Like how Americans think about Chinese accent with English. Do they think it’s cringe, endearing, or are they glad a foreigner can actually speak their language?
Sometimes when talking to my cousins/aunts/uncles on my mom’s side, I use Google Translate. (They speak a little bit of English but sometimes I want to say something to them in Chinese.)
It’s an advantage. In general people are most happy if you speak around b2-C1 (low hsk6) level. If you speak to well, making only sometimes a mistake then the assumption is that the person lives in the country for ages, and should not be so stupid to make such a mistake…
That is of course only valid for people who aren’t very close friends…
Think Arnold Schwarzenegger, he speaks with Austrian access on purpose (Well his English besides the accent is near perfect - but the strong accent made his career.).
It’s different for people not native in the language, they a) think accent is something to get rid of b) place much larger importance to accent than to correct grammar or sophisticated language.
Often if you’re too good, but not perfect, people will think you had bad education. This is especially true for French. For Chinese it’s okay as long as you look like a westerner. If your south east Asian you’re Chinese will be rated much more critical, and it’s expected from you to reach very high levels.
Once people are not complimenting your language anymore, you know you passed the most successful level and maybe out some accent back, but keep on improving everything else.
For Chinese it’s easy, just don’t speak tones correctly when it doesn’t matter. You should get the tones right on the most common 1000 words or so however.
1 Like