How To Mandarin With Brian Yu

Language Learning Chinese
21

[quote=“Acer4273”][quote=“ehophi”]
His accent isn’t exactly standard for any major regions of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore.

You wouldn’t accept an English lesson from an instructor who sounded like this, would you?

[/quote]

Hilarious of you to think his Mandarin “accent” sounded as bad as that teacher’s English.
Amuse me for a second: Let’s hear you break down the linguistic Mandarin accent differences of Singaporeans, speakers from “major” parts of Mainland China, and Taiwanese and hear you make a case how those are just so much superior to an ABC’s accent who grew up with immigrant Chinese parents. You probably look down on all those native Mainlanders who come from a “minor” part of China, with their non-standard accents. It’s funny how foreigners are more likely to be critical of a non-standard accent than native Mandarin speakers who understand that some come from all regions of the globe with their own idiosyncrasies.[/quote]

It’s actually common in NNS. Part of my job is attempting to standardise exam markers and the NNS examiners are a fcking nightmare with their insanely over-perception of error.

I think it’s because they learned English (although usually with perceptible but non-impeding errors …) and they find it harder to let error go. Or because NS auto-correct slightly, and notice it less, in the same way that less literate people are often better proofreaders.

22

[quote=“Ermintrude”]
I think it’s because they learned English (although usually with perceptible but non-impeding errors …) and they find it harder to let error go. Or because NS auto-correct slightly, and notice it less, in the same way that less literate people are often better proofreaders.[/quote]

Neural networks’ pattern recognition also comes with pattern repair (auto-associative memory). Using the less literate people are better proofreaders example, they are less familiar with some of the patterns, meaning it’s not yet imprinted in their neural network so their brains can’t automatically correct them.

The peferct exmaple wuold be the spellnig odrer tset. If you are proficient with the language, your brain automatically fixes all those errors and you can’t detect them.

The flip side would be like the coke cock erroneous association. Or this one:

Apparently people proficient with Japanese can’t read the picture because their brains try to associate the kana looking Latin alphabets with something they know in Japanese.

23

Yeah.

24

[quote=“hansioux”]
By the way, you have yet to tell me why you feel the Korean English teacher is so much worse in her videos.[/quote]

You are either terrible at listening, terrible at interpreting, or both. Her pronunciation of coke was clearly something else. If I have to explain to you what that something else is, then you are clearly trolling.
Yet ehophi who posted that video in reply to OP, clearly insinuated that her English pronunciation skills were as bad as Brian Yu’s mandarin. Not even close.

No, you are taking the high road now because I called you out. You are exactly those people I described above, further dividing those who speak the correct standard form of mandarin from the many who don’t. If OP posted an audio sample of his mandarin and asked people to critique it, go at it, but that was clearly not OP’s question to you all. How easy it must be for you and ehophi to sit back behind your computer and reply back with trite and petty remarks.

My frustration is primarily towards ehophi because his initial remarks to the OP were the most condescending, but if you want to be on the receiving end of my frustration with people like him then go ahead.

I don’t have to defend myself because the evidence is all there on the first page of this thread. The first thing you guys posted was hardly constructive criticism, “here is my trite little jab on your accented mandarin, I have nothing else to say.” Please, you and ehophi are so full of it.

Because you are clearly some kind of linguistic academic who likes to judge other people’s imperfections in their non-standard mandarin when it wasn’t even bloody warranted or asked for. Why don’t you answer this question: Let’s hear you break down the linguistic Mandarin accent differences of Singaporeans, speakers from “major” parts of Mainland China, and Taiwanese accented mandarin, an ABC’s accent who grew up with immigrant Chinese parents.

Oh, and please also entertain me for another second. Why don’t you try defending ehophi’s statement that an “accent [that] isn’t exactly standard for any major regions of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore” is considered “pretty damning for a video series titled How to Mandarin” and how his statement isn’t just another way to denigrate those “minor” mainlanders.

25

I don’t generally particularly like or support ehophi’s, well, much of anything (sorry dude)…but if someone is going to put up how-to videos, it’s nice to represent something approximating a standard accent. I didn’t get the impression that the accent on this video was anything out of the world bad (though again I didn’t hear much Mandarin to be fair, it’s hard to judge either way) but to be fair, if I were a learner who knew nothing about Mandarin and saw a series titled “Learn Mandarin with Mrs. Zhang” I’d assume that Mrs. Zhang was a) a native speaker and b) had a fairly standard, imitation-worthy accent. Because as a beginner who knows nothing, I’m going to imitate that.

Everyone has some sort of accent compared to someone else. But it’s standard practice to first try to accustom beginners to the most standard accent available, so that they can more easily figure out the variations that other speakers will present later in their language arcs. We don’t teach non-standard syntax to beginners on purpose either in most cases, because it’s easier to go from standard to the non-standard exceptions than the other way around.

26

Meh, I figured I’d let everyone vent a bit, then just pick the stuff worth a response.

I agreed most with this bit:

That’s about right for YouTube. I used YouTube to learn how to code, and it’s plain to see which types of videos surpass others.

Here’s Python in forty-five minutes:

Here’s Python in eleven hours:

That basically speaks to the problem with the lack of relevant content. Go ahead and check the comments of both videos, OP, to see which type of video you should be producing.

Honestly, if you just filmed some pet cats speaking Mandarin at each other with subtitles and brief points (either in the grammar or usage), your channel would probably explode. Beginners will eventually notice the deviation in accent as they find more resources, but if you just intend for them to survive a trip to Chinatown or a layover in Singapore, most users probably aren’t going to care.