Just kidding. He does an admirable job. His tones are all over the place, and his pronunciation is a bit suspect, but I’m impressed that he was able to communicate rather well. Doesn’t seem to run into many spots where the conversation drops dead due to lack of communication.
Good job, Mark. Maybe Facebook can bring down those commies! lol
the pronunciation is at Firefly Chinese level, but comprehension and phrase construction are great. Still, I have a hard time understanding him at first.
here I go nerding up the forum…
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke in Chinese at China’s Tsinghua University just for the heck of it. Let’s get this out in the open – his Chinese completely sucks. But why shouldn’t it? Unlike me, Zuckerberg didn’t major in Chinese, nor has he ever lived in a Chinese speaking country. I have no idea how long he’s been learning the language, but it certainly has not been a dedicated pursuit like it was for me for four years of university. On why he started learning Chinese:
[quote]有三個原因。第二…第一，我太太是中國人。她家說中文，她的奶奶只說中文，所以我想要跟他們通話。今年以前…我和Priscilla最近結婚，所以我告訴她奶奶，用中文，她非常吃驚。
…
第二，我覺得是不是… 我想要學習中國文化。中國是偉大的國家。我覺得學習語言幫助我學習文化，所以我學一學，學習語言。第三是…普通話很難！我只說英文，但是我喜歡挑戰。[/quote]
From the standpoint of grammar and word choice, that’s actually not bad at all. It’s extremely comprehensible if very simplistic. The problem is Z’s accent and delivery, very difficult to understand despite his confidence and speed – maybe because of it. He really needs to work on his tones. But I give him a thumbs up for effort.
Foreign Policy mocked him mercilessly for, heaven forbid, practicing it. The article is titled Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin Like a Seven-Year-Old (which isn’t true – any seven-year-old Chinese kid speaks much much better). What we should be doing is encouraging people to challenge themselves and practice skills like foreign languages, not making fun of them.
This kind of elitist, dare I say asshole-ish, attitude is exactly why I never tried hard in Spanish class. I knew my pronunciation and grammar were not perfect – I Anglicized some of it on purpose; we all did. High school Spanish was all about looking like you weren’t trying hard, because if you tried hard and didn’t perform at 100% you were a failure. Better not to try at all. Is that the sort of philosophy we want to spread about studying Chinese?
Mark Zuckerberg, I support you. 加油～
Mods, I also created a thread on Zuck’s Chinese. Please merge. Thanks!
Yeah, he gets an E for effort at least. What bothers me more is when they praise people like Kevin Rudd for their “fluent Chinese.” Oops, just went back and listened to Rudd…his putonghua is actually pretty damn good. Am I remembering some other pol butchering the language?
Picking on people’s language skills is not classy. Most non-native speakers speak error-ridden, horribly pronounced English, and it causes a strain on me as a listener or reader, but hell, I respect their effort and work. Why be a dick when somebody is showing you the respect of talking to you in your language, even if it sounds like shit?
The journalist is insufferable. I quote:
‘I watched part of the video with our Chinese intern, and he could not understand most of what Zuckerberg said. It was easier for me to decipher Zuckerberg’s Chinese, because that’s what I sounded like as a second-year student of the language while in college. (My Mandarin now is decent, though rusty; I studied for four years in college and spent roughly six years living in China. It wasn’t until after I finished my second year of Mandarin that I could get a Chinese cab driver to understand me.)’
Maybe they are afraid that a big player like Facebook founder speaking in Chinese signals the shift in language dominance, the beginning of the end of English as lingua franca, passing the baton to Chinese?
Yep, that reporter should know better. If you want to get better service, you use the local language. If you want to make a connection, you use the local language. He’s married an ethnic Chinese woman and he lives in Singapore, it is also probably expected of Zuckerberg to already understand a few words. If not, he may be perceived as standoffish, proud.
Well since you mentioned Firefly (another show that I LOVE-ed!) Chinese, and we were talking about Arrow in another thread, let me mention that there is a fair amount of Chinese is Arrow as well…and you will be wishing it was at Firefly level. It’s REALLY bad!
Anyway, yeah, Mark’s Chinese certainly isn’t great, but as someone who has never lived in a Chinese speaking country or having rigorously studying the language at university or something, I am pretty impressed. There are certainly times that I can’t completely understand what he is saying. Being able to just have a conversation is a very difficult task for a fairly new language learner, and he pretty much succeeds on that level.
[quote=“hansioux”]the pronunciation is at Firefly Chinese level, but comprehension and phrase construction are great. Still, I have a hard time understanding him at first.
here I go nerding up the forum…[/quote]
lol…After watching that video, I’m remembering how bad Firefly Chinese was. It’s complete gibberish. I can only make out a handful of phrases throughout that video. Arrow is about the same. Zuck was much more understandable, imo.
On the flipside, it’s almost becoming a cliche for Westerners to parachute in and mangle a few words in Chinese.
[quote=“Taiwanguy”]Well since you mentioned Firefly (another show that I LOVE-ed!) Chinese, and we were talking about Arrow in another thread, let me mention that there is a fair amount of Chinese is Arrow as well…and you will be wishing it was at Firefly level. It’s REALLY bad!
Anyway, yeah, Mark’s Chinese certainly isn’t great, but as someone who has never lived in a Chinese speaking country or having rigorously studying the language at university or something, I am pretty impressed. There are certainly times that I can’t completely understand what he is saying. Being able to just have a conversation is a very difficult task for a fairly new language learner, and he pretty much succeeds on that level.[/quote]
Didn’t he move to Singapore? Or am I confusing him with the other FB guy?
[quote=“Icon”][quote=“Taiwanguy”]Well since you mentioned Firefly (another show that I LOVE-ed!) Chinese, and we were talking about Arrow in another thread, let me mention that there is a fair amount of Chinese is Arrow as well…and you will be wishing it was at Firefly level. It’s REALLY bad!
Anyway, yeah, Mark’s Chinese certainly isn’t great, but as someone who has never lived in a Chinese speaking country or having rigorously studying the language at university or something, I am pretty impressed. There are certainly times that I can’t completely understand what he is saying. Being able to just have a conversation is a very difficult task for a fairly new language learner, and he pretty much succeeds on that level.[/quote]
Didn’t he move to Singapore? Or am I confusing him with the other FB guy?[/quote]
Yeah, that was Eduardo Saverin who actually gave up his US citizenship (possibly to avoid paying taxes on the Facebook IPO) and has been living in Singapore for a few years now. Zuckerberg still lives in the States.
Quite nice to read the comments the author is getting.
This is opinion, not science, but here goes. The day that China becomes the lingua franca will never come, at least not in the world as we see it today. There are many reasons, but I’ll just pick out a few:
[ul]1: Latin letters are used by the vast majority of countries on every continent except Asia, and even Vietnamese, Arabic, and Korean speakers are more accustomed to alphabets or syllabaries than character-based scripts. Asking non Sinitic-language speakers to navigate the labyrinth of Hanzi just to learn a lingua franca doesn’t make sense. It takes years just to be able to decode a few paragraphs of Chinese characters; I can’t imagine the day that the most accomplished academics from all seven continents are writing their papers predominantly in Chinese. If the current system isn’t broken…[/ul]
[ul]2: The Chinese language is at this point in history still very uninternationalized. There are a lot of words that are difficult to put into Chinese if they have not been previously translated, and foreign names are always an interesting endeavor. Taiwan and China typically end up with separate transliterations (歐巴馬 vs 奧巴馬); it would only get more complicated with billions of people doing the same. But there are also so many phrases and concepts in the language that are so linked to Chinese culture and history; I simply can’t imagine a Paraguayan and a Nigerian laughing off a missed business deal by saying 塞翁失馬，焉知非福 to each other. And can you imagine highschoolers worldwide struggling to imagine the Chinese landscapes of 唐詩三百首 and the monsters of 聊齋誌異 instead of Blake and Mary Shelley?[/ul]
[ul]3: English is the official language of at least one country on every continent. Chinese is official only in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and while there are 1.3 billion Chinese people, many of them never get a chance to leave the country. It makes more sense for (again) a Paraguayan and a Nigerian to speak to each other in English, which they are much more likely to have extensive experience in, than in Chinese.[/ul]
[ul]4: The last point I’ll make here: The world’s education systems are already biased toward English. It would take years to replace all of the English curriculums (curricula?) with Chinese ones, and there would most assuredly be a shortage of qualified teachers and proven learning materials. This won’t be fixed any time soon.[/ul]
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
All the musical greats had one thing in common: A performance where they got laughed off stage. No one likes a linguistic snob. But getting panned in public has it’s benefits. I bet The Zuck’s going to woodshed now and come back in 18 months speaking like a mfkr.
This is opinion, not science, but here goes. The day that China becomes the lingua franca will never come, at least not in the world as we see it today. There are many reasons, but I’ll just pick out a few:
[ul]1: Latin letters are used by the vast majority of countries on every continent except Asia, and even Vietnamese, Arabic, and Korean speakers are more accustomed to alphabets or syllabaries than character-based scripts. Asking non Sinitic-language speakers to navigate the labyrinth of Hanzi just to learn a lingua franca doesn’t make sense. It takes years just to be able to decode a few paragraphs of Chinese characters; I can’t imagine the day that the most accomplished academics from all seven continents are writing their papers predominantly in Chinese. If the current system isn’t broken…[/ul]
[ul]2: The Chinese language is at this point in history still very uninternationalized. There are a lot of words that are difficult to put into Chinese if they have not been previously translated, and foreign names are always an interesting endeavor. Taiwan and China typically end up with separate transliterations (歐巴馬 vs 奧巴馬); it would only get more complicated with billions of people doing the same. But there are also so many phrases and concepts in the language that are so linked to Chinese culture and history; I simply can’t imagine a Paraguayan and a Nigerian laughing off a missed business deal by saying 塞翁失馬，焉知非福 to each other. And can you imagine highschoolers worldwide struggling to imagine the Chinese landscapes of 唐詩三百首 and the monsters of 聊齋誌異 instead of Blake and Mary Shelley?[/ul]
[ul]3: English is the official language of at least one country on every continent. Chinese is official only in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and while there are 1.3 billion Chinese people, many of them never get a chance to leave the country. It makes more sense for (again) a Paraguayan and a Nigerian to speak to each other in English, which they are much more likely to have extensive experience in, than in Chinese.[/ul]
[ul]4: The last point I’ll make here: The world’s education systems are already biased toward English. It would take years to replace all of the English curriculums (curricula?) with Chinese ones, and there would most assuredly be a shortage of qualified teachers and proven learning materials. This won’t be fixed any time soon.[/ul]
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.[/quote]
You’re thinking logically, but not certain media. The simple explanation of trying to sell goes over many a head.
I don’t really catch your meaning here.
Don’t confuse becoming a lingua franca with businesses suddenly pandering to China. A lingua franca involves everyone in the world – not just Hollywood and not just the Chinese people – whereas TV shows can continue to force characters to vomit out broken Chinese in the hopes viewers in China will feel flattered and ask for more.
[quote=“Hokwongwei”]I don’t really catch your meaning here.
Don’t confuse becoming a lingua franca with businesses suddenly pandering to China. A lingua franca involves everyone in the world – not just Hollywood and not just the Chinese people – whereas TV shows can continue to force characters to vomit out broken Chinese in the hopes viewers in China will feel flattered and ask for more.[/quote]
I mean that you are right regarding what you say about Chinese, but certain sectors may not be thinking as logical and have a knee jerk reaction against hegemony.
Zuckerberg is trying to make a sale, that’s all. But the price of a censored version of FB in China is not something I think he has considered, unless he is planning to sell and dump.
You know it only strikes me now that he’s talking to a room filled with people who aren’t technically allowed to use his product… I know they know he’s a big name in tech, but I wonder if they think he’s not as big as he really is.
When you learn a foreign language, you have to start somewhere. Everyone goes through the awkward stages at the beginning when they fumble around searching for words and have trouble getting their mouths and vocal chords to utter the proper sounds of the language.
So I don’t see what the big deal is. So, he’s learning Chinese, and has a ways to go. So sue him! At least he has the guts to speak, and that’s one of the most important parts of learning a language.
Good on ya, Mark!