Experts Rank Chinese Speaking Celebrities - Best to WORST!
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- čas přidán 11. 11. 2023
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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😂
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!
Well done in recognizing and appreciating the enthusiasm and optimism displayed by these celebrities as they make an effort to communicate in the language.
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.
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....
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
Unnecessarily harsh on Vanessa. She sounds very Chinese with even a regional accent. In English I would accuse this white guy for hypercorrectionism.
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!
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.
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.
Very funy video thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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 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😂
Awesome!!!👍👏🏻👏🏻😍😍😍
I love how you named the categories.
Very interesting content 😁 this and the kung fu videos are great!
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.
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！
Totally agree with the analysis/result. I like the final adjustment made for Zukerberg after listening to all. Keep up the good work. 😊
Xiaoma is god tier, he speak mandarin, cantonese, and fuzhounese from the street 🤯🤣
yeah i can't take those 2 guys seriously . Xiaoma accomplished???
He is great but I believe he is a bit disingenuous with his content. 99% of so-called polyglots online are doing a parlor trick where they strategically guide a conversation into prepared lines. I do not believe Xioama presents himself like many polyglots who pretend to be super geniuses who are actually fluent in 50 languages or anything, to be clear.
However, what I find disingenuous about his presentation is that he is one of those "Just get out there and speak it" types. That is complete hogwash. He only speaks Mandarin at an advanced level. His other languages are like "I.. I want to... I want... I want to eat Creole food Creole Food I want to eat Creole food." Parlor trick stuff. But his actual fluent language? He did not learn it by "getting out there and speaking it." He has a formal university education in Mandarin. He did not learn it from just putting himself out there. That is like saying you can learn to play violin by sitting in on a symphony over and over again until you get it. So that is my issue with the dude. I love his content a lot, but I have seen this a lot with polyglots.
一般吧
Xiaoma isnt as good as he puts himself out to be, and his accent is quite American. for more information check out rita mandarins channel
I will see you in London for the Shen Yun in February '24!
😎👍
i have watched that guy several times and found it interesting. I want to learn mandarin and am trying but not doing so well, but I keep trying. he spent a year in china so he says.
I like the different experiments with content
Worst insult from a British I've got so far : spectacularly~~~ spectacularly average 😁
Wow so amazing.
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.
It's refereshing to see yourself being humble. There are many CZcamsrs who speak conversational Mandarin, using wrong tones and grammar, but often claiming to be Fluent, Native Level or even speaking "Perfect Chinese".
I know Ben Hedges from his show The Credit Shifu, but my mind is blown that he speaks Mandarin too!
What? Xiaoma not in God Tier?😭 He's been learning Chinese for 10+ years and not only does he speak 普通话 but also many other dialects! He also knows a lot of languages to a concersational level. That small clip was simply him getting started haha he can speak fluently.
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.
im a mandarin native speaker and i have to say ben's mandarin is better than mine❤absolutely love this
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
Respect ❤️
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.
对于第七个人，the CZcamsr，我有一点不同看法。As a Chinese, I can see he's definitely a high level Chinese speaker. His pronunciation and tone is so natural. It can't be trained just for some restaurant conversations without deep learning. In the second clip, he said "那…但是我能不能…我能不能要一个小一点的，因为我现在就是…不是很饿". That's a complete sentence.
确实
Rita and Jessie (Jeci?) also do review non-native Chinese speakers fwiw.
Ni huang . Its safe to say u can sort me in to the category ”beyond saving” ”unsalvagable” or ”Old dog!” ^^
That was great!!! As a total novice with just a tiny bit of knowledge, this was a lot of fun and inspiring!
John Cena's mao tai will forever be a classic.
Meet either of Jim Roger's daughters and they will blow your mind out with their Chinese proficiency.
All these people speak better than I even though everyone who doesn't know me expects me to be fluent.
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
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.
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.
Jared talking to the back row! Great for the stage, hard for the interview.
fair enough
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
good
Where is Mira Sorvino?
You guys need to review doc disrespect too 🤣🤣
Chinese get so proud of any little thing related to China. Like there is a hotpot in the US "oh my god, China is so amazing and powerful". So if you say 你好， they think " OMG the world loves China, the world is learning Chinese."
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
gotta wonder why John Cena went for 礼拜 specifically... what, was the movie premiering in Xinjiang?
I know ~5 languages and English is my 5th one
John Huntsman should be in the accomplished tied. My guess this is a joke for him.
Don’t be too harsh on them at least they’re learning and they’ll improve as time goes on
I think Mark's Chinese is ok. I can understand him perfectly. Jared makes a great point that there are many Chinese native speakers with heavy accents!! I love Kevin Rudd for the simple fact that he is the only Western politician who speaks fluent Mandarin in the world!! Huntsman's Mandarin is ok but not as good as Rudd.
Xiaoma said in many of his videos he lived for a year in China and he is also married to a Chinese woman.
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.
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
Wait. Isn’t that Ben…the sci-fi host..on channel…”Generation Tech”..?
为什么你们的普通话这么好，而我学了十八年的英语但是发音还是这么不标准😂（Why is your Mandarin Chinese so good while I have been learning English for 18 years and my pronunciation is still so substandard）
I agree totally with you! I have been speaking English for nearly 30 years and there are still words I can't tell apart such as micro vs. macro and words I can't pronounce!! I guess we just have to accept that we can't get rid of our accents!! I also make a lot of mistakes when it comes to pronouns such as he, she, etc!
I don't think I could have understood John Cena without the chinese subtitles.
I think the actress lady said she had made two movies in China, which would indicate she didn’t butcher the first one. Of course, when there are coaches and retakes, she could still be faking the difference, I guess?
I don’t know but it’s very cute to see beginning learners use hand gestures to follow the tones 😂
Vanessa Branch nailed it
Why no Laoma Chris?
“徐克”is a very famous director
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.
ok, but where is Creed from The Office?
Oh yeah i forgot about that one
You guys need to watch 非正式会谈
There are plenty of good speakers of Chinese among foreigners these days
I am a beginner learner btw
John Cena wins it all lmfao the delivery is impeccable lmfao
Zhang Xi Na
LeleFarley is still the best foreign Chinese speaker I’ve seen in my life.
I think the actress's 1st clip is adepted!
I know ten words in Chinese, but it was fun to watch anyway.
Fast and furious guy spoke Chinese like it was Japanese?
😂🤣
The former prime minister Kevin Rudd speaks good mandarin. His vocabulary isn't bad.
how could u not include 曹操（Jonathan Kos-Read） in this comparation as the absolute god.🤔
The 2 hosts here seem to speak Mandarin better than English
he might see this, the thought in his head of being banned from facebook was like oh fuck yes hes god tier but we have to be modest, yes of course he needs work.
Out of all foreigners, Lele Farley speaks Chinese fluently and better than some Chinese people.
Tones aren't separate from the pronunciation. They're one and the same.
We generally view pronunciation as the sound of the word, so what pinyin conveys without the tone added. Like “Shi” or “Ma” for example. Then we can add the tone “shī, shí, shǐ, shì”. So i really wouldn’t say that are the same, even chinese language dictionaries use pronunciation to help you find a word and then break it down further into different tones of the same word.
Up until today, I never seen anybody who speaks better Chinese than laomao chris in Beijing. I mean between Americans.
Sadly we never draw attention from locals no matter how fluent your Chinese, mainly because we almost look the same.
Look up a CZcamsr called Laoshu505000 and watch his videos speaking Mandarin and Cantonese. He passed away 2 years ago but his language skills were nuts.
when John Cena speaking Madarin, he sounds like...eh...an angry Japanese🤔
Can you better explain what it means to speak your dialect versus Chinese? My brother has lived in China for over 10 years, and he said to consider the dialect as an accent but is also a different language... I'm not following lol
There are tons of separate Chinese languages that they speak in China, and dialects of those languages, but in Chinese they're all just called dialects. Many people who speak these "dialects" speak standard Chinese with a non-standard accent.
Right yeah so Mandarin would be standard chinese and then you have like Shanghainese, Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese that are different dialects, they are related to Chinese but have different pronunciation and maybe some different grammar as well.
@@learnchinesenow this helps very much, thank you 🙏
@lamo543 this helps very much, thank you 🙏
Chinese dialects vary a lot! Some people speak it in a way that is basically the same as standard Chinese but with words specific to the dialect, kind of like Australian English vs US English. But some are super different, like comparing German with English. And some are the same but the pronunciations can be hard to parse, like with very thick Scottish or Irsh accents where it might be hard to understand if you're in a noisy room and not used to the accent.
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
Leaning Chinese traditional medicine is actually learning cultures and belief oriented crafts, it is not medical science, having some merits accumulated from experience, but not a reliable way of treating diseases.
Why does Gérard have to shout
Tai ja means we and hao means good
Da Jia
Mandarin
That politician was way better than Zuck. Also, Cena doesn't really speak I feel. He just rehearsed a few lines.