Speak Chinese English or speak true English?
To Chinese people, speaking in English is not a easy life for most one. However, you must speak it if you work in a US' company. It was very frustrating if the native speaker looks lost after you finished a sentence to him, tough each word was sure to be pronounced correctly. And It is funny that my Chinese colleague can understand me, while ehe native speaker didn't understand my sentence as a whole. Some time ago, I worked with an Indian engineers who
spoke English with a heavy accent. Although I can not even hear any English word from him, he can communicate with US' people very well. The pronunciation doesn't make a big point here. Why does this happen? Possible reason is here:
1) wrong language context. US' people have a different logic consecution from Chinese. Sometime, it is natural for Chinese to put two specific sentences one by one, however it may be confusing to US' people.
2) wrong stress and rhythm. Every sentence has its point on one or two word, these word must be paid more respect. The stress and rhythm in Chinese way make native speaker confused.
I didn't understand a word of what you just said.
:-)
Agreed, when going on a holiday in Asia most of the time I speak English, and what I get as answers SHOULD be English as well, but 90% of the time I have to ask to repeat the answer just to be able to hear (and then understanding) all words.
Then again, if none of the involved parties get angry or annoyed, no worries: communicating is also about *wanting* to understand each other.
BTW English is not my mother language, but I've worked (a lot) with people from the UK in the past, and most of them said I speak the language very well, better than a lot of people from their own country. English is taught very well in the Netherlands: we're a small country, so I guess speaking a globally recognized and understood language too is good.
Posted by SwitchBL8 on January 01, 2008 at 12:55 AM CST #
are you in china?
Posted by james c russ on January 17, 2008 at 04:44 AM CST #
NO COMMENT
Posted by SARAH ONG JIAWEN on May 29, 2008 at 01:45 PM CST #