In the past six months, Chinese people have told me “you’re the next 大山,” “you’re half Chinese,” “you already speak [Mandarin Chinese] more fluently than I do,” and (my favorite) “you should be a [Chinese speaking] comedian (this one was tempting).”
I find these comments particularly entertaining since they are directed at me. I am not fluent in Chinese (unless you define fluency by the very loose definition that Benny the Irish Polyglot Subscribes to). Every time I say anything more than 你好 to a stranger, they usually end up complementing me on how good my Chinese is. I am serious: this happens more than 50% of the time when I talk to a taxi driver, order food, ask for directions, or meet a new Chinese friend. Most foreigners in China with some level of Chinese can attest to the fact that these kind of compliments are regular occurrences.
I have significant doubts that I would be able to pass a college class in Chinese (despite claims that I have made in the past to girls who were impressed by Chinese language abilities). I am unable to confidently and professionally interpret for any formal events that require flawless language skills, and there are plenty of times that I pronounce things so poorly or speak so unclearly that I have to repeat things and circumlocute in order to communicate my point. Sometime I understand so little that it is very disheartening. Without context my ability to understand is often crippled, so that entering a conversation mid-way through or following other peoples’ conversation is particularly difficult.
For instance, last night I went to a party for a health club that a friend invited me to. Most of the people there were dancers, yogis, muscle builders, or people with some other kind of fitness/health focused lifestyle, profession or hobby. In small talk although I could understand most of the words that people said, I was still missing a good 10% or 20% of what was said. Unfortunately, the words I understood were all the basic things like “Whoever feels this way about that,” or “Last time I went there I didn’t like it very much.” Conversely, the parts of the speech that I didn’t catch were fairly vital things like the topic/subject of the conversation. That is pretty disheartening. While playing a game with the other people, the rules were explained very quickly and I didn’t catch how to play. As a side effect, I didn’t enjoy the game, because I didn’t know what we were doing, so each time it was my turn somebody had to guide me through it, making the whole experience slower and less fun for everybody. Even after a few rounds when I got the hang of it, I still wasn’t sure of the meaning of all the words that we were saying or the goal of the game. Although the party was nice, it was linguistically a fairly depressing experience, and as a result of my lessened mood I didn’t socialize or make any new friends there. (Which is really too bad, 'cause I would love to be friends with dancers and yogis!)
NOTE: The next day at work I found out what one of the phrases in the game was. It was so simple, so if I had taken 20 seconds to talk to someone then I would have understood it. It was just a little chant that went “Pirate capitan, heixiu heixiu.” At the party I recognized the word for pirate, but I had no idea what captain was. More confusingly, according to my co-worker heixiu doesn’t really mean anything: it is just what pirates say. This was particularly difficult for me to grasp, since the only heixiu I know is a colloquial way of saying “to have sex” (嘿咻).
Maybe their standards for what counts as an impressive level of language ability are just lower than mine. It could also be a difference in perspective, since most Chinese people that I converse with only hear me speak a few phrases, which are normally correct. Conversely, I hear myself speak everything that I say, some of which is correct and some of which is incorrect. Similarly, they only hear the final product, but I am aware of all the work-arounds and the all of the effort that I (internally) put into figuring out how to say something in Chinese.
Not to downplay my own skill though: It is somewhat of an oddity that I, as a Westerner, can speak some Chinese. Most westerns that come to China speak either very little Chinese or no Chinese at all, so I am automatically in a special category due to the fact that I am able to ask about more than ordering food and where the closest subway stop is. I am fairly confident that I speak better Chinese than most Westerners in Beijing. Of the foreigners at my company, none speaks better Chinese than I do, of the people I spend time with outside of work (mostly at juggling and at improv) I am either the foreigner with the best Chinese or I am in the top 5. More generally speaking, I think that about 80%-90% of the foreigners that I have met speak Chinese at a lower level than I do. There are certainly a handful of Westerners I know that speak far better Chinese than I do. A few are decades older than me and have Masters degrees or more than 10 years of life in China (so I tend to not compare myself to them), some spoke Chinese with parents as children (so I also discount them in my comparisons [Cause if I spoke Chinese with my mom and dad from a young age I would rock out in this language too!]), and a small number have simply studied hard and have put in the effort to gain a high level of proficiency with this language. It is these individuals, like Gus, Cutler or former classmates of mine from CET that really have a high level of respect from me for their language abilities.
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