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Long Pan -

Teaching material is definitely one point to consider in learning a language. As well as
standardisation of phonetic. Anyone who tried to learn Cantonese knows that the big trouble is
that 1) there is no unique and solid phonetic you can rely on; 2) teaching material are rather
poor.

As for Arabic I do think it is less complicated than Chinese. First they have an alphabet. Then
you'll find some commune roots with French for example (and on the other way, Tunisian, Moroccan,
Algerian people do not have much difficulties to speak French). The big trouble with Arabic is
that each country has its own dialect (spoken) with quite big differences (a Moroccan friend
travelling with me in Egypt had to speak English with the people; but she could guess more or less
what people said). The traditional Arabic is like latin for Italian people. It may be quite close
to Egyptian or Middle East Arabic but very different from Tunisian, Algerian, Lybian and Marocan
dialects. Last but not least, it seems that teaching material are pretty poor and that they mostly
focus on traditional Arabic.



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atitarev -

Long Pan, you understand it correctly but don't forget that what you call Latin for Italians is
not quite correct. Modern Standard Arabic is almost the only written and formal form of Arabic
used. All newspapers, educational materials, formal texts and documents are written in MSA, it's
the language of media. It's not the same as the classical and Quranic Arabic but very close. The
variety of spoken dialects are not standardised and seldom used in the written form.

The writing system:
Short vowels, their absense (sukuun) and doubling of consonants (shadda) are not written in Arabic
and you can't easily determine what they are. Not only the vocabulary but good knowledge of
grammar is required to read an Arabic text. Partially phonetical script is almost like phonemes in
Chinese - you can guess but you never sure

Grammar:
How much pain is it to learn plural forms in Chinese? none
There are pages of plural pattern forms in Arabic (not only MSA but dialects have this)
Verb conjugations are not straightforward, especially when root letters are semivowels or doubled
letters. Passive forms are written the same way as active but pronounced differently, need to know
the internal (unwritten) vowels.

Arabic pronunciation is difficult for everybody. There are a lot of sounds, which don't existing
in any other language and similar sounding sounds, which are quite distinct to an Arabic speaker
but sound the same to a learner.

The diglossia in the Arab world is different from that of China. You still need to learn standard
Arabic to understand Arabic written text but you will have hard time practising it because not
many Arabs themselves have mastered it + very low literacy rates. MSA is no-one's mother tongue
and is seldom spoken on the street but it's the language of education and media, the link between
very distant dialects.

Very common cause for frustration: very difficult to look up words in dictionaries, finding root
letters, taking away prefixes/suffixes, finding out which verb form is used.

My native tongue Russian is also difficult for foreigners but we write what we speak and you can
learn by reading. Russian is very homogenous across all Russia and there are plentiful resources.
Native Chinese find find it very hard to learn.










aussie_mate -

for those ppl who don't believe in the importance of tones, try turning up to a new ctiy and
telling a taxi driver a place name without the right tones and see how that turns out.










Pravit -

Many excellent points brought up in this thread, just wanted to comment on one bit I found
interesting:



Quote:

So yes, I think the visual data people receive influences their listening, if they even listen in
the first place...If they don't see you are a foreigner they probably won't even really second
guess that you are Chinese if you are somewhat decent in pronunciation since there are so many
Chinese with non standard putonghua as well....

I've never been in their shoes, but I think many (obvious) foreigners in China attribute many of
their problems to them looking foreign. I'm of Chinese descent, and I've been told that my Chinese
pronunciation is more than decent, but every time I have anything more than a trivial exchange
with a native speaker, I inevitably get asked if I'm Korean or Japanese. There have also been
plenty of occasions when Chinese have asked me to repeat things two or even three times despite me
being absolutely sure that I said it clearly. Given the extremely wide range of accents and
dialects that native speakers can understand, I think it's safe to assume that it was our
pronunciation that was off. My ultimate goal is for people to think I'm some 乡下家伙 rather
than a Korean exchange student...

I agree Chinese is too often portrayed as more difficult than it actually is. In terms of grammar,
I think the language is actually quite easy; the problem is that it's very slow to acquire because
of the reading issue mentioned earlier. I also read books very slowly in Chinese because I have
this irrational urge to look up every word even though I usually can guess what it means; it just
bothers me I don't know how to pronounce it.










koreth -

Interesting. I'm basing my "it's because I'm a white guy" perception largely on the many times
when I've been out with my girlfriend (a native speaker) and said something to someone else in
Chinese. I get a blank stare, repeat myself, the person understands, and later I turn to my
girlfriend and ask her what I got wrong the first time. Very often she tells me I sounded about
the same both times, or at least that my pronunciation was close enough to be comprehensible the
first time.

She is (at my request) not at all shy about correcting me when I bungle my pronunciation, so I'm
pretty sure it's not just her trying to spare my feelings.

Also, when we go to a couple of our favorite Chinese restaurants where the owners recognize me and
already know I speak some Mandarin, they almost always understand me the first time. But these
aren't places we go often enough (nor do I ever speak for long enough) that they would have had
time to get used to my accent.

Not saying my pronunciation is perfect -- far from it, I screw up all the time and there are some
sound sequences that still give me lots of trouble -- but I really think there's something else
going on too.










gougou -



Quote:

Given the extremely wide range of accents and dialects that native speakers can understand, I
think it's safe to assume that it was our pronunciation that was off.

How often do you have people asking you to repeat on the phone?


I quite liked Bill Dodson's post on this problem:

Quote:

The vendor, a young, pretty girl, simply stared back at the customer, perplexed.












gato -



Quote:



Quote:

I'm of Chinese descent
There have also been plenty of occasions when Chinese have asked me to repeat things two or even
three times despite me being absolutely sure that I said it clearly. Given the extremely wide
range of accents and dialects that native speakers can understand, I think it's safe to assume
that it was our pronunciation that was off.

How often do you have people asking you to repeat on the phone?

Pravit said he's Chinese-American. People aren't asking him to repeat because he looks foreign.

Pravit has uploaded before recordings of his speaking Chinese (see link below). You can compare
and see if your accent is better than his. I'm not sure I see any evidence of discrimination here
on the basis of skin color.
http://www. /showthread.php?t=15577










gougou -



Quote:

Pravit said he's Chinese-American. People aren't asking him to repeat because he looks foreign.

My accent certainly is not better than his, that's why I was wondering. Because when I speak on
the phone, nobody asks me to repeat - in fact, some people won't believe me when I tell them I'm a
foreigner (granted, that mostly happens when calling to the South ). Speaking face to face,
though, I often have the impression that people don't understand me more because of a mental block
than because of my mispronunciation.

My ex was from HK, so her face looked Chinese alright, but people would be able to tell (I guess
from her clothes and her behavior) that she was not from the mainland. Most guessed Korean... That
could be the case for pravit, too.










heifeng -



Quote:

I'm not sure I see any evidence of discrimination here on the basis of skin color.

I don't think it's discrimination, it's more of the shock factor that people don't EXPECT that you
are speaking Chinese if you are a foreigner...or sometimes they even are trying to think of what
to say to you in English instead of just listening to you speak to them in Chinese....



Quote:

Pravit said he's Chinese-American. People aren't asking him to repeat because he looks foreign.

Also it is very possible the Chinese person's putonghua listening comprehension is just not that
good either =D

So going on a side topic, I think this is the reason some of us may get a lil' obsessed with our
pronounciation. Some of us obvious foreigners probably figure that only if we are really freakin'
good can we have people understand us 99% of the time and potentially stop people telling us to
aspire to be dashan...hehe

Also, on the phone topic, I've had 'qq friends' or whatever in the past that I would talk to on
the phone quite often and no one really ever guessed that I was a foreigner. They just thought
that I wasn't doing my part to learn putonghua well enough and just spoke another dialect, hence
my 'accent'. Overall, there were minimal problems with the Chinese person understanding me, if I
understood or wanted to understand what they where going on about is another story..... I think I
have talked about this before on this board, but chatting with strangers on qq w/o the 视频 and
not revealing your identity is about the only way you are gonna get honest feedback on your accent
from Chinese people, and the only way you can avoid the whole 'how do you like China' and other
b.s. questioning and dumbed down Chinese that comes with having a foreign face....I highly
recommend it...at least for a short time, or until you want to learn more civilized language and
get sick of wangba's....










赫杰 -



Quote:

I think I have talked about this before on this board, but chatting with strangers on qq w/o the
视频 and not revealing your identity is about the only way you are gonna get honest feedback on
your accent from Chinese people, and the only way you can avoid the whole 'how do you like China'
and other b.s. questioning and dumbed down Chinese that comes with having a foreign face....I
highly recommend it

Thank you heifeng for the recommendation, I also often commend using QQ as a tool for improvement.

About the whole avoiding dumbed down Chinese and questions thing, my recommendation is finding
someone (if you are in the position to do so) that you really enjoy talking to, someone that can
become a really really good friend. What I mean is, I personally feel it's better to have a few
really close friends, you know that kinds where you can just talk for hours and hours about the
meaningful topics or just whatever, instead of having just many many not so close friends. Of
course if you are really really 外向 then go get as many friends as you can.

But I am just saying, be sure to try to find those people who simply allow you to forget that you
are a 老外 (to some extent), those that actually talk to you as if you were just a normal friend
(even chinese friend), and stick with them as much as possible. Finally, when faced with the
painfully typical questions, routine questions warrant routine responses, say your say (or ignore
them outright, if desired) and leave them to make better use of your time.

HJ












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