Slate has an article on the topic. Twitter keeps talking about it. It keeps coming up in the news and elsewhere.
A few questions:
1. Does he “speak” Mandarin?
2. Does it matter if he does or doesn’t?
I’d say he might. He claimed fluency in Taiwanese and Mandarin. If fluency is fluidity, then so be it, as I’ve heard him speak comfortably in small doses, though not on Colbert for what it’s worth. Critics have pointed out his halting, repeating, 你不，你不是 sort of thing. I’d say that hardly disqualifies him since I’ve heard natives do the same.
If fluency is rockstar proficiency that can rival a native speaker. Doubtdful.
Does it matter? I’d say it absolutely doesn’t. If he were president, which I very much doubt could happen at this point, he’d be using interpreters anyway. Ones who are trained for such a purpose. The real benefit here is that he can at least get by. I’m not sure how good W spoke Spanish but at least Jon makes the effort and, I bet if it were necessary beyond impressing Colbert, he could clean it up real nice.
What do you think? Is he fluent from what you’ve seen? Do you think it matters?
I bet he knows all the words for religious-y things like sin, salvation, underpants…
The “副美国总统” thing on Colbert seemed a very strange mistake to me – you’d think he’d have uttered the words “美国副总统” a fair few times before.
As for his pronunciation, the only error i heard was a missing tone-change for 想. Which leads me to ask a tangential question i’ve asked many Mandarin native speakers and never gotten a definitive answer for: should “我很想你作我的副美国总统” be pronounced
“wó hěn xiáng nǐ zuò….” OR
“wǒ hén xiáng nǐ zuò…” OR
“wó hén xiáng nǐ zuò”
?
As far as i can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a definitive rule. Instinct suggests maybe those particularly common third-tone duos like “我很” would probably take precedence over less common pairings. But in the above example, “很想” is equally as common. In fact, “我很想” is an extremely common trio of third-tones, normally pronounced “wǒ/wó hén xiǎng” – and this almost certainly resulted in Huntsman’s error.
And if there is an answer for 4-third-tone phrases like the one above, how about 5-third-tone strings, like “我很想你买这个”?
In my limited experience, I hear the last variant most (string of rising tones before a final low tone), but it depends on the speed of speech. I think that right before any pause, the last syllable before the pause is more likely to get dropped to the low third tone.
But we have to be careful about observations like this, because once you come to a conclusion, it’s easy to “hear” it that way because of confirmation bias. I’ve had some pronounciation issues because of incorrectly concluding I heard something sound some way and then “hearing” it like that later, reinforcing my error.
I’m ambivalent about the whole “fluent in Chinese” judgement. On the one hand, I think Zhonglish speakers (like myself) should be held to the same standard of fluency by which we judge anyone who’s learned English as a second language. Too often the standards are lopsided in the extreme, giving the foreign speaker of Mandarin endless face for the most mundane utterances while laughing at Chinglish expressions that are unusual but understandable. John Pasden has a hard-headed “stages of learning chinese” categorization under which I think many so-called “advanced” learners of Chinese would actually qualify as his “intermediate.”
On the other hand, I’m not quite convinced that Geoffrey Sant (author of Slate article) is giving Huntsman a fair shake. Have you ever tried responding to the “say something in Chinese” prompt? I had it come up several times in August when I was back in the States. I think I generally came up with something nonsensical such as asking the person (who knows not one word of Mandarin) 你想让我说什么? Quite possibly I came up with even stupider things. Point is: it feels totally unnatural. Yeah, Sant says he could have prepared, but…
And then there’s just the question of practice. I know from my experience with Latvian, a language I once learned to a fairly fluent intermediate stage, that the language is back there in my head somewhere, not completely lost even after 20 years. I know this because a few years ago, after spending several weeks with some Latvian friends, I quickly went from almost speechless to feeling pretty comfortable in the language again. At present, though, I’m hard-pressed to put together basic sentences. Am I fluent in Latvian?
Likewise for Huntsman, I’ll bet even casual Chinese conversations have been few and far between for years and years, let alone the kind of standard Sant wants to hold him to: presenting his China policy in Chinese.
In the end, I don’t think more than a dozen Americans are going to care. It’s all Chinese to them.
You comment inspired me to write a post of my own on the topic. I think that every Chinese student should have a plan for when someone says to them: say something in Chinese!.
God, I hate the word “fluent.” Hate, hate, hate it. It’s so poorly defined as to be more or less meaningless, and at this point whenever I see someone describe themselves as “fluent in Chinese,” I tend to interpret it as “third-year college proficiency, but I expect to bullshit you successfully on this point.” Which if you believe the hand-wringing about American monoglottalism – I don’t – probably is more or less “fluent” by naive definitions.
I feel bad for Huntsman: basically everyone who’s likely to care much one way or the other about his Chinese ability is now attempting to illustrate their own cleverness by crapping all over his Mandarin. As you say, he’ll have interpreters — language superheroes with mutant powers and years of training — to handle any serious interactions in Chinese, so his Chinese will be ornamental and restricted to greetings at most. I’m not sure he’s got, or ever had, sufficient command of Chinese to save any souls, but it’s not as if we’ll be asking that of him in the increasingly unlikely event that he makes it past the primaries.
Are we asking the wrong question? Let’s see what his Taiwanese is like. I think when you are in such a position, claiming fluency is a big thing especially if you are using to advance your political campaign. If he makes gaffes, I for one don’t feel sorry for him.
I agree that the term “fluent” is way too overused. However, I feel it is somewhat necessary because non-language learners don’t really understand how learning progresses and similarly don’t understand the value of “less than fluent.” To them, its fluent or nothing. Without going into lengthy details with someone about what fluency means (and how difficult true fluency really is), it’s often easier to just use the word.
It’d probably be best to say that he has a good understanding of the language and certainly enough knowledge to get around in China, but he probably won’t be leading any conferences in Chinese any time soon. And that’s ok.
Kellen, I just want to say that your post reads like a tongue twister
Seriously though, I thought his Mandarin is pretty good. In a post-Bush U.S. where we can only expect the President to pronounce words like totalitarian correctly in his own mother tongue, having someone who can say a few sentences in an entirely different language would be comforting.
I’ve only seen him speak on the Colbert Report so I’m not totally comfortable making assertions about the man’s Chinese, but I think I can say a few things about the writer of the article:
1. The author translates Huntsman’s “我很想你做我的副美国总统” as “I really want you to DO my vice-America president.” Seriously? “Vice-America” business aside, I think back-translating 做 as “do” when it clearly should be “be” is completely unfair and makes Huntsman’s response sound way more “mangled” than it actually was. So either the author doesn’t know about the multiple uses of “做“ or he’s just plain mean. This alone made me not even want to read the rest of the article.
2. “Americans respond to compliments with ‘Thank you’ while Chinese will typically answer ‘Nali, nali’—literally, ‘Where, where?’” What?! Yes, “哪里哪里” is what our Chinese 101 teachers told us to say, but I have NEVER heard a Chinese friend say it in response to a compliment, EVER. Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t it become sort of a thing that only foreigners say? I hear “不会” or “不是“ or even “谢谢” from my Chinese friends; they tell me “哪里哪里” sounds ”太过分“ to them.
I guess the author’s gist, that Huntsman’s Chinese isn’t as fluent as he claims it is, is probably true. But, as been said before, this is true of TONS of people who claim fluency in Chinese, so it seems unfair to me that he’s suddenly taking all the heat. Or maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive about my own Chinese so it hurts to see someone else’s go under public scrutiny…. Ultimately, I agree with most of these comments that lack of fluency (whatever that means) in Chinese won’t really matter if he becomes president. Didn’t even matter while he was ambassador to China, apparently, so why are we worried now?
I’ve heard Chinese people use 哪里哪里. As a foreigner in China, in most situations, you’re going to get a compliment before you give one out, which means it seems like more foreigners say 哪里哪里 than Chinese people.
Huntsman speaks Mandarin. I wouldn’t say he’s fluent, but I think people often judge fluency like they judge their waistline. We always remember how good things were and we never realize how far we’ve let waistlines (or our Chinese) go.
I think this is, for the most part, a non-issue. As people interested in Chinese, we latch onto any semi-mainstream article on the topic and then talk about it as if everyone in the world is also paying attention. They aren’t. As far as the TV media and the rest of America is concerned, Huntsman speaks Chinese.
@Syz: I too fear the dreaded: “say something in Chinese”. I never know what to say.
At 2% I’m almost surprised we’re even talking about it.
“…Chinese will typically call Huntsman’s Mandarin ‘ma-ma hu-hu’…”
No, that’s wrong. Chinese people (at least on the Mainland) almost never say “哪里哪里.” It sounds silly. If you want to sound like a foreigner in Chinese 101, then say it.
As mentioned before in this thread, “fluency” is no precise definition. But I think it is legitimate to claim fluency, as long as you easily chat away with native speakers, on everyday topics as well as on more abstract topics – philosophy or religion, for example. “Business fluency” would be a different league. But again – definitions may differ widely.
I’d agree, were we forced to define fluency less abstractly, I think that’s a fair definition. Usually I’d call that proficient though. But then we’re replacing abstract vagueness with other abstract vagueness.
Mostly I tell people I’m fluent when they ask but don’t really know or care what that means. It’s along the lines of “say something in [insert language here]!” To those who know better I tell them I get by.
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