who challenge the findings of FG are subjected to personal attacks, threats of litigation and frivolous lawsuits. But why should I feel threatened by a "great practice that's good for health"?
So I want to challenge you or anyone to prove that Li Hongzhi can really levitate in the air. I await your response.
I think you confuse condemning the CCP with condemning China. Have you seen Shen Yun?
@@learnchinesenow You see, I've said nothing about CCP, what does it have to do with them?
I have seen extracts of Shen Yun and read reviews of it, do you think it is a happy and feel-good show that people can take away and feel good about China? No.
Again, I await anyone who can prove that Li Hongzhi can really levitate in the air as he proclaims to be able to do.
@@learnchinesenow As for videos and articles online that are critical of FG, there are plenty of credible sources. I have both Chinese and Western sources if you are interested.
John Cena's mao tai will forever be a classic.
The fish ball guy is at native speaker level 100% at least his talent on learning Chinese
I’m curious how they would rate me. I have been learning Mandarin for about 15 years and have been living in Taiwan for three and a half years now. I still won’t necessarily consider myself “fluent” though.
讲中文3个月就学会了，写是最难的
Whenever someone asks me to say something in my first language, I never know what to say.
I love how you named the categories.
I think he was trying to saying "我的名字是Sheldon." not "我姓sheldon." They're both kind of convoluted you'd usually just say "我叫sheldon."
我是 Sheldon works just fine.
idk why but John Cena really love saying 跟 instead of 和, its such a weird way of saying ‘and’
but actual chinese people say 跟 to mean "and" alot. saying 和 often makes one sound like an unfluent foreigner.
@@idkybutwutever I am actual Chinese people and I know that he is saying 跟 in the wrong context
@@Miki_Azy可以给我举几个例子吗？
@@Etelvinicius 你母语是中文吗
@@Miki_Azy 我们南方说的多
Very entertaining in your analysis and humor. There are quite a number of American speaking Chinese in movies and TV. Hope to see more in your show.
I know Ben Hedges from his show The Credit Shifu, but my mind is blown that he speaks Mandarin too!
Ranks the politician god tier after only hearing him speak in a super political setting. Then doesn’t rank the truly fluent RUclipsr god tier because they only saw him talk in a casual setting. Impeccable logic
damn Kevin Rudd chinese is better than mine as a native chinese. thought its my mother tongue. i think to speaker chinese as a lifestyle vs business setting is really a different skill set. wish i was more hardworking in school.
well its not just business, its politics. Which means needing to know very high level language that would not be common in everyday speach which is even above business, especially if one miss-said word can lead to outrage or worse diplomatic isolation.
“I have a masters degree in Chinese medicine”
That’s cool. I have a Ph.D in alchemy.
这一期节目非常不错，我看完了。学中文的朋友们，为你们加油！
加油哦
A comb is the thing that you pull through your hair that makes your hair all neat and tidy.
Shame you didn’t include the end credit scheme of that Big Bang Theory episode. Sheldon finally tries to unsuccessfully confront said Chinese restaurant owners and the owner rightfully chews him out lol
Spoken chinese is not easy at all, I admire anyone non-Chinese who makes an effort to do so!
I agree. Omg! With all the vocabulary in my head, I couldn't even give directions in Chinese. I never thought I would run into a non English speaking Chinese person in NYC. Tbh. I figured I would only focus on movies and scripts, so I can watch
Chinese tv without subtitles. How antisocial of me!? I feel ashamed! 😅 I met this lady the other day and suddenly developed a stuttering problem. 😅
I go on bilibili live using google translate voice recognition on people to help my listening, but its not the best... I wonder what is the best voice recognition for chinese, maybe, xunfei or using Whisper AI live.
C'mon guys, there's no way that Zucks could be better than Huntsman. C'mon.
Yeah idk, this was more about fun than accuracy, i think we got pretty close, but those three Zuck, Huntsman and Cena were all pretty similar. Maybe if we had some longer clips of Huntsman we could make a better assesment
@@learnchinesenow it seems that you are prioritising pronunciation over their vocabular and grammar?? I doubt john cena has greater flurncy than mark zuckerberg
Where is Mira Sorvino?
I don't think I could have understood John Cena without the chinese subtitles.
My wife and I do this all the time when we watch shows and movies. As Westerners who have lived in China for over ten years we find it quite funny. Looking forward to a part two. Shows like Firefly, Seinfeld and 30 Rock and movies like Shang-qi and Akwafina come to mind…and just for kicks, why not throw in Mark Henry Rowswell.
Very funy video thanks!
It’s important to also differentiate between fluency and proficiency
Xiaoma said in many of his videos he lived for a year in China and he is also married to a Chinese woman.
Xiaoma does more than restaurant videos. Yal did him dirty
As a native speaker of Chinese and a learner of English I like this video so much.
How can you put Xioa Ma below the Milky Bar kid ( Rudd )
From a Chinese person's perspective, and knowing these people:
God Teir:XiaoMa
Accomplished:Kevin
Needs work:John Cena, Arabella, Vanessa, John Hungstman
Trainwreck:Mark,
Faking it:Sheldon
Yes, Sheldon is mangling “la plume de ma tante” in Mandarin. That’s the gag.
Tbh Cena's Mandarin skills isn't that bad. He in fact promoted the “老干妈” mala chili sauce quite well and made it semi-international.
Would have loved to see a compilation from the tv show Firefly. They basically used Chinese as their version of swearing…
They were obviously just saying memorized lines but I would be curious to see how close they did get…
Lol their Chinese was not good
Agree, their Chinese was unrecognisable
13:02 you skipped the punchline. Someone startles him right after that and he says 吓死我了！perfectly
We have to keep the clips under 10 seconds for copyright purposes unfortunately
That kid in restaurant is legit. I seen him fool Chinese people on a gameshow.
John Huntsman should be in the accomplished tied. My guess this is a joke for him.
I've always really liked Kevin 07. When I was learning chinese in 2015, my teacher thought he was still PM. Its so good to see him making moves as Australia ambassador to the US and now that the Labor party is back in power hes in the news alot more too.
I'm fairly concerned that the distinction between spoken "Mandarin" and written "Chinese" wasn't made clear at all. There was plenty talks of "Standard Chinese" and "dialects"....but that wording doesn't help.
So what needs to be made clear? Written Chinese is pretty much Mandarin or Putonghua.
@@learnchinesenow I suppose you could put it that way. I'm mainlh surprised that it wasn't made very clear, since "Putonghua" should be translated directly to English as 'Mandarin' right? It's been a source of confusion for anyone who doesn't quite understand it. Hopefully that makes sense?
Well I would say in 2024 when someone says “Chinese” you know they mean Mandarin. Perhaps back in the 90’s when most of the Chinese immigrants to the west spoke Cantonese you might be confused. But i think these days its pretty clear
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i m sorry... but as a native speaker. some of the rankings are just totally bizarre to me🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
These rankings are amongst westerners, and not westerners who live in China, so even god tier is not going to be like a native speaker
I’m an interpreter educator. I modeled a political speech if you take affect out. It glossed as: “Hi - I’m going to tell you whatever you want to hear so you will vote for me. Here are some buzzwords. I will tell people you don’t like the exact same thing tomorrow”.
As a former student majoring in Chinese language, I would like to point out that the most accurate term to use is "Mandarin" instead of "Chinese" or "Putonghua." This is because there are numerous mutually unintelligible spoken languages classified as "Chinese," including Cantonese, Wu Chinese, and Hokkien, which, by the way, are much closer to ancient Chinese pronunciation.
may I ask why putonghua isn't the right term either? I thought putonghua = mandarin
@yama3148
“Mandarin” is the common term. I guess putonghua is fine too, but notice “Potonghua” is a Chinese term & non-Mandarin speakers may struggle to say that term.
@@maya-kleinnn Strictly speaking, Putonghua, also known as Central Mandarin, is just one subdivision of Mandarin. There are many other subdivisions, such as Southwestern Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin, which are slightly different from Putonghua.
Putonghua is the term used after the Communists took over. Before that people called it Guo-yu.
Also, the other things you mentioned, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc…those are DIALECTS, not languages. Huge difference.
Very interesting content 😁 this and the kung fu videos are great!
I think Jonathan Kos-Read （aka：曹操） speaks mandarin the best among all of them! He went to China in the 1990s and his mandarin sounds EXACLY the same as Beijing locals. He knows the Chinese culture extremely well and acted in a lot of Chinese movies.
曹操是什么梗啊
@@XXXMakabaka1880 中文名就是曹操，你搜索 曹操 演员就能找到
Also, I must have been following your channel forever - Ben has a wife and kids? I remember an episode when he said he didn’t know playground vocabulary (the word for slide) because he was young and didn’t have much experience with kids…now his kids are reciting Chinese poems…crazy.
John Cena wins it all lmfao the delivery is impeccable lmfao
Thank you Linus Chinese Tips for the video
Xiaomanyc is now fluent in various Chinese dialects, even rare Chinese dialects. I'm a 100% sure he should be in god tier. 😆You guys should have watched more videos of him! haha
He is amazing but not God tier. God tier is Da Shan and Kevin who not only speak the language but also is able to speak with a cultural understanding.
hes not fluent in various dialects. hes barely conversationally functional in mandarin. find any clip of him without a million jump cuts if you wanna prove me wrong.
I've seen videos of him claiming to speak in cantonese, where he actually hardly speaks any canto in the video 🤷 In one particular video, he claimed to speak canto but spoke almost exclusively in mandarin instead. Maybe he's actually improved his canto since then. I stopped watching him a long time ago cos I got tired of the click-baity video titles in all caps and his claims of "shocking" all the native speakers in every single video.
小马的语音语调都不行
Amazing you two! So great prononciation! Bravo
The thing about native Chinese also speaking non-standard Mandarin should get more attention. Laowai are often held to a higher standard than many Chinese, getting corrected on tones and pronunciation when nobody would ever do that for a local who’s also wrong.
Really? In my experience it’s the opposite, laowai always get a pass for messing whereas Asian diaspora get scrutinized
Foreigners get praised but also get corrected because they're assumed to be learning and aiming at accuracy. Locals get let off as just having a regional accent.@@accordiongordon
@@8964TS nahh fam, the chinese aunties and uncles constantly shit on the younger generation of ABCs for not speaking properly. Meanwhile, everyone is deferential to the whiteys so they get a pass
Same, it hurt so bad when my aunt said my Chinese sounded like Mark Zuckerberg lol. I know at this point my Mandarin skills are leaps and bounds above many other Chinese Americans but I still like to keep humble. So now I'm "intermediate" to actual Chinese people, "advanced" to other Asian Americans and people learning mandarin, and "fluent" on my resume.@@accordiongordon
Growing up in US, I try very hard to speak Cantonese and Tosian w/o an American accent. Most native speaker would said I speak pretty good and many thought I was born in China. When visit HK, my relatives would say my tone is a little off. Since I don't speak much Chinese nowadays, I'm sure my tone will be worst.
English is in fact more difficult to master (getting to native level) than Chinese, despite what many people believe.
Nah you’re dumb if you think that
I have to comment on this. It's a first time I came across this channel and this video made me laugh as it was witty and also smile if you know what I mean in a heart warming way. Thanks.
shen yun promo at the end is insane LMFAO
I started learning Mandarin 40 years ago at the age of 19, and have spent over 16 years in Taiwan (including the last 13). I am very comfortable conversing in Chinese, both verbal and written, and I think I speak Mandarin with a pretty decent (Taiwan) accent. But like Ben, I don't feel comfortable telling people that I am "fluent" in Chinese, and I prefer to just say "I do alright" when asked, and let others be the judge. Frankly, I cringe whenever I hear most any non-native speaker claim they are "fluent". Mandarin is an amazing language, but quite difficult to master as a non-native speaker, especially if you attempt it without substantial time in an immersive environment and intense study. For most who make a serious attempt to learn it, it is a life-long pursuit. And just about anyone who is honest with themself should feel humbled from the journey, and be very hesitant to crow about their ability with the language, no matter how accomplished they may be. At least, that's my opinion.
ok, but where is Creed from The Office?
Oh yeah i forgot about that one
I feel like you really didn't do Xiaoma justice..
He has tons of content of him in non-repetitive settings with strangers, including shocking natives of distinct regions with his ability of speaking in both Mandarin, Cantonese and various accents like Fuzhounese.
Otherwise, nice list!
The 2 hosts here seem to speak Mandarin better than English
Well done, I would've add Mark to Trainwreck but since you two are experts, I'd go with you two!
Fast and furious guy spoke Chinese like it was Japanese?
😂🤣
What an entertaining clip! I speak cantonese, but really struggled with the intonation when i tried learning Mandarin
are y'all Falun Gong?
I got turned off as soon as I heard the guy was involved with Shen Yun. Alarm bells ringing.
The younger one sounds like one 😂
I was gonna go see shen yue but then i found out they are part of the falon gong
I think the categories aren’t very representative because although the grammar/pronunciation/tones weren’t the best, it is still impressive that people like John Cena and Mark Zukerburg put a lot of effort into learning Mandarin chinese and have good vocabulary. There also wasn’t that many examples provided for each person so it’s not fair to label these people as ‘train wrecks’ etc. I like the video but it could be improved with more examples from each person, just purely ranking people against each other and not categorising them, and also I’m not sure why xiaoma who is famous for making videos in Chinese would be compared to the other celebrities who are famous for other things but happen to know Chinese.
Ah its just for fun
Xiaoma is definitely God tier, he speaks mandarin better than I do as a first language speaker
Wow. I'm a native Mandarin speaker and I'm astonished at how you guys are so off in your ratings! First of all, if you're going to rate, you need to have an adequate sampling to review, not a smattering of lines. Xiao Ma is exceptional, and John Huntsman is certainly better than Trump's granddaughter! Kevin Rudd has great vocabulary and grammar, even if he speaks with an accent.
no real chinese people go around the american side of the internet saying "hey im a native mandarin speaker". youre either a liar or an ABC pretending to know what youre talking about.
Tim Ferriss' Chinese is actually amazing!
Fun video..However, need to say "Mandarin" Chinese not just Chinese please!
If you were speaking to a 10-year-old native Chinese person, would you consider them fluent in Mandarin? The answer is obviously yes. So I think both of you guys would be considered fluent. Here is the definition - Fluency is defined as “being able to speak and write quickly or easily in a given language.” In general, when someone is considered fluent in a language, they have the ability to speak the language near perfect but could require more concentration and time to formulate in-depth thoughts and understand slang terms.
gotta wonder why John Cena went for 礼拜 specifically... what, was the movie premiering in Xinjiang?
Maybe John Cena studied for a time in Taiwan