The American professor who performed live comedy in Mandarin in front of a billion people

From Zero to Fluent in Two Years: I’m Learning Mandarin Listener Nails Spoken Mandarin

Links:

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Chinese transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com

Clement's Twitter: https://x.com/cjpgverrier

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On today’s podcast, I broadcast the first of what I hope will be many Chinese monologues submitted by listeners to this podcast.

Today’s recording is by Clement, an I’m Learning Mandarin listener from France who lives in Taiwan. He talks us through his fascinating Chinese learning experiences.

I first met Clement in Taiwan a year ago after he attended a group language exchange session I organised.

He’s since gone on to use many of the methods we recommend on this podcast, including sentence mining and tone training and, as you’ll soon hear, has achieved an outstanding level of pronunciation and spoken fluency within just two years of learning.

As usual, you can find a Chinese transcript for this episode along with an English translation on imlearningmandarin.com

If you like this episode please don’t forget to leave a five-star rating on your favoured podcast provider. And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts you can also leave a review.

Now over to Clement!

How this Deaf Mandarin Learner Perfected Chinese Tones

My Free Mandarin Learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

My Chinese learning Blog: imlearningmandarin.com

James's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jameswonglife

James's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JamesWongLife/videos

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On today’s podcast, I speak to James Wong, a commercial model and influencer from the UK who has an incredible story of overcoming adversity to become fluent in Chinese.

James’ dad is from Hong Kong but moved to the UK as a child. James was raised monolingual in English but as an adult decided to explore his heritage by taking on Chinese languages. He moved to Taiwan to study Mandarin a few years ago and has lived there ever since.

His Chinese learning journey would eventually see him reach a high level in spoken Mandarin, master the tones, and even take part in several televised interviews in Taiwan.

These achievements were made all the more remarkable by the fact that James has severe hearing loss.

I began by asking James about his mixed heritage background and early exposure to Chinese language and culture growing up.

The history of Chinese attitudes to Mandarin speaking foreigners

My free Mandarin learning ebook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Follow this Chinese podcast along with a transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com

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In today’s episode, I talk about the recent history of Chinese attitudes towards foreigners speaking Mandarin and how this differs from the English-speaking world.

It’s always struck me that the way Chinese people react to foreigners speaking their language can have a major impact on our learning journey.

On the one hand, it feels nice to be showered with praised as a beginner for saying a few basic words.

But on the other hand, this can get old quickly.

And the culture of treating foreign Chinese speaking as an entertainment spectacle, with international Chinese speaking competitions broadcast on TV to a whole nation can seem odd for learners who’ve never encountered it before.

So today I discuss the origins of these attitudes and the reasons why Chinese people tend to react the way they do when they hear non-native speakers speak Mandarin.

The American professor who performed live comedy in Mandarin in front of a billion people

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

David's blogpost, Why Chinese is So Damn Hard: https://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

My blog: imlearningmandarin.com

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My guest today is David Moser, an Associate Professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. He’s had a fascinating and varied career in academia teaching courses in Chinese history and politics and authoring books on Mandarin grammar and the unification of the Chinese language.

There’s so much we could have spoken to David about. But for this interview, we decided to focus two main areas:

The first is his story of self-studying Chinese to fluency. It began in the US in the 1980s and ultimately led to a series of amazing life experiences in Beijing, where he became a national star, performing in front of up to a billion people in live televised comedy sketches.

The second point of focus is a piece David wrote called Why Chinese is So Damn Hard. It’s possibly the most widely read blog post on Chinese learning ever written and also one of the inspirations for me starting my own blog and this podcast.

The blog is a tongue-in-cheek lament on the difficulties and frustrations we all face when we take on the Chinese language. I’ve included a link above.

I hope to have the opportunity to get David back on the podcast to discuss his academic career in future. But for now, I give you, round 1 of my interview with David Moser.

This bully nearly made me give up Chinese!

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Transcript: imlearningmandarin.com

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In today’s episode, I tell a story in Chinese about bullying and language learning based on personal experience.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ll be posting these shorter Chinese episodes every two weeks, in between the longer interviews with Mandarin scholars, learners, and experts.

One of the things I’ve found is that setting yourself a goal to record and post podcasts speaking Chinese is a brilliant way to improve your speaking skills. When you know other people are going to hear your recording it pushes you to work harder on your delivery!

So that’s why I’ve decided to open up the podcast to listeners who are interested in recording and producing your own short monologues in Chinese.

If you’re at an intermediate to advanced level and would like to have a go at recording an episode in Chinese please get in touch by emailing info[at]peakmandarin[dot]com.

You’ll be supported through the process of developing your idea as well as recording and producing an episode in Chinese to be published on I’m Learning Mandarin.

Finally, before you listen to the podcast, I recommend installing the browser plugin Zhongwen Chinese-English Dictionary (available on Firefox and Chrome) so you can look up any characters or words you don’t know by hovering over them.

Now on to the episode!