Just wait until she opens her mouth.
The Shanghai Daily has an article, titled : “Talented Tongue” (ouch!) about this young lady and the fact that she is good at languages. (More talented, obviously, than the person who wrote that ugly headline.) This includes Mandarin. Now, she’s not just good at Mandarin – she’s really good at Mandarin. She’s even better than most native speakers!
John Pasden, you have some competition on your hands. Actually, Jenny, even you have competition. By the sounds of this article Lu Xun himself might have competion on his hands.
Ken Carroll
pretzellogic on 
Andrew Cockerham on 
Dave on
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Fluent in 2 years?
Certainly, anyone who masters the “accordian” would make short work of Mandarin.
hey Ken , have some sample of her speech? Im curious…:)
Hi Fleps,
I haven’t heard her. I’ll try to reach her for an interview. Maybe we should even hire her!
Maybe Chinese is easier for Russian speaks to pick up. Serge Melnyk speaks excellent Chinese as well, it’s better than his English.
She was a linguistics major too, darn it she knows Japanese as well. Okay, John is prettier….ohh not really. Well more than two years, that was the time in Russia, then there was time in China. Actually, there are quite a lot of very good non-native Chinese speakers out there, they just don’t get much exposure. I saw a show once with one guy talking about economics. Ken — you and John can lure her with talks of lexicons and cognates. If that doesn’t work probably Jenny and some coffee will. Just keep Aric away.
I like how she said frankly she’s put in the time, when you talk to her ask her how much? And how could she compress it into what sounds like 3-5 years.
There was a TV program in the UK recently about an English guy with an incredible brain (unfortunately I can’t find the links).
The focus was on his mathmatical ability, he is highly unusual in that he displays all the characteristics of an idiot-savant but somehow came out of himself as a teenager a is now noraml socially too.
The main focus was on a batch of tests that were carried out by a bunch of American scientists to prove that he wasn’t faking it. However there was an interesting aside when he stated that he had similar language abilities. Almost as an afterthought they selected a language (Norweigan) and flew him off to Norway for a week.
He was left in the hands of a Norweigan language teacher and his own devices. At the end of the week he was interviewed in Norweigan on Norwegian TV and the Norwegians involved seemed frankly amazed by his progress.
I don’t think this would have worked nearly so well in Chinese as a good part of his technique seem to involve huge quantities of reading once he got over an initial hump. I guess even a super brain is going to have to take some time to learn the characters. It is interesting to speculate how quickly he could learn Chinese though.
Problem is I can’t find any information on the Internet (the program was about two years ago). Maybe he has been spirited away by some shady organisation so they can clone him or something. Anbody else know anything about him??
You flatter me, Ken. There are many, many foreigners out there with better Mandarin than mine, but I’m certainly not through improving it yet!
This whole thing of mandarin-speaking laowai celebrity is weird. I think only in Asia could someone become wealthy and famous simply by virtue of the fact s/he is fluent in the local language. Japan, Taiwan, and China are the ones I am familiar with. Does Korea have its pet foreigners too? Can anyone come up with Western countries that exhibit this same phenomenon? A country in which a foreigner’s sole claim to fame rests on the fact they speak their host country’s languge fluently, and have made a lucrative career out of doing so. What I find even more bizarre is how so many foreigners in Asia get caught up in it.
It maybe because us foreigners often don’t make the effort to learn the Asian languages, so they’re impressed by the few that do.
My question is, HOW did she learn to speak so well. Is she doing something differently, a new learning technique perhaps? Maybe I should buy an accordion.
Pandagator Maybe She is just a whole lot smarter than most people at learning languages. I keep finding people who are significantly smarter than me, which is strange as I am a so smart that the odds against me finding so many should be atstronimical
Interesting.Nice article
Rian: We saw Word Press website most of day until few minutes ago… atleast from Texas. Chinesepod.com just came up in South USA. You guys should have someone watch website during night(China time) or hire better hosting company. It is not first time you site crashs while your sleeping.
Hi Richard and Rian: I figured it was just Rian/tech team up late messing around with the site (I’m here in China), but yah–the sites were hosed after midnight yesterday.
I think the issue of celebrity is simply a matter of newness. Most Chinese are not (or were not, until recently) used to seeing/hearing foreigners fluent in Mandarin. CCTV took a shine to Da Shan many years ago becuase his skills were comparatively rare. China is not a nation of immigrants and had been closed off from the outside world for some years. Anyone who wanted to learn the languaghe had to do it thehard way. When Da Shan came along (in the 80s) he was news. He certainly took on the persona they wanted and ran with it, and the rest, I suppose, was history. Fair play to him.
It wouldn’t be possible to create a Da Shan these days, though there is now an African American guy who does a televised tour of China. I guess this is news. His Mandarin is not as good as Da Shan’s but he comes across well. I guess there is a first in here.
As to our talented Russian language learner, I don’t think she could devise new strategies that could be universally applied. She most likely has a unique gift, some quirk of her psychology that make it possible for her. The rest of us have to do it the hard way.
Ken
I actually would like to meet her Mandarin teacher. Do any of you know how?
Zhuangli,
I’m trying to contact her, but she doesn’t seem t undertand what I’m saying (joke)!
Ken
Just a small correction: according to the article, she studied Chinese for two years before coming to China, then earned an undergraduate degree in China. That means she’s put in at least 6 years of hard work into her Chinese studies. The girl is clearly talented, but she may not be quite the genius some of you are suggesting.
-John
John writes: >>The girl is clearly talented, but she may not be quite the genius some of you are suggesting.
There was a comment in a magazine article about art workshops: “You’d be surprised at how much ‘talent’ regular practice will reveal.” That’s a good thing to keep in mind with Chinese, too…
Speaking of language geniuses… What about people who can pick up native accents? In college one summer I was a guide/interpreter for a Belgian dance group at an international dance festival. Another guide, an American who spoke French, but was assigned to the Sicily team, came over to meet and converse with the Belgians. His cousin had told me that he had this gift for speaking languages (French, Spanish) without an accent, but I assumed she was exaggerating or meant “he has a really good accent.” But after meeting the accent whiz, one of the Belgians came to me and said, “He speaks without any accent!” I said (envious and trying to casually explain away this phenomenon) “Well he did live for six months in France.” The Belgian replied, “No, you don’t understand! He doesn’t have a French accent! He has a Belgian accent! And he was only talking to us for an hour!” Also apparently when he was in France he did not have an American accent. So I asked the no-accent guy what his secret was. He said (basically) “I just listen to them talking for a while and get a feel for how they are pronouncing things before I start talking.” Shoot… he wasn’t anything special, just from the same area as me, a guy with a Southern accent, kind of quiet and soft-spoken. He didn’t strike me as an obvious “brain.” One of my college professors also had a wife like that… she grew up in Germany and spoke German, Italilan, French and English, all without an accent; and learned the other languages past age 13. Now my question is: Is there something about the way they HEAR the language that is different? When I was taking art we learned that artistic talent resides in the eye and vision, not in the hand that holds the pencil or brush; and it’s the “seeing” that has to be developed; so I am wondering if accent resides in the ear, not in the tongue… of course the drawing hand and the speaking tongue have to be trained, but they are only following the eyes and the ears. Is that a question of “genius” or something that can be learned?
BEEP-POO-BLEE -The other day I saw a Chinese t.v. show where there was a little kid who could identify phone numbers from the tones when one presses the phone buttons. He could even ‘hear’ his parents coming home from their footsteps three flights down. I think some lucky folks get a brain that parses out things better than the rest of us. It’s like those comedians that can do accents and imitations. Darn them all!
I remember one time JohnS commented something to the effect, ‘listen carefully’. I liken this to the technique of practicing drawing by drawing upside down so that you ‘learn to see’ the lines, shadows, etc., rather than trying to draw a preconceived ‘vase’ that is in front of us. I bet this is the same in language. Speaking well means learning to listen.
I think musical competence is related the ability to learn languages. Especially Chinese, being tonal. That Russian girl is obviously a musician and probably has been for many years. She must really hear the tones and inflections. I also know a very talented Korean violinist who speaks perfect American English after being here just a few years (she learned it faster than her Korean friends and has virtually no accent).
She was very modest in her response to press… It would be great if you could get her on the Cpod show. Yes, there are many very good speaking laowais out there but this chick executed her strategy in major competition beating one hell of alot of Chinese. I find it stressful buying ticket at train station in front of 100 Chinese. She must have really been prepared. Good job to her!
Just as a response to Prince Roy’s question above: yes, Korea definitely has its share of foreigners who are famous simply for speaking fluent Korean. What’s striking to me is the tremendous increase in fluent foreigners over the last 5-10 years or so. There’s now a show on TV whose title can be translated as “Beauty’s Chatter” that features 16 young women from various countries (Canda, US, Russia, Finland,Ukraine, China, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ecuador…) whose abilities range from good to outstanding.