Laowai Speaking Chinese on Youtube

By Confused Laowai | Date: August 7th, 2010 | Category: Language

I’ve stumbled on these videos on Youtube of Laowai showing their speaking skills. Some need some practice, but they all are admirable in what they do. It’s actually interesting listening to some laowai, because their vocabulary will be limited, just like my own. Therefore it enables me understand a bit more. Yes, their pronunciation is not perfect, but it also gives me some insight into my own pronunciation, so I can improve it, by seeing the errors others they make. The fourth video actually features a guy I met through a mutual friend last year in Beijing.

I hope these inspired you, just like it did for me. I’m going to try and film some videos myself.

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  • Greg

    Great idea to put together these videos. It certainly helps to know what I want to sound like, and what I don't want to sound like! If you want to feel totally out of your league :-) try track down pictures of foreign kids aged around 5 who probably grew up in China, and whose Chinese is excellent. Well worth it … !

  • http://twindie.net NielDLR

    Thanks for the comment.

    Oh man, I've also stumbled on those before. Makes me feel horribly inadequate!

  • Alvanoel11

    Hey, LAOWAI. I just find ur blog by chance and i really like it. I was writing something, kinda like email, then i googled “my univ + holiday”, ur blog poped up, i read ur earling posts, they r great. maybe i can give u some help with ur Chinese, cuz im a Chinese and i l live in China now. U can add my gmail ID. 谢谢你对中文这么感兴趣啦！ ：D

  • http://twindie.net NielDLR

    Hey, glad you found my blog interesting and I'm always interested to
    chat with Chinese people. I will add you on Gmail definitely.

  • http://www.carlgene.com Carl

    Speaking a second language on video is nerve-wracking. Yesterday I was called in to help my company make a video for Youtube and we had to do take after take because we kept stuffing up. There’s also that sense of “talking monkey” that one tries to avoid. But at the end of the day you just gotta bite the bullet and give it a go, I reckon.

  • http://twindie.net NielDLR

    Yeah, you have to go through quite a few rehearsals. I come from a
    performing background (do musicals, plays and write tunes etc) so I
    don’t find it that nerve wrecking, but I’m a perfectionist. However,
    in language learning it is going to take a long time to be a
    perfectionist, and a slight waste of time really. You just gotta do
    it, like Nike would say. People make mistakes, everyone does, you just
    gotta be comfortable with the mistakes you make. :)

  • Mat

    Hah, I was expecting to be intimidated by these but they do the same kind of pauses and occasionally tonal mis-steps that I do. I always think it’s kind of curious how it’s massively easier to understand Westerners speaking Chinese. I don’t think it’s vocab, I think it’s the pauses. Natural Chinese tends to be syllable timed with pauses seen as a sign of not being fluent, which of course is very difficult to parse.

  • http://twindie.net NielDLR

    Yeah, good point on the pauses between the sentences. However, you
    can’t refute the select vocabulary. It plays a big part. There would
    be no, big words, or idioms for that matter. I think both factors are
    at play.