I’d certainly appreciate any comments from you on what I’ve posited thus far on the topic.

ciao,
Clint

My notion (and that’s all it is) is that the mental wiring for your native language is so deep and so internalized that it seems like the natural way to speak. A second language learned after childhood is almost guaranteed to be not be so deeply wired. So your Mandarin speakers who’ve been using English in an English-speaking area do have to make a shift.

In a much simpler area, I’ve driven standard-transmission cars for nearly 30 years. Of course, I can drive an automatic as well — but in semi-automatic situations, I find myself reaching for the clutch or the gearshift, because those are the skills most deeply wired.

I do think there must be compensations or considerations that the average person allows when dealing with a non-native speaker of that person’s native language. Does that help close the social distance a bit?

1. A common thing I find when speaking mandarin with native speakers, who live in an English speaking area, is that they often need to “switch” their brains in to mandarin-mode to understand what I am saying. This is something many other people, whom I have spoken with, have commented about also. I’m not sure how much it occurs in the reverse context as I do not live in a mandarin speaking area. Whether it is a phenomenon that only occurs in this EnglishSpeaker-to-ChineseSpeaker direction or not, it is still a valid language barrier which makes me less likely to attempt speaking mandarin to someone in the same situation again. Until you explain that you are trying to learn mandarin, the other person has to consciously make that “switch” to processing mandarin. It creates a social barrier between the person willing/wanting to engage in the other person’s native language.

2. The emphasis on certain words in a sentence structure has a direct correlation to the final message as seen in the following examples:

That pen is too expensive.
THAT pen is too expensive.
That PEN is too expensive.
That pen IS too expensive.
That pen is TOO expensive.
That pen is too EXPENSIVE.

And just to be fair, a Chinese example:
那支笔太贵　- That pen is too expensive.
那支笔是太贵 - That pen IS too expensive.

Unless the speaker places emphasis (or no emphasis at all) on the correct word, it can create a barrier that is not perceived by the speaker and could potentially offend the listener without the speaker’s intention to do so.

3. Inflections vs. Tones: This may seem like a very obvious observation, and it is sort of related to #2, but it’s yet another example of how easily an incorrectly spoken sentence can infer the incorrect meaning and create further distance between the speaker and the listener. For the English speaker, inflections are used to emphasise, create questions, statements and so on. In Chinese, tones are used to differentiate between exclusive meanings of basic sounds.

There are so many things to get past to close the distance socially, and this is just at the basic language level without taking into account social statuses and other factors that grossly affect the judgement of both the speaker and the listener in every situation that they happen to be in.

Seems I’ve made this post into a book-length reply.. sorry about that but I am really passionate about social sciences and sociology.

Mostly, it reads as though Carolino had a Portuguese-French dictionary and a French-English dictionary, but almost no useful knowledge of English.

It’s available via Google, though I treasure my Dover Press edition as the greatest value I’ve ever gotten for $2.95.

Today being the 23rd, here’s the text from p. 23:

For to wish the good morning.

How does your father do?
He is very well.
I am very delight of it. Were is it?
I shall come back soon, I was no came that to know how you are.

For make a visit in the morning.

Is your master at home?
Yes, sir.
Is it up.

I think your first point is crucial. There are patterns behind how we convey social meaning. We learn them through exposure to the natural spoken form of the language and we soon figure out that many can be applied to different contexts. I hope to write a lot more about this in the near future. I think the example you give of the girl on the forums is also an excellent one.

Michael,

Some very good points here. I do see output (or OUTPUT if you prefer) as critical, but for reasons that would take a full post to explain. I think we’re on the same page, though.

As to male bonding, I think that there is tons of male bonding in the pubs and on the golf course around here, but little of it is between western guys and Chinese guys. Men bond differently than women but they do just as much of it.

Henning, your English is incredible. You’ve got your literal meaning, your functional meaning, and your social meaning all spot on here! I think that when it comes to Chinese a certain amount of commentary is definitely useful, for precisely the reasons you mention.

Dave,

Incredibly, I had never heard of that book, but it’s a real treasure. I’m going to spen the rest of the afternoon on it!

Orlando,

That’s great news. I’ll head over there after I look into English As She is Spoke.

Ken

BTW, when I gave my talk at UCLA a couple of weeks ago and I gave a whole bunch of SpanishPod vouchers to those in attendance. Hope you get some movement from it.

Orlando

I don’t know how often I encountered the situation that I asked myself: “Can I really use that expression in written communication?” (with the answer often being a plain: “No”). Or that I looked for terms I thought to fit in perfectly in Google for validation and only found them in a “Dictionary of complicated words”.

But English is fairly easy from a German standpoint. Often you can guess the degree of formailty based on word length or roots (latin / french / germanic).

Not so with Chinese. Some of the new vocab I learned at CPod are regarded purely colloquial, never to be used in written language, although there are no clues whatsoever why that is the case (recent example: 指不定). If this is not discussed during the lesson than you need to rely on luck…

The native feeling will never come.

But it might be an idea to not only present the naked vocab as a list, but unotated with meta-data like “degree of formality”, “context”, “regional confinement”…

For myself, I find that in live conversations with French speakers, I become energized and animated when the person just seems easy to talk with, and also when we share a genuine interest in the topic(s). I simultaneously plunge ahead (not worrying too much about the ideal vocabulary and grammar) and seem to retrieve better what I’ve learned.

As to the relevance you mention, Ken, there’s nothing like interaction with native speakers to help a learner figure out that no one really says X in situation Y.

Are you familiar with the incomparable English as She is Spoke? As Pedro Carolino himself said, “He speak the french very well. Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman. It is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages.”