John Cena Speaking Mandarin Chinese

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.