My level is still shit but anyway you can sense how at ease this man is with the language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYlnJpvRwX8
Why is being bilingual surprising?
In France, I bet there’re lots of Asian-French (French citizen whose parents were from Asia) who speak perfect French with Paris accent and also speak their own mother tongue learned from their parents.
How come I’m not in a talk show because my English is at a native level?
But I have to cring and say good job when some idiot butchers ni hao like it’s so impressive as I’m speaking my 4th language to them during the entire conversation. I always found that really funny.
Exactly.
That’s the double standard I’m talking about.
It’s like Westerners think they have done an amazing job being able to let out three words in Mandarin. (ä˝ ĺĄ˝Hello, 謝謝Thank you, 再見Goodbye)
But if you Asians speak their language (English, French, etc) with a slight foreign accent or a misuse of a word, they despise you and make fun of you.
That’s also what I think when some Americans and Canadians complain that the Chinese don’t integrate.
Those people have spoken and written your language perfectly, and some of them have changed their forename into an Anglo-Saxon name.
What more do you want?
Ask them to change their surnames into Trump?
Go to church every Sunday like you do?
Have burgers, fries, and coke for each meal (though sometimes I do)?
They just want to pick on the minorities, and Chinese happens to be a better target than any other ethnic group.
I still remember when I went to the US and they’re like ok! Now you have to choose a 2nd language course as part of the curriculum! You can take French, or Spanish! Like wtf. Can’t you see I’m just trying to learn English and it’s confusing the hell out of me trying to learn Spanish too? Although I am glad I did learn some Spanish to have basic conversations with and understand enough where people can’t talk shit about me without me knowing.
On the side note. His Chinese is very good. He even has the accent, not just the tone of people from China down. Chinese is considerably harder imo to learn, but still. It is odd that most English speakers in the US thinks it’s so impressive of them to butcher a simple phrase and expect me to be so impressed when they don’t realize I’m talking to them in my 4th language to them. Although I have to admit English has become my most comfortable and native language by now. It was always so odd to me the expectation that I should be able to speak English and when I do speak it fluently, they’re like how come you don’t have an accent coming from taiwan? Like which is it?
coming from the guy who gets upset if you assume he might understand the meaning of ä˝ ĺĄ˝ ha! hillarious
On a serious note, people are always more impressed if they hear a European or American speak a native level of Chinese, than the other way around, simply because Chinese is much more difficult to learn than English.
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is Chinese really more difficult language than English?
Chinese is surely more difficult to learn for speakers of Germanic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic, or any of their family languages, but for speakers of other languages, English could be more difficult to learn.
Do we really have to discuss the differences in the powers of cultures behind different languages?
Worldwide, how many native speakers of tonal and atonal languages are there? What’s the ratio?
Also, the ratio of Sino-Tibetan native speakers to Indo-European native speakers (including Hindi of course) to native speakers of other language families?
Also, the ratio of agglutinative language n.s. to analytic language n.s. to others?
Also, the ratio of people who know the Roman alphabet in one form or another (including Chinese who grow up learning Hanyu Pinyin) to those who know Hanzi in one form or another (including almost no-one outside of East Asia) to others?
Also, which language are more people exposed to in daily life at school, in popular music, etc.?
English spelling is a pain in the unmentionable place, and the grammar is more complicated than it needs to be, but there’s no reason to be surprised by someone speaking it fluently as a second language. Chinese is more popular now than twenty years ago when Da Shan types could find fame and fortune, but it’s still a novelty among westerners.
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no objection nor question.
My question is, whether westerners learning Chinese is more difficult than non-westerners learning English, when they learn it in the same way. (I hope this makes sense)
My guess is, if westerners would exposed to Chinese as non-westerners are exposed to English, westerners speak Chinese as non-westerners speak English.
Oh sure, all other things being equal, if we grew humans in laboratories, Chinese would be less difficult than it is now for the average human. But we would still need to raise those artificial humans to have good tone perception.
If toddlers in English speaking countries have higher language skills than toddlers in Chinese speaking countries, can we say Chinese is more difficult than English?
Define higher. 
No language is any more or less difficult than another as a first language. It has an almost 100% success rate. As a second language Chinese is arguably more difficult than English due to the more limited input native speakers receive. There might also be some cultural reasons as to why it’s more difficult - such as increased willingness for people to talk in English and teaching methods.
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As a westerner, I actually REALLY hate it when I say three words in mandarin and then a good portion of Taiwanese/Chinese people say my Chinese is so good. It gives me a false sense of security in my Chinese ability. I have been studying Chinese off and on since 2002 and while nowhere near fluent, I am decently familiar with it. So because of that familiarity, at my work in Taiwan, I am often placed in meetings that are in complete Chinese and while not being totally expected to understand the content of meeting in Chinese-it’s definitely appreciated if they don’t have to translate for me. And at these meeting I often struggle with comprehension.
So my overall point, it’s like consciously or subconsciously, an inside joke to tell a westerner he has good Chinese after saying three words; it should be if you can function and get tangible things done using Chinese, then by all means you can tell anyone their Chinese is great.
My Chinese skills will ALWAYS be awful.
(little bit of a rant sorry)
I reckon this is just a way to be polite and nice. I was told that too and my Chinese is pathetic, the person telling me that probably wanted me to feel comfortable and keep speaking, nothing more IMO.
Myself I have told the same thing to foreigners who try to speak my native language, while I knew deep inside their French was objectively bad, I told them it was good because I could understand what they were trying to say. and so they would not get discouraged in trying to speak more.
Heh, I actually found it refreshing speaking to a middle aged woman the other day and having her go “Wow, your Chinese really isn’t very good”. 
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