John Cena's Mandarin chinese is an example of people who learn
a language for a certain purpose and pull it off successfully.
Hi, Steve Kaufmann here, um, today, a bit of an unusual subject, maybe,
uh, someone asked me how well does John Cena speak Mandarin Chinese.
So the title is John Cena speaking Mandarin Chinese, but I want to
really talk about the importance of communicating when we learn a language
and then the relative lack of importance of perfect pronunciation or even other
imperfections in our use of a language that we learn in order to communicate.
So someone asked me, and by the way, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe,
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So a friend said, what do you think of John Cena's Chinese?
To be honest, I don't, didn't know who John Cena was CENA turns out
he's some kind of a pro wrestler.
Uh, I'm not a big fan of professional wrestling, uh, but, uh, whatever
he is a well-known personality.
So I looked him up.
So what do I think?
His Chinese is not what you would call phenomenal.
His pronunciation is not very Chinese.
However, It's very pleasing.
He communicates.
You have the feeling that he wants to communicate, that he
likes the Chinese language.
He likes communicating with his Chinese fans.
Uh, there's something very positive.
Now, I'm not a native speaker of Chinese so I can't, I can't tell
you how a Chinese person reacts.
Maybe some of you who are Chinese can tell me your reaction to his Chinese.
But to me, it comes across as quite positive.
Um, And, uh, so I, I thought of all these people that I know who
communicate very effectively in a language that they speak imperfectly.
Uh, we can start with, uh, former Canadian prime minister, Jean
Chrétien, and he speaks with a pronounced the French Canadian accent.
And even his usage is not always a hundred percent yet he was very
effective, so effective communicating in English that he was prime minister
of Canada for I think 10 years.
And was very popular.
Uh, you know, I it's possible just as you know, John Cena uses his
Chinese it's part of his shtick of connecting with his Chinese fans.
I think to some extent, or some people suspected that Jean Chrétien affected
his, you know, Quebecois accent on his English, because it was part of his
persona and he was a very successful uh, politician, but they both communicate.
Um, if you watch, uh, Mark Zuckerberg speak Chinese, my impression
is that he may in fact speak Chinese better than John Cena.
I don't know.
But, uh, he's not tremendous either, but you have the impression that
he isn't really communicating so much as he's performing.
Uh, his attitude is, uh, speaking to his Chinese audience
in Beijing "oh, look at me.
I can speak Chinese.
Uh, I'm very clever.
Aren't I?"
Kind of thing.
Uh, so that the audience is kind of a prop, so at least that's the
impression that's created with me.
It may not be fair, but you know, I think the important thing in
communicating is that genuine desire to communicate, to connect.
And, uh, as I've said, many times, I, you know, I remember I had a Swiss
banker who spoke English so well, but had a pronounced Swiss accent, uh, all
the different people that I've, you know, done business with who spoke, but
who communicated and they didn't for a minute, worry about their pronunciation
or the odd little error in their language.
And so that's where, you know, many of us, as we're learning a language, of
course, we want to continue to improve, but whatever our level, whatever your
level, whatever you are, you have to measure what you have achieved
against what your objectives are.
So if your objective let's say in learning Japanese is to absolutely
master the pronunciation to sound like someone on national radio in
Japan, and you're going to work on your pitch accent and that's fine.
I'm not critical of that.
But to suggest that everyone learning Japanese should put the
same amount of effort into mastering pitch accent is to my mind silly.
I have never, I was blithely for all the time I lived in Japan I never even knew
such a thing as pitch accent existed.
I'm sure that in trying to imitate Japanese as spoken by native speakers
and of course falling short, but nevertheless, using that as a model
I would not necessarily imitate some aspects of pitch accent.
And similarly in speaking Persian, which I'm told is a language that has
pitch accent, if I tried to imitate the way the native speakers speak, to
some extent, I will imitate that pitch accent, but I'm not going to study
it with the intention of aceing it.
Uh, it's just part of my acquisition of the language.
And, uh, there will be imperfections, uh, as I've said before there, I don't
know what we have a Russian person that works with us and, uh, his, his articles
use of the article is very haphazard.
It doesn't prevent him from being a very comfortable communicator in English.
Um, you know, people make mistakes in gender in French.
I did my video, uh, about the difficulties of French.
Uh, it's, it's important to be aware of some of these difficulties
and work on some of them.
I mean, we can work on, on getting the 'r' right.
But if we can't quite do the guttural 'r' in French a hundred percent like the
French, it doesn't prevent communication.
Uh, I think it's worth working on the 'eu' sound, the famous...
go 'ooo' and then try to say 'e' and you'll get 'eu' it's worth
working on it, but if you don't get it, it's not the end of the world.
Uh, similarly with the, uh, the nasal sounds.
I think they are worth working on, noticing them, trying to do as well as
you can with the nasal sounds because it will also help your comprehension,
but when you speak and when you are genuinely communicating, communicating
with someone, just communicate.
So if I get back to John Cena and his Mandarin Chinese, he does communicate.
I don't know, I haven't seen him discuss philosophy in Chinese, but
those things that he does talk about he communicates effectively, uh, I don't
know, uh, how many tones he gets right.
I think it's pretty haphazard, but he's happy doing it.
And I think people listening to him again, I can't speak for Chinese
people, but I have the impression that Chinese people are happy to see him
speaking Chinese to the extent that he speaks it and he is communicating.
So, uh, I guess where I come to in all of this is John Cena's Mandarin chinese is
an example of people who learn a language for a certain purpose and pull it off
successfully and obviously enjoy it.
And really that's what language learning is all about enjoyment and of
course, communication or communicating with people, connecting with people.
So there you have it, a bit of um, you know, digression perhaps from
the title, but just talking about the importance of communicating without
worrying too much about perfection.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.