Comments on: They Don’t Understand My Chinese, What’s Wrong?

By: They Don’t Understand My Chinese, What’s Wrong? |

They Don’t Understand My Chinese, What’s Wrong? | — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:07:56 +0000

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By: little girl

little girl — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:05:18 +0000

If you are going to learn speak accurate chinese please learn from Taiwan it is the place where you can learn a good chinese by the way china’s chinese ancient is quite difficult to understand when they are talking about and also not a right pronoucation because of their ancient. I am also chinese but chinese from malaysia, and i found that only China people’s chinese are too difficult to hear when they are talking and also a bit noisy. not even me all of my friends only can understand chinese’s chinese from the other country example
chinese from Taiwan
chinese from malaysia
chinese from singapore
chinese from burnei

By: mountain taishan

mountain taishan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:29:34 +0000

many people maybe just too shocked to understand anything. They don’t always expect you can speak Chinese. So unless you are speaking very clearly, and speaking someting easy to be understood, people have illustion that you are speaking a foreign language.

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:14:09 +0000

给我茶？ But usually the tea turns up of itself; you don’t need to ask.

By: William Fitzgerald

William Fitzgerald — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:50:48 +0000

They have told me my voice is too high pitched…I sound like a girl when I speak Chinese… I don’t this to be the case in English. So I’m afraid thats not the problem.

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:32:32 +0000

I think another reason may be that they are simply astonished that your speaking Chinese, or that a foreigner is speaking to them, depending on where you are. I think I surprised someone today when I asked them where to find a 书店. “书店在哪儿？“ I got a repeated “哪儿” and then I said again “在哪儿”, which resulted in continuous blinking and open mouth. 老婆 says my tones were correct, and that she might just have been surprised.

By: grimace

grimace — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:18:09 +0000

Don’t feel bad about and think your Chinese sucks…

I said one sentence to someone before, but because we were surrounded by foreigners, he assumes I wasn’t speaking Mandarin.

After I said the same thing again, he said,(in Mandarin) I thought you couldn’t speak Mandarin…”

I just laughed, and then we talked about Mr. T.

By: Chris Gongsun 公孙海

Chris Gongsun 公孙海 — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:43:19 +0000

Re; Green tea (Albert and Jonathan’s discussion at the top of this page)
Surely it’s called QING CHA 清茶 , not LUU CHA 绿茶 ?

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:13:43 +0000

I experienced this for years until I learned some techniques for getting past the 尴尬 barrier. It definitely helps when your Chinese gets better and more accurate (it also helps if you happen to be ethnically Chinese). I’ve noticed this problem lessening as more 老外 can speak Chinese, or are seen speaking Chinese on TV. When I first was learning Chinese over 20 years ago the 尴尬 barrier was much worse. So here is what I think happens in these circumstances: Westerner approaches Chinese person and begins to open mouth to speak; Chinese person thinks “Oh no, the big noser is approaching me. It’s going to speak English and I’m going to have to respond in English. Oh no, my English isn’t good enough. I’m going to be embarrassed”. Then in the nervous preparation to speak English, they don’t even hear the Chinese coming out of your mouth. You probably will notice you often get a response in English or just a blank stare. They just might not be prepared or never have spoken with a foreigner who knows Chinese. So how do you bust past the barrier? I forge ahead starting with clear simple sentences and almost always say the first sentence twice to give the listener time to acclimate and get their head around the concept. You may need to repeat the same conversation you have had one million times about “Wow, you speak Chinese!” and go through all those questions about “why?”, “how long?”, etc. These are a great way to warm up your listener for what you originally approached him or her about.

By: Chickenlegs

Chickenlegs — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:22:06 +0000

Well said Bruce and how very true.Many people
who speak Guandonghua just about refuse to speak
Mandarin, as mentioned in the first post, although they are often fluent in Putonghua. i
guess part of the large cultural and historical
divide that no government of national unity can
easily change. The same occurs in N and S India.