When Hollywood Speaks Chinese, I Cringe | Video Essay
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ม.ค. 2022
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Accented Cinema - Episode 77
Here is a problem rarely discussed, but should be relatable to anyone who speaks a language beyond English: Hollywood just doesn't seem to understand how non-English languages work.
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Goood...
Do you have a video about 'fresh off the boat'?
I don't have any annual plans, I'm lucky if I know what's happening the day after tomorrow...
I love your channel but this is a cringe video in itself.
Have you seen Shang Chi, thoughts?
"Non-English language are treated like costumes to put on" hits hard
That's funny. As someone who watches a lot of K-dramas and C-dramas, I'm tired of seeing Korean and Chinese actors who play the rich man/woman type of character meeting a foreigner and speaking English to show how smart they are, when in fact they have a super THICK accent and can't even pronounce the words correctly. It's never Spanish, or German, or whatever. It's always English. And the foreigner in the screen is always a white person, never someone black. But when Hollywood does that it's appropriation and racism.
Double standards are scary.
@@marianacarina2580 Agree. And I think the reason why Hollywood does this makes racism instead of others is just that Hollywood has the most influence over others. It’s not all about double standards.
It’s the same with non-English movies from non-English speaking countries.
They mock a local speaker of broken English regularly in their movies, and tv shows.
@@marianacarina2580 - E. X. A. C. T. L. Y.
Man you went OFFFF in this video LOL. It always bothered me when Hollywood makes a white character speak Chinese to show off how SUPER SMART they are, meanwhile actual Chinese-speaking viewers are pointing and laughing
I was so tempted to ask you for a cameo. I wanted to send you a few clips to get your reactions.
After watching so many clips myself, I decided no one should endure such torture.
To be honest, it always makes me think of tourists going to tattoo shops to get something that makes them sound tough, but walk away with something like "chicken nugget" permanently on their body
@@AccentedCinema xiran really does make the best faces
As a westerner still learning Mandarin, even I can hear the awful ways these sounded. But I was always generally disturbed/disgusted by the way Asians are represented in Hollywood, so this doesn't really surprise me. Embarrass the fuck out of me, yes. But not surprise me.
@George Armedeus Kraner what part isn't true?
An epiphany hit me. Chinese language instructors aren't actors. They can help with pronunciations and vocabulary, but not with delivery. Voice acting is a craft of its own and being a native speaker doesn't automatically mean you're good at it.
This is probably why Tucker from Rush Hour speaks Chinese well, cause he's right next to Jackie Chan, who knows how to act in Chinese.
Yes! And I think that there's a barrier for native English speakers to act in Chinese languages versus, say, Romance languages. Since modulations in tone are used so differently in English and Chinese, a lot of English-speaking actors seem to deliver Chinese in a very dull and flat manner in their attempt to get the tone right, sacrificing their own performance. Whereas, if an English speaker doesn't speak Italian, they can still deliver lines in Italian with the right tones as long as they know which words they need to emphasize.
3:58 honestly a great move by Chow to intentionally use awkward English to take us out of the moment then immerse us back in with even more appreciation for the character that acknowledges the awkwardness. I don't think this is even limited to comedy, imagine any of the movies shown but the Chinese speaker plainly says "I'm sorry I can't make out what you're saying". A great opportunity for embarrassment, frustration, humility, or any other character trait the writer wanted to communicate.
But Chinese people are too polite for that, generally speaking, since admitting that the other speaker is basically unintelligible seems like a huge slap in the face. So I suppose that wouldn't ring true for the average Chinese viewer, either.
0:43
_looks at the american dude for a long while with furrowed eyebrows_
“先生，你到底在点什么？你刚才讲的话我连一个字都听不懂呀！你可以重新说吗？”
I'm so late to this convo. But to get around the 'chinese people are too polite to call out someone's bad chinese,' you could have another well meaning chinese person (like an american chinese kid for example) 'translate' the unintelligible chinese into whatever the originally intended words were.
The chinese speaker remains polite and the bad chinese speaker's inadequate chinese is aknowledged. Like 'this character's chinese is so bad, this chinese american grandchild has to translate it to their native chinese speaking grandmother like they would english.'
Alternatively, you could just have the chinese person nod like they understand and ask another person once they leave wth the unintelligible chinese speaker said.
“It’s not Mandarin, nor Cantonese- it bullsh*t” 🤣
I'm seeing a shirt design...
@Commieblin That moment when your broken chinese is so broken you summon a demon from a different cultural background XD
@@pewpewdragon4483 😂
@@mattkandarian7712
Yeah, that would make for a good shirt. xD
@@pewpewdragon4483
That would make for a good gag comic actually.
Their expressions when they speak chinese is hilarious, it's like they're acting like they're saying something profound, but they're just saying something normal.
Ikr, like the guy ordering food was literally just normal conversation/orderings that someone who don't know Chinese can practice and incite it after like 1 month of practice
And he's acting like he's doing something SOOOO out of the world.
Imagine an immigrant speaking in simple English to a waiter with a cocky face.
@@mckenzi4608 also he spoke it so badly it was frankly embarrassing
I am Russian, so I want to point out that there is always a specific stereotipical character when someone is trying to speak Russian. He/She will do this 100% to show off how badass they are (like Gloria from the Modern family when she talks to mafia to scare them OR Murray from Stranger things when he talks to soldiers in s3 and s4 to trick them). HOWEVER, Gloria speaks awfully (I am a native speaker and hardly undersrood 2 or 3 words), Murray on the other hand speaks better, but in reality no russian-speaking person would believe he's a native (as he has very distinct accent) and so he won't be able to fool anyone
Stranger Things kind of does Russia/the USSR dirty as a whole.
It's funny because they also do something similar in French. When they want to make a character seem sophisticated or intellectual, sometimes sexy they make them say a few lines in butchered French. I guess Hollywood does that with so many languages. The thing is, most Americans with no recent migration background only speak English so I guess for them speaking another language in itself is already exotic... some American tourists also seem to expect everyone here to speak English, there is a kind of entitlement that others will learn their language but they won't bother learning ours, and maybe that's this kind of process that happens when they butcher foreign languages on screen...
Exactly my thoughts
I want to learn Russian but fear people will laugh at me like they do the people in this video. What's the best way to learn?
@@clarkkent9034 I can speak only from my pov, but what annoys me when ppl speak Russian in movies is that the characters are supposed to be FLUENT in Russian, but have thick accents and weird sentence structure that looks like the writers just didn't care enough to make the character believable. You, on the other hand are a real person. Obviously you're Russian won't be as good as a native speaker's, but 1) you're learning a new language, and Russian is extra difficult so it only makes sense that you'll have an accent. And 2) you acknowledge that you are not a native speaker and are trying to learn another language. Just as English is not a native language to me, but I'm not pretending that I am American or British etc
Hope it makes sense
My respect goes out to Jim Carrey because he actually learned basic Korean for the movie Yes Man. That's why while his Korean wasn't perfect, it fitted the scene and the character he's portraying.
In K-dramas it always makes me laugh when they have a Chinese character that speaks Chinese but it's just another Korean actor stumbling through the random Chinese dialogue they're supposed to say 😆
Hahhahaha or Japanese, I was watching a kdrama a few weeks ago, and one of the characters was talking to a group of japanese tourists, and i could not understand anything. They were emphasising wrong parts too xD and here I thought they would at least be good.
Same with English,the "America-born" character speak silly English smh
@@Henry_44 literally!! though there are some actors who are fluent there are more who speak with a funny accent
lol reminds me of Train to Busan part 2..where they're supposed to recruit someone in HK, but the actors are obviously Koreans, the setting doesn't feel like HK, and the cantonese lines are off and are as much cringy.
I am Korean and I agree. Budget issues I guess. And also time. Korean drama makers suffer from tight schedule and budget I heard. Definitely needs to change!
I thought Bradley Cooper's movie was mocking Mandarin by making him speak complete garbage. Turns out, he was attempting to speak the language with marbles in his mouth.
similar to Jennifer Lawrence's vietnamese in xmen. I thought she mocking the dude at first lol
@@bowwow8620 Never heard of that. Time for me to cringe.
Its just one line, with sufficient practice he can easily do the order
I guess his admiration for Marlon Brando in Godfather was very 😏.
The Shang Chi name case is funny, as it is because of stereotypes that they changed the Mandarin and had to keep the main characters name intact.
What was it before?
On God why can't they just make it Shang Qi
@@victort.4868Probably because the Chi name is copyrighted.
The most frustrating thing is that Mandarin pronunciation isn't even as hard as people make it out to be; if actors spent a few hours practising their lines with a coach their speech wouldn't be anywhere near as jarring. Of course learning the difference between zai/cai, chuan/chuang, re/ri and so on takes longer but if all you need is a few lines then it's not important.
Edit: Good point on the last bit about language and national identity. Hollywood loves to tell everyone how they've moved on from the stereotyping that they're still engaging in, but when they do it nowadays it's not racism, it's a "cultural homage".
true true
although as a wasian who never properly learned chinese, accents are the hardest for me to nail :')
This is exactly what I was thinking. I am not at all proficient in Mandarin, but I'm convinced a half-way decent actor could learn to say two phrases well enough not to butcher it.
The biggest cringefest was how American news channels covered the Olympics in Beijing.
Do *none* of these organizations have native speakers or teachers on staff? Seriously, learning the basics (enough to properly pronounce names and places) isn't impossible!
When the mainstream does it, it's "cultural homage"
When others do it, it is "cultural appropriation"
Bruh
It's definitely one of the harder languages to pronounce
As a Korean we relate this to a spiritual level. Not only that a lot of Korean pronounciations were butchered around, we also had to endure watching scenes like neo-Koreans drinking "soap" and an American spy stealing North Korean nuclear factory plans titled "Gangnam bank foreclosure procedures".
At least we had moments to poke fun at this. In The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a Korean villain was asked to "say anything in Korean" by the director. But instead of making improvised threats, he broke the 4th wall and apologized on-screen to the Korean viewers while saying that the acting life in the US is sh!t. This got into the final cut because the director didn't understand what he said anyway.
The redemption we got from bad English in Squid Game was so satisfying, I hope Hollywood filmmakers got the message.
That sounds hilarious
English scenes in Korean dramas are usually so hilarious. But rather than interpret it as disrespect towards my native language, I see no reason not to see it as the characters have only advanced to that level of English. After all, it's incredibly common to hear broken English in daily life in North American cities anyway.
Honestly, at least they’re trying. Lol. Its like when asians in asian try speaking in English is cringe asf.
@@christopherdonaghue2461 and the only reason for that is to make the characters “ look smart’ lol.. its cringe.
At least in america, they do it for other reasons.
Non korean here.... "gangnam" had me rolling. I have watched too many kdramaz that I know the whole history of Gangnam .... Right from Kim Su Ro, Heo Hwang Ok to plastic surgery hub....
Its in South Korea people🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 It was always in South Korea
I come from a Russian background, so anytime "Russian" is spoken on screen my brain automatically goes into "it's gibberish time." I feel like language needs to be treated like training for a fight scene. You can't just practice for a week and expect to get the flow right.
I think a lot of American culture involves assimilation, so whenever you keep your ethnic roots, you're viewed as an outsider. Considering the amount of literal exclusion Chinese people had to deal with in American history, it's no wonder that Chinese, and really all East Asian, culture and language is exoticized to this day.
The shape of water- I was laughing so much when they spoke Russian 🤣
When you said "it's gibberish time" I felt that
It doesn't happen often but I feel the same when Filipino/Tagalog is spoken on screen
In particular this one scene from a show called Lucifer (I think)
As a first generation kid, that second paragraph is spot on...
I had an ex from the east (Ukraine, but she was fluent in Russian with a Russian Grandma) she was understandably particularly vocal about that. They do that with mostly everyone, even people you wouldn't expect. Francis Ford Coppola is of Italian origins. In the Godfather, Mike's Sicilian wife's accent is ABSOLUTELY not Sicilian, you can clearly hear she is from Rome - where the Apollonia actress Simonetta Stefanelli is from. That part temporarily throws me out of a generally speaking, perfect movie.
I think the problem is the differences in value between the two. While the production definitely wants to make a nice looking fight scene (because it is appreciated by LITERALLY everyone watching, they probably don't care as much about the accuracy of language scenes, especially if they are pressed for time on set (like Hollywood movies usually are) as well as it has a smaller audience that can really distinguish the difference.
as a person whose first language is cantonese and is fluent in mandarin, i still appreciate the effort, and i can understand them [with subtitles lol] meaning they don't speak gibberish. I am especially happy when i hear cantonese!
This is something of a two way street anyway, as demonstrated by the opening example. I chuckle whenever an obviously foreign (often still white) "Native" English speaker appears in an East Asian movie. Your comment reminds me though that rarely does bad English, or an out of place accent like this take me out of a TV show or movie as much as a weird name. Even "President Jim Jeremies" or something. It's not that the name is outright impossible, but it would be impossible not to think "nobody is voting for Jim Jeremies - nobody"
Finally!! Someone who isn’t as negative as this whole video. Yes!! You should be celebrating that people are trying to learn and appreciate their efforts whether or not it’s “perfect”
@@orlandoservin5492 I think what the issue the video tries to highlight primarily is that genuine representation would comment or in some other not ignore that the pronunciation is terrible. The film can even highlight it to viewers without having the characters awkwardly comment on the pronunciation if that fits the scene better. Things like this are done all the time in filmmaking so why shouldn't it be done with language too?
I can understand most of them❤
I watch a lot of Chinese films and television, and do notice that, on a related note, many of the same type of issues are present in scenes with English-speaking actors, as well. It can make it difficult at times to get my (English-speaking) friends into certain dramas and films because, of course, they tend to be very critical of the at times stilted English dialogue, writing, and incorrect accents. Usually my go-to is to explain to them that American movies almost always do a very shoddy job with Chinese language and culture, but we just don't notice it, of course. I think that puts in perspective why some of the English acting and dialogue may feel stiff or improper at times in Chinese movies, in return, because its simply not the native language of the creators or primary audience so, to most of them, these issues don't glare any more than all the shoddy Chinese dialouge in American films do to the English-speaking audience.
Exactly. For some reason, the only language that all western foreigners in Chinese films/series speak is English, even when it's not their native language. The English is often horrible as well, which can lead to some weird situations. For example, I once watched a series in which supposedly British troops were speaking English with thick Slavic accents. I can only assume that many of the western characters in Chinese series/films are portrayed by Russians.
@@davemorgan6013 I have seen some pretty decent Italian and German dialogue here and there in a drama, but I can't speak as to how grating they would be to native speakers since I don't speak either very well.
And the reason most western foreigners speak English is because English has become a sort of business "lingua franca", so everybody can speak accented English and communicate.
Haha yeah been watching plenty of Korean dramas recently and when they have English speaking actors it's jarring. So many times they are meant to be Americans but are speaking with a pigeon Eastern European accent
Yes, and may I add that the reasons more people seem to make fuss about it are because English language movies are more readily available worldwide, and that English-language social media is more present. Most Chinese social media users are using intranet, thus their films, even the ones using English, are not commonly discussed.
It's the same with other languages: for example German. When they've got dialogue in German in an English language film (let's be honest, it's mostly in scenes with Nazis lol), it always confuses the heck out of me and I sometimes have to turn on the subtitles to understand what they're supposed to say. Like, they do have vocal coaches and people speaking those languages and dialects, don't they?
Yes, the German in films, is usually terrible. I get that the actors might not be able to pronounce it right but to have the grammar and sentence structure completely wrong? Does no one check this? Google translate does it better.
I don't speak German so I would prefer actors speaking strange German than two Nazis speaking English to each other like in some movies 😂
@@silentsaturn7604 pronunciation of german messed up, what is wrong, i myself as an ethnic chinese cant speak chinese, it is a damn annoying hard to learn language to be forced upon many children around here, but messing up german, german?
@@Cecilia-ky3uw I would think German would be comparatively easy to learn for a native English speaker since there are so many similarities, not only in structure but also in words. At least that helped me learning English lol.
@@literaturmurks likely, as a native english speaker who was born in indonesia, I am very much sure id have a marginally better time learning german(as i have doubts to my ability to learn any other language at all)
Back when Life of Pi was in theaters, I remember watching the scene where Pi's mom reads him a story in Tamil and my cousins and I were laughing our asses off.
The actress who spoke it (Tabu) may have been fluent in the language herself, but because the screenwriter clearly hadn't consulted a native speaker, the dialogue sounded like it was from Google Translate.
That's gold
OMG really? I am Tamil, read the book but haven't watched the movie. I thought they all spoke in English (so that foreigners will understand and it's made by Americans) but this info is news to me xD
@@EspeonMistress00 Yeah, that scene i mentioned is the only one where Tamil is spoken, if i'm remembering correctly.
Even though my cousins and I are second-generation Desi Americans and our Tamil was not fluent, we could still tell how unnatural it sounded.
i also had this reaction but it happened to be in a game that u guys might know, which is max payne 3. I laugh my ass off with those npc dialogues in brazilian portuguese how it sounded like it was from google translate, like, actor's voices were clearly from native speakers but not even the worst brazilian screenwriter could do those lines
This was me during Avengers movie when supposedly india is all about slum and Hulk was helping them
I didn't watch Dune the whole way through, I thought it was boring at the beginning, but man Timothée Chalamet's deliver of that line give me literal chills.
It's not that they all should be speaking perfect Chinese/Korean/Russian, it just has to be best suited for the character. It all depends on the character's background.
If your character's is supposed to be a native or just a well educated, eloquent speaker, even if the actor doesn't speak it, you should get a proper language coach to help the actor nail the fundamentals down. If you don't, this whole character's setting is ruined.
But if you do, oh man, it's going to hit so hard, like a fine stroke on a beautiful painting. These details do add up.
This also reminds me of actors who don't know a thing about playing on screen music instruments: a character supposed to be a genius at playing them, fumbling with them like a maniac.
That doesn't show genius or intelligence or passion, that makes all of us look stupid: the actor, the audience and the film maker.
That movie was boring as hell. I didn't finish it too.
@@blyndfold4336 lmao i found someone who has an entire arm up their ass
@@blyndfold4336 I recommend the book
TBF, this movie is set FAR in the future where various cultures, faiths, etc have combined, like combining say, Buddhism and Native American beliefs
@@chrisdiokno5600 yeah, the ancestors of the fremen followed a faith called Zensunni, which is a mix of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Islam. Dune is a worldbuilder's wet dream
I'm from Germany and I always find it very interesting to hear when a character in a foreign film is said to be speaking German. The best example for me would be Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion. When she speaks German, in most cases I don't understand a single word. But personally, that doesn't bother me at all. I understand that it can bother people when their mother tongue is misrepresented, but for me there are too many factors that influence a film or series. For me, an Evangelion has never lost its effect in these scenes in which "German" is spoken. The pronunciation may not be perfect, but the emotions that should come across in these scenes still touched me deeply. Of course, I'm also happy when you realize that there are differences in accent between "Bayrisches " and "Kölner" German, but in the end it's not that important to me personally.
But I have to admit the context with the "alien language" is pretty questionable.📽
(Sorry for the Bad English)
Deutsch in Anime und Manga erscheint oft als einzelnes Wort oder als Slogan. Es erscheint fast ausschließlich in Szenen mit Kampf oder Kriegen und steht für "Science Fiction, Mystery und Autorität".
"EVA,Hellsing,attack on titan,jojo,girls and panzer,requim fot the phantom,elfen lied,etc." Fast keine Ausnahmen.
Ich bin kein Deutscher, also weiß ich nicht was Sie denken. Aber ich glaube, dass die deutsche Sprache immer mit einem Stereotyp von Deutschland während des Zweiten Weltkriegs verbunden ist, was Sie vielleicht nicht glücklich macht.
I recently heard German completely butchered in an older TV show (The Mentalist). When the character then spoke English with an even worse German “accent”, it hurt to hear. She was also aggressive, dumb, blonde, buxom and a model who married (and was divorced from) a rich American man. These are stereotypes of German/Russian/Eastern European women - think mail-order brides. I figure, if you’re going to use a language in your movie or TV show, make sure it’s not in poor taste or unnecessary. In the case that the language is butchered, if it’s necessary to the plot, I can get over the bad accents or fucked up syntax. But don’t throw it in just because. Even worse, don’t add it because you think it’s funny.
What wasn’t mentioned in the video was, to express the correct meaning and make words auditable not only depends on the pronunciation, but also the tone. Like which two words go together, where can you pause. For exam,ple if I spea,k English, like, th-is, I would definitely annoy a lot people ( including myself
As somebody who grew up with a Hong Kong-Malaysian Chinese family, it became incredibly apparent to me that any tad differences in accents, dialects, and languages can speak volumes about a person's background and identity. the fact that this is glossed over in so many films is frankly quite sad considering how much potential there can be to this artistic medium. I'm glad someone as amazing as you pointed this out :) hope films just get better from here on out in understanding how to portray these multifaceted identities in even the subtleties
Edit: happy a lot of people think the same way 🤙🏼 I understand those that think that this isn't exactly the most important thing, as to some, these are miniscule details that may not mean anything in the grand scheme of things. However, one can't deny that an understanding of foreign cultures is lacking in a lot of movies, and that goes for films trying to use western culture too. I just think that we all kinda just need to understand the rest of the world better, and our films reflect our need for that. It's also jarring when other cultures are just jarringly used; like in the video, the Cloudy of a Chance of Meatball's chinese scene would take anyone out of the scene. There's kinda no point of stuffing random cultures that you probably don't understand into stories that don't fit. It also opens up doors to make more three dimensional characters in everyone's films artistically. I also think that makes us respect other cultures more, and disassociates the stereotypes that we have of them. All in all, I just think that tiny extra effort to make things culturally accurate in films can go long ways (I mean heck, people locally didn't know how to pronounce shang-chi's name, because no one knew what dialect it was in since it used the wade-giles system; if chinese people can't interpret a chinese characters name, that kinda says something)
He also made a great point about names. Looking at a name i can tell if this person is Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese or Chinese by way of Vietnam. That point about Shang-Chi is funny and interesting. It didn’t occur to me. There’s a lot about Shang-Chi that is incongruous and he hit that one on the head.
that's why Asian's need to make their own films in Hollywood.
@@CoryPchajek I think the VIP in Squid Games just have bad acting not bad English. The fault is the production didn't explain the story and situation properly and just gave them the lines
@@IceX92 Mostly bad script and acting. Very campy and unnatural. But perhaps it was done on purpose by the director. I feel like the VIP scenes opened up the eyes of many westerners and white people on how Hollywood tends to portray POC and non-Americans in their films - full of stereotypes and over-exaggeration.
Yeah, I get it, too. As somebody who grew up in a bilingual Weegie-Scouse family. It's why when I'm learning other languages I focus in on the speech patterns and aspects of a specific dialect and accent through video and audio sources after doing research on the areas and cultural differences because the "standard" version taught of the language is either wrong in critical ways when spoken with native speakers or is completely neutered and without character. French, Spanish, German and Japanese are especially bad but far from the only examples.
Honestly. It’s like hearing Englisch in anime. Especially if the character is meant to be good at Englisch. It just kinda takes you out of the immersion.
Edit: guys this was a lighthearted jab. I don’t take offense to people speaking bad English, I just find it funny even in situations where its meant to be serious. I also don’t take offense to people speaking bad Chinese. I’m just generally not one to take offense to people not being able to a language they don’t speak. Please stop twisting my comment out of context.
Yeah, the problem is that they always pretend as if the characters are fluent or even conversational when they're barely intelligible. It's not so much the use that bothers me so much as the fact that they just, what, assume no native speakers will ever hear those lines? Just have the actors say the lines in that language if it's that necessary, but don't write them as native speakers and maybe acknowledge their funny accent.
@@Em-fz6eb yeah. That’s exactly my point too. I don’t mind them speaking English with accents, but if they are meant to be “impressive to even native speaker”…. (Karma from ass class was one I remember so well, and irina the English teacher too, she was talking about how Japanese can’t differentiate between “r” and “L”, yet she barely made a difference)
In Asobi Asobase, they subvert stereotypes by making the "foreign" girl bad at English (spoilers: she lived in Japan for so long she does not know English).
My absolute favourite line is "I ain't keepin' my poker face. It's my nature." such a meme line from Kuroko's Basketball
joseph joestar: sonofabiiiitch!!
Yeah but that's just limited to Anime...
Imagine if your entire culture was limited to a few badly spoken words in like 20 movies over the last 100 years.
Anime is popular now but you can't really compare. Also the power dynamic is way off. In anime they get the characters to speak English because it's a prestige thing. English is prized and seen as popular in Japan. The inverse is not true for Asian languages in hollywood
Meanwhile, whenever there are one or two Finnish words in a Hollywood movie, however unintelligible, half of the country throws a party and it's the top story in major newspapers for weeks.
Good content. I especially liked that you also brought up examples of successful implementations at the end.
Hollywood: “OK, so for this scene you’re going to need to speak Chinese.”
Actor: “Uh, do you want me to speak Mandarin or-
Hollywood: “What? No I want you to speak Chinese!”
There really is no OR. Hollywood WANTS Mandarin, to appease the CCP so their movie can get into China
LOL.
“Alright, sounds good”
*Proceeds to speak Wenzhounese*
@@odd1ty612 casually picks one of the hardest chinese dialects to speak lol
@Excalibur01 you do know that Taiwanese speak mandarin right? And Chinese languages like Cantonese, Minnanese, Shanghainese etc mainly or only exist within PRC right?
The one I can't get over is the Dark Knight. They have a Cantonese actor from Hong Kong. And the characters in the movie are literally in Hong Kong. And they break out in just awful Mandarin. Why weren't they allowed to speak Cantonese?!
That one I also thought was strange.
1 word - CHINA. They're wiping out us Cantonese.
Because mainland China was backing the bucks💵 baby.
Probably decreases the odds that the movie will be banned in mainland China
Are you saying mandarin is an awful language?
So happy I found this video, amazing work you did!
This gave me numerous flashbacks of actors speaking Russian in Hollywood movies which is 95% of the time is a complete disaster.
Another recent example would be the Tagalog scene in No Way Home.
Ned's grandma's Tagalog was intelligible but the accent was so off it's almost obvious that she doesn't really speak Tagalog as her primary language. As a Filipino, I didn't really understand why that Tagalog scene was even necessary to begin with since we can already tell Ned and his family are Filipinos based on their furniture and the pan de sal that MJ threw. It was just so cringey to me
Yeah and I thought Ned's grandma is speaking Malaysian or something, when I try listen to her properly I can understand what she's saying but her dialogue just sounds so off.
@@doodlehobbo8697 not to be that guy but by Malaysian do you mean Malay? cuz there are so many languages in Malaysia...
@@Clemlem Theirs alternative languages in the Philippines too but we rely on the main language to understand each other.
Really? My family was super happy about the Filipino rep in No Way Home, and my sister, who doesn’t even speak Tagalog, was able to translate everything she said.
@@celestinebuendia maybe that's why she's able to understand it.
I unfortunately don't speak Chinese but love this channel's content. I do however, speak Arabic, and there was a game released recently called House of Ashes that had genuine arab voice actors and Ashley Tisdale speaking Arabic. While I was thrilled they had actual Arabs speaking actual Arabic... the characters were supposed to be Iraqi soldiers, and yet, they casted Egyptian and Lebanese voice actors that didn't even ATTEMPT to sound Iraqi. They're entirely different dialects! Ashley Tisdale spoke in such a rigid but understandable way (MSA) that was authentic for a foreigner but it still almost grated against my ears. I think Hollywood and the games industry only really go to a point of believable the average American consumer will go "Wow! That's actually Chinese/Arabic/Spanish!" and then forget about it. Style points, as you said. If it's not English, forget about it, I guess.
It's a similar problem with movies with "Asian" characters. Hollywood don't care what ethnicity the actor is from, and assume because they are "Asian", they can fill ANY Asian role. Like John Cho, a Korean to play Sulu, who is a JAPANESE character. Unlike Black American characters and even a lot of "white" characters, Asian people are not so interchangeable.
It's same when the setting is in Latin America. Every country has its own dialect and accent, but it's usually Mexican/Cuban/Puerto Rican actors that play the characters who don't even try.
@@jascrandom9855 I didn't even know about Cuban accents until I MET a Cuban
@@Excalibur01 Wait until you meet an Argientinian or Paraguayan.
This reminds me of Homeland's graffiti. The directors of Homeland hired some Arab writers to paint Arabic graffiti on the walls of their set, to make it look realistic. They didn't mind what the writers wrote, as long as it looked Arabic. The writers reacted by writing comments against Homeland and its racist messages.
Another fantastic video essay. Your videos are wonderful. Thabk you!
Really well said! Really opened my eyes to something I had never noticed before, and makes an incredible amount of sense
I think with Shang-Chi specifically, there's a legacy problem. Shang-Chi the in-universe person is younger than pinyin, but Shang-Chi the character predates the ISO adoption of pinyin by a bit less than a decade. Not that this really excuses things; if they didn't want to update Shang-Chi, they should have just bit the bullet and given everyone Wade-Giles name transliterations. You could even make a joke about it at some point; have someone comment on Shang-Chi's odd romanization and have him complain about how his dad thinks pinyin is too newfangled for a proper family to use.
In the case of Wen-Wu, I can imagine they make up some excuse like “he goes by many names over the centuries.” But if his sister is an original character in the MCU (?), they should have made all their names consistent within the family.
@@mhawang8204 Right. Whichever transliteration they use, the ultimate problem is that you have this family where it's inconsistent for no discernible reason. The best comparison I can come up with for an Indo-European language would be if you had a pair of brothers named Enrique and George. Why not Henry? Why not Jorge? It's something that could easily be explained, but presented without comment it looks weird.
I think it's because if they spelled it as Shang-Qi people would read it as Shang-Ki, so to make it easier for the audience to pronounce it correctly they made it Shang-Chi
@@gazeboist4535 it's funny because we have this exact thing in our family 😭 my sisters have Spanish names, but me and my brother have french names
Or, just change the spellings. I know why not... but isn't it funny that we can accept the changing of names of cities in real life, but if any iota is changed in an imaginary universe, the fan boys and girls and non-binaries will cry tears of blood?
In regard to respecting language, I remember being really impressed by Inglorious bastards and how focused Tarantino was to actually get French and German actors to fill those roles. This added a whole new quality to the movie, making it almost feel like a celebration of language. I hope this is something we can see more of in the future
Tarantino was like masterpiece first and then money
And even then, Germans were only reduced to Nazis. Like in all of american media.
But I will admit, it was refreshing to actually understand the german on TV for once.
Yes especially the scene in the bar, where the SS officer noticed that one of them is a spy through subtle signs
This is so right, as a french person i honestly thought my dad turned on the french dub 😭
FACTS
this is such a good video -- thank you for making it and sharing it with us!
I know exactly what you mean bro, I’m mexican and every single time characters start speaking spanish while clearly being unable to speak it I die inside
Sometimes when Hollywood does this, it bites them in the butt. My favorite example is from _Homeland_ where they got a native Arabic speaker/writer to put some "graffiti" on the walls. Only he decided to write in perfect Arabic words to the effect of "this show is so racist" and "not all Arab people are terrorists". Hilarious!
He didn't have to tell me, I never even bothered to watch the show. 24 was enough honestly
It was a show about Islamic terrorism. What's racist about that? Fundamentalist Islam exists. Perhaps one should ask, why are Islamic countries so backward?
not all muslims are terrorists but most terrorists in this modern day are Muslim.... It's like a man getting offended they made a rapist a man XDXD If they're going to do terrorist character, of course they're gonna mirror the real world to make it relevant and allow people to suspend their disbelief and accept the story. Buddhist French terrorists are less believable than Muslim terrorists XDXD I doubt they're purposely trying to make Muslims look bad, they just are portraying terrorists, not their fault it's more believable for people to accept it when they're Muslim and not Buddhist or Christian.
There's over dozens of different Muslim terrorists groups like the Taliban, Al-Shabaab, Isis, Al-Qa'ida, Boko Haram, Ansar Khalifa, Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Abu Sayyaf Group and so many more, all from different countries with different cultures and economy... yet for some odd reason they have Muslim extremists and terrorists...
The scene from "Arrival" feels particularily egregious because its a movie ABOUT how language shapes thought. In that moment, Amy Adams' character is, essentially, repeating the General's own words back to him. It would have been perfectly acceptable in context to do a "repeat after me" through an earpiece.
I don't understand the argument. It's perfectly plausible that she hasn't practiced Chinese before, and is just trying to phonetically reproduce the General's words back to him. It *couldn't* have been in English because why would a Chinese person speak their last words in English?
That they haven't put subtitles on this scene is a problem, but this example doesn't help the (otherwise very valid) point of this video.
@@SolarLiner I agree. If she spoke English I would have wondered why it worked on the General. Something’s always lost in translation, so it had to be word for word.
As a native speaker I also think it’s a garbage line. The equivalent in would be a Chinese linguist preaching “make love, not war” to an American general in that situation
@@SolarLiner it's just ironic that Amy Adam's character was able to speak a literal alien language from another world before she could speak mandarin, the most common human language. lol
Chinese here. I never know what Amy said to the general until this video....
Just discovered your channel ~ thank you for addressing this. Much love from HK.
go off king! my family friends and i always laugh about this but we forget there is actually some serious stuff happening underneath in all! thanks for this!!!
Thinking that there is only one Chinese accent is the same as thinking there is only one British accent in UK
Many people do, and i think the reason many see the accents as similar because of how entrenched the cultures are, china as a civilization has existed for some time, same with the entrenched civilizations of europe, parts of africa like ethiopia and nubia(sudan), egypt, the mexica(aztecs) in the form of mexico(kinda).
or even that british english is the only kind of english in the world
Not to mention Mandarin isnt the only Chinese language, its just the standardized one.
I've been in Japan for over 11 years and there is a general notion here of "national languages" with one country having one language. In the case of English, which is recognized as being somehow present in multiple countries and spoken as a much valued second language, there are two "accents": American and British.
Anyone from the United States will laugh at this notion as much is made in US media about the different accents found within the country. But then, a lot of these same people have little to no knowledge of the various British accents save perhaps what is generally called a "Scottish" or "Irish" accent.
Coming back to Japan, locals feel there are a variety of accents and Tokyo residents are notorious for looking down on "weird" accents/local dialects - especially those in the north and west. Yet would your average Beijing citizen be aware of the variety of accents and dialects found in Japan?
Yesss see Agents of Shield, Fitz and Simmons. I recently found out that people thought their accents were fake because it didn't conform to rigid stereotypical "Scottish"(i.e Edinburgh) and "English"(ie RP), even though, I like watching it because it's Marvel content that gives me a little taste of home as an expat Brit lol
I really liked the Ocean's trilogy solution where Qin Shaobo spoke in his native language and the rest of the cast understands him but responds in English. And it even adds to the humour as you only get half of the conversation (if you're mono lingual like me) meaning there are some very funny non sequiturs in there :D
yes but that's also a tired trope which Asian viewers are tired of. Why are Asians only speaking Asians languages? To show their alienees, just like what this video talked about. To make the character weird and stand out in obnoxious way. All those type of characters just turns me off to the show or movie. It's just another lazy use of stereotypes and treating Asian side character like props.
@@RandomUserX99 because its funny and cool, just like chewie and solo, or district 9 movie.
@@RandomUserX99 "Why are Asians speaking asian languages"
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Was that a real question?
@@toolatetothestory you think Asian Americans speak only Asian languages? You think they're no American thus have to speak in gibberish? Or are you too racist to see any issue with that?
I also liked that Qin Shaobo spoke Mandarin in the Oceans movies. I thought the bit about the rest of the crew understanding Yen showed how important he was to the group.
I'm half Filipino. Although I could speak and understand Tagolog as a child, I can't anymore. I've been listening to my mom speak it all my life. I feel like even though I can't word for word translate I have some sense of what she's saying. That's how I look at the Oceans movies. The crew doesn't speak Mandarin, but they've been around Yen enough to have a sense of what he's saying.
When talking about a character being "alien" because no one understands their language I think more of Basher. I know Don Cheadle's British English wasn't great anyway. There's a scene where he says something about the situation being "Barney" and goes on to say it's "Barney Rubble...trouble." Even though the rest of the crew understands the words he says, they don't understand his meaning.
THANK YOU finally a whole video about this because I always Nita r this when I watch shows. Sometimes they make me think that I’m crazy that I can’t understand them but no their Chinese is just awful. I feel like it sounds bad to non Chinese speakers too? It is also funny because they are supposed to be sufficient at the language and say words even I don’t know their pronunciation is so bad it’s not realistic at all. No one would have that good of a vocabulary and still have terrible pronunciation. I feel like for just a few lines it’s not that hard to hire someone to make sure the actor says those lines perfectly. I also know sign language and for the movie CODA the actress who plays ruby fully learns sign language for the role so it feels very natural and believable.
Great video! I'd be very interested in a follow-up video where you show examples of bad use of the langauge and good? I know you showed a couple examples here but I think it'd be fun to see a 10 minute video showing back-to-back good/bad examples.
This video reminds me of when I took a Chinese course in community college. I was literally cramping my tongue trying to get the pronunciations exact, doing mouth exercises in the mirror, browsing native speaker recordings, reading my favourite Mandopop lyrics, and practicing with speech recognition apps, then coming to school to show the teacher my best. Meanwhile all my classmates sounded like this. And the sweet Chinese immigrant teacher gave us all the same feedback: “Perfect!” 😭
lmaooo i’m sorry but as a native speaker who tutors that’s so funny to me 😭😭 i could never
@@eileengarfield I'm half taiwanese and half swiss, my mom is from Taiwan and my dad has made a habit of learning chinese for the past 5 years and my mom straight up refuses to speak chinese with him because she can not handle the cringe. I once went to the chinese course with him out of curiosity, and I noticed that chinese is just difficult to teach when everyone in the class is a person that just doesn't understand how pronounciations work. They can read the characters in the book and have a straight monotone pronounciation while reading it, and every other person in the class will understand it, because they eventually develop their own crippled version of chinese in that classroom and the teacher can usually try to practice the tone with her students, by having them repeat the tone back to her, and they will straight up pronounce it the same incorrect way five times in a row and the teacher gives up. She doesn't give up immediately either, she gives up over the course of a full year. And I totally get why my mom just can't handle it because my dad also has a habit of getting mad at her for not understanding it and it is a cringey sensation, but I also tried it with him and as a result he is NOT monotone anymore, oh no he practically sings the tones now, except for the fourth tone where I told him to do it as if he was angry and use it with a bit more power in his tone, and that one turned out to be nazi german-ish. Since I also went to his course once, I can tell you, out of all the students, the teacher likes his pronounciations the most, so progress has been made... It's also pretty wholesome how her students all suck at the pronounciation, but compliment eachother for how good their chinese sounds.
@@corneliahanimann2173 in Psychology class, I was taught that babies are born with the ability to pronounce sounds in all languages, but as they grow up into a specific mother language, they lose the ability to pronounce sounds that are unique to other languages, that's why it's so hard for older children and adults to learn new languages. Also, Chinese is a tonal language where half of it's meaning depends on tones and every single word has a tone, but English is not.
@@dian277 They don't lose it, they just become set in the ways of their own language and it's a lot harder to force it out of them.
@@corneliahanimann2173 Seems like he could improve a lot just by reading the following wikipedia pages: "International Phonetic Alphabet" (don't use the lame homegrown American ones!), "Help:IPA/Mandarin", "Standard Chinese Phonology", and "Tone (Linguistics)"... and of course chase down the definitions for aspiration, velarized, alveolo-palatal, retroflex, etc.
Modern IPA has a good notation for tones that might help him. Going through the wikipedia pages for "Help:IPA/XXX" for English and his own language(s) -- Swiss German? Standard German? French? Italian? -- would likely also help.
Chinese has an annoying thing called "tone sandhi" which is that the spoken tone for a syllable depends on the "official" tone for that syllable AND the tone of neighbouring syllables. Doing exercises where he marks the tone changes (with IPA tone symbols or pinyin tone marks above the text) might help. Olle Linge's Hacking Chinese website has some good articles on tones and tone sandhi.
I think the best video on how the tones sound is from "Learn Chinese with Rita": "Mandarin Chinese TONES GUIDE That Schools Don't Teach You".
I can also recommend the Mandarin Corner channel on youtube where the host interviews people in the street or in her studio or walks around in various places and explains what's going. The subtitles are in pinyin, hanzi, and English and her pronunciation is very clear (despite not having Mandarin as her native topolect!).
He can get pretty good easy readers from Mandarin Companion and Imagin8 Press (they are going through the whole Journey to the West beginning with HSK 3 and gradually increasing the difficulty). I think most of the books come in two versions: one for simplified characters and one for traditional characters.
Don Cheedle's line sounds like he's keeping his own accent - i agree - sounds good
He speaks Cantonese like a guy who grew up in Crenshaw and learned Cantonese as an adult from a native speaker (Master Ching). Which is as it should be. "Authenticity" isn't about perfection, it's about speaking it as one would expect a person of a certain background would be speaking it. Which is why respect to Cheadle for nailing it in character.
@@OptimusWombat I just love that you mentioned Crenshaw 😂 cause...accurate
@@heyitsnasira I mentioned Crenshaw because that's where Kenny (Cheadle's character in Rush Hour 2) and Kenny's Kung Fu Master Ching live, lol.
This is probably one of my favorite scenes in the Rush Hour franchise.
To be fair, Cheedle is a talented actor who's willing to put in the work.
@@sth128 except in Ocean’s 11, unfortunately. However, I give him the benefit of the double. I think his terrible Cockney accent was a result of not having enough time to prepare and/or not having a dialect coach.
Subscribed! ABC here with immigrant parents from GZ. Randomly came across your channel but the content is interesting, meaningful and agreeable!
This needed to be said. TY!
It’s just like when English is used in China. You’ll hear English randomly thrown in ads or music or business signs. I heard an ad in China for KFC saying “Thank you! miss you. Love you..” and then the ad continues in Chinese. How many Chinese songs suddenly say “Yo yo, here we go!”
Oh god, my skin crawls.
and when they have the english word at the end of the line so the song can still rhyme when translated
Korea does this in every kpop song but people love it hmmm
Oh, yeah. It's always jarring in Kdramas/C-dramas when they show the character who's spent years in the states and their accent doesn't link up. (Or even the super wooden acting from the white actors)
@@shebjess I remember some show from like 10 years ago where there was man and woman hosting a bilingual news channel. The woman spoke English like she grew up in America, I'm guessing the actress was Korean-American or something. The man spoke English like he was reading phonetic cue-cards and didn't actually know what the words meant. It was funny because the show treated them as like equally proficient with English.
Also the “Chinese looking” characters is also scary as well.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have proper Chinese dialogues coach! If they can teach the actors to speak imagery languages like lklingon, elvish and dothraki… actors can speaks Chinese properly. The issues was just that we have been letting get away with it for years.
I was born in Hong Kong, live in UK/US and Beijing for years. Images how I shivered for all these years ! Thank you for making this video !
Hollywood is just lazy when it comes to Asian languages...I think there may be some subtle racism as well. Chinese isn't seen as important and so is not given the respect it deserves.
Oftentimes, the issue is not the fact that actors don't get a proper coach, but rather, the lack of time for the actors to practice. Most Hollywood films have very tight deadlines because things are scheduled months (sometimes years) in advance. If things get delayed, investors get pissed and they are the ones with the funding.
@@RNGeeGee Exactly
yes hollywood likes to cast korean as a chinese character, japanese as korean character, and chinese as japanese.
thing is, south east and east asian are so good at seeing subtle difference between chinese, japanese, and korean
@@KoeSeer There's this movie called Premium Rush, where Jamie Chung, a Korean American plays a Mainland Chinese who immigrated to the US and is trying to get her mother and child over. If I remember correctly, she didn't speak a single Chinese in the movie, even when speaking to her mother and daughter on the phone. It felt so jarring and funny but kind of a dilemma because it could've been worse if she spoke terrible Mandarin LOL...
I remember watching Rush Hour 2 with the commentary and it was Don Cheadle himself who wanted his character to speak Cantonese. Glad he nailed it.
Shout out to Cheadle! I remember watching it years ago and amazed at his fluency, not just the pronunciation but also the naturalness. It’s that rarely!
Love this! Great job 😂
Yes, imagine not casting every Slavic actor as Russian.
But even when they have to cast someone as Russian, they use a Bulgarian or something.
Nah, Swedish actors fit more in those roles apparently
Yes, I have always wondered what the Russians think about the accent of the Rade Šerbedžija or any other actor from ex-Yugoslavia that played Russian in Hollywood movies. I agree, Russian was always a "dangerous language" and is often exaggerated at the request of the director. I don't speak Russian, but sometimes I feel a stereotypical exaggeration in pronunciation that makes me roll my eyes. Well, the cinema is changing fast and I hope that more attention will be paid to it. I don’t expect the actors to speak native but I hope it won’t be gibberish or stereotypical anymore.
Nah...you just do you're best Vampire accent and Boom ! You sound like an authentic Russian ! 🤣
Like in the movie Salt (2011) Russian spy is played by Polish actor.
Timothy Chalamet's mandarin line in Dune sounded so lovely and natural that it hit me like bucket of water when he went straight back to pronouncing Dr. Yueh's name You-AY immediately afterwards. Timothy baby, your mandarin is flawless, you KNOW that can't possibly be correct
I mean, a word like Yue/Yueh (different spelling systems same thing) is a pretty damn difficult word for most non chinese speakers to say so I think he can be excused. Also, the majority of the "poor western viewers" probably wouldn't understand the proper pronunciation of Yue anyways
Informative! 💟
I came back to this video after working to learn mandarin. I definitely have a lot of work to do still, but I was amused that I was at least able to hear what was wrong with most of the actor's attempts at Chinese. I'm sure there are other problems I don't recognize yet, but I found myself wincing at all the incorrect tones and sloppy consonants. I think there is something useful to be learned about how language works. Before I spent time learning to hear and pronounce the 5 vowel tones, I couldn't hear a clear difference between the proper pronunciation, and the incorrect pronunciation. In English, vowel tones exist, but they do not usually change the meaning of a word. In fact, their role is so infrequent and contextual that most speakers are not even aware of using them, and no pedagogy exists for teaching them. Because of this, only underlying vowel shape is necessary for an English speaker to recognize the vowel. Because of this, we can't natively hear the difference between the many Chinese words that truly have different vowels, but 'sound like' the same vowel to our untrained ears. This makes it very easy to convince us that an actor is speaking in Chinese, when they truly are speaking in gibberish.
For any English only speakers who are still confused about what the problem is, I offer this example. Imagine an actor is supposed to be saying, "As soon as I saw her, my heart soared." If their delivery was as mispronounced as many of the examples in the video, they might _actually_ say, "Us soon es I sow hair, my hurt sored."
It happens with almost every language outside English. Spanish is specially jarring to me since with the enormous amount of Spanish speaking countries, they always mix people from different places.
You get people from Chile, Spain, Argentina, the US or somewhere else posing as Mexicans or vice versa and it sounds like anything but the Spanish they're supposedly portraying.
Honestly, since it happens so often I just got used to it. But it is more intelligible than them trying to speak Chinese at least.
That's when they do it right. It's normally a latino looking actor which clearly doesn't know spanish and is just speaking a terrible spanish with a very thick american accent
Insert your own Resident Evil 4 joke here.
I'm watching Gilmore Girls and I know the fifth season was like 2006 but Paris has a brazilian nanny and she spoke a very broken portuguese on the phone a few times, but when the nanny showed up she spoke spanish, it's terrible lol
If anyone here has played valorant please tell me, am I crazy or does Reyna sound way more Russian or some other accent than Mexican in her English? I always hear praise for her voice and I really don't understand why.
I had completely forgotten about Don Cheadle's Cantonese, I remember being super impressed by it at the time. I honestly shed tears watching Shang Chi last year because it was the first time I didn't see a single person speaking Mandarin in the film that wasn't a native speaker, and the impact of that experience after a lifetime of poorly delivered Mandarin lines in Hollywood films had taken its toll on me. Thanks for this video!
Is Tony Leung a native Mandarin speaker?
@@tmonkeyking2424 he speaks Cantonese (while Mandarin is also the language he can speak with a strong Canton accent)
@@tmonkeyking2424 No, but I watched a TH-cam video of him on Taiwanese tv back in the 90s and his Mandarin was very good.
I will be so happy when I encounter a movie with russian treated this way! Sounds like a dream!
(Esp after things like Orange is the New Black, where they have some proper Russian speakers for the tiny minor roles, but then Red (aka main ru lady on that show) and the guard guy learning Russian in his 50s for his wife are literally(!) the same level of straight up awful broken Russian..)
the worst thing is their gammar, google translator can do better than that, the level of disrespect is off the chart, hell my 5 yo cousin can write better lines.
Thank you for this interesting video ! I have never thought twice about american actors speaking Chinese to sound smarter as I’ve always just assumed that they aren’t native so it’s okay if they have a bad accent. But as a French/Chinese girl, I’m always annoyed by the way both are portrayed in movies and shows. What bothers me most is when they create a French character and cast an actor that is definitely not French but insist on giving him a french accent that sounds super fake (last 2 examples I’ve seen are French guy in iZombie and French guy in The Boys - though I really grew attached to the character from The Boys), and/or when they create Chinese characters that supposedly don’t speak English well, and they cast actors that are of Chinese descent but who’s mother tongue is clearly English because their Chinese (whether Mandarin or Cantonese) accent is kinda lousy. Just be consistent already. Either hire someone who can REALLY play the part in a CONVINCING way, or change the character !
I learned a lot in this video. Thank you so much.
I speak Chinese and I remember there’s a movie where 2 students are trying to speak another language in front of someone so the dude won’t know their plan. To portray them as smart students, the movie showed them speaking Chinese. But their accent is so weird and it was spoken in such a strange way that I couldn’t tell they were speaking Chinese lol
Are you talking about the film ‘Booksmart’?
@@mfuentes4961 yes that’s the movie lol
I can understand basic Mandarin and I distinctly remember this scene from Arrow where Oliver interrogates a blind Chinese guy in Mandarin and I couldn’t understand a single thing he said. The most egregious thing is that the Chinese character immediately says afterwards to another person that Oliver must be Chinese because his Mandarin is good and I could not help but laugh out loud
@@kristenleung3120 My god.🙄 For once I wish someone would write a joke in the script by letting the Chinese character respond: “what the **** are you saying?”
@@mhawang8204 3:57 came close.
I want to see a movie where when there's an inevitable fight scene taking place in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, I want to hear the cooks yelling at everybody in the Toisan dialect.
Agreed
:) I don't remember the movie but there's an American action film where the the hero is chased through the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. At some point someone yells out, "I'm sorry dad, but they want me to say something in Chinese!"in Toisan.
@@KwanLowe that's amazing. I NEED to see that lol
@@KwanLowe that sounds hilarious. Do you remember what actors were in the movie?
@@KwanLowe what was the movie
Hollywood's Spanish is cringe worthy too, especially Dom in the Fast & Furious movies. 😂
I believe one of the issues lies in the fact that Mandarin is considered one of the most challenging languages to learn. I recall being impressed with Brad Pitt's portrayal of a US soldier speaking German in the movie Fury. Although his German wasn't flawless, it was entirely suitable for his role and perfectly fine to understand.
Agreed, whenever there's a character with a 'Caribbean' accent in these movies 9/10 they hired a random American to mimic what they think a Caribbean accent is without care or concern for its authenticity or which Caribbean country its from and it takes me out each time 😂
You know Hollywood doesn't know what they're going when they made the whole Aladdin movie (Middle Eastern) on Indian theme.
@@Angel-vv9xo O gosh here comes another horrendous take, maybe it isn't just Hollywood's fault. And no Indians were never the target audience
Preach all those caribbean characters are based in stereotypes and with mostly one damn accent ie Jamaican Patois except sebastian but that's only cuz the va couldn't do a jamaican accent so not much better
They usually mimic the Jamaican accent because Hollywood quite frankly doesn’t care about the rest of us.
Are you Indian?
I've been learning Chinese for the past 5 years. It's very jarring to look back at these scenes after gaining basic proficiency. Every time Chinese shows up in a Hollywood film I'm hyper conscious of it now. The worst is when they force actors who speak Chinese fluently to speak at an unnatural pace.
I’m in exactly the same place. It’s funny realising they’re butchering the language basically EVERY time.
@@IshtarNike Look into the Black China Caucus to get connected with some like-minded people of the diaspora.
👏👏👏 I always noticed actors speaking in mandarin that I couldn't understand. I thought they were speaking some deep words. Then when I heard you respoke the lines I was like, "they were saying that?" lol. Nicely covered!
If a character goes to china, tries to speech chinese and fails miserably and people react to it as they would at someone failing miserably, I would be perfectly fine with that. But NO. There is absolutely no point in speaking chinese in these movies 90% of the time and I'm just utterly confused.
On the subject of names, could you imagine two english characters playing a father and son like "Hi, I'm Charlie Calloway, and this is my father, Æđelstan of East Anglia"
Yes. English lit loves time travel.
@@Warriorcats64 Sounds jarring in the case of Shang-chi and Xiaoling when the father named the elder son in a newer language system and a younger daughter in the older language system, but no explanation is provided or even attempted. Maybe they will explain it later, maybe they won't.
@@arjunsatheesh7609 To be fair, I read a lot of fantasy genre books with time travel, so that changes my view a lot.
@@Warriorcats64 I am sci-fi fan myself and most literature does give an explanation for similar situations, whether English or not.
Just that Shang-chi & Xiaoling situation remains unexplained.
I was about to say, one great example of Chinese spoken by a non-Asian actor was from DUNE (2021) by Timothee Chalamet. I felt that the usage was just the right amount where it made my ears perk up when he said it and didn't make me cringe, but instead gave me goosebumps because of how well utilized it was within the film. I'm so glad you mentioned it in your video. Love your work!
I totally second this, those lines constituted an amazing delivery. Since Villeneuve was not “flexing” Chinese language usage, but instead built it as an in-universe language in the story telling, the delivery was gracious and heartfelt. It ringed true, and Chalamet’s accent, cadence and emphasis on the words were very good. I wish there was a “part 4” in the video were the creator elaborated a bit more on such “virtuous” examples of language usage in movies. I feel this is a problem shared by many movies (anyone recall Viggo Mortensen supposedly “italian” dialogue in the Green Book? That was also cringe as f…) .
Agreed. Timonthee put in the work. I could understand him without reading the subtitles. A rarity for sure!
It was one line but his accent was so good! I really appreciated the effort that timothee took to learn accurate pronunciation, bc he could have half-assed it, as most people watching Dune in English would likely not realize or notice.
To be fair, Timothy’s line was short and simple. It was a common phrase people use almost on a daily basis. So it’s not surprising he pulled it off with ease. Amy Adam’s line was much more challenging, even for native Mandarin speaker. Her sentence was like a proverb. I wouldn’t catch the sentence completely even if she speaks perfect Mandarin, just because I am not familiar with that phrase.
@@subzerohf you are right, but being used to hearing Chinese usually butchered by toneless, heavily-accented deliveries, the swiftness and natural Way he uttered 什么意思 was such a gracious addition to the overall feeling of the movie.
Great video!
Thank goodness someone finally made a video and highlighted this issue. This has been my BIGGEST issue with films. I can never understand what nonsense is being said in 'supposedly' mandarin.
As a Malaysian, that scene in Venom really took me out of the movie. No one uses "你在干嘛" here lol, we say "你在做么".
Also in Shang-Chi, why is everyone in Macau speaking Mandarin? Don't the majority speak Cantonese in Macau?
TBF a good number of people in Macao and HK can speak some Mandarin today.
你在干嘛 I think is spoken in Singapore. Guess the film thinks Singapore and Malaysia are too close together to be differentiated.
@@bryanngdawei3282 i honestly don’t think many non-singaporean or non-malaysians would pick up on that. even so, to stay true to the malaysian accent, 你在做么 or equivalent should have been used.
@@fyang1429 sure, but Macau is still predominantly a Cantonese speaking region and with Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung and Yuen Wah in the movie, not having them speak Cantonese is such a missed opportunity.
@@bryanngdawei3282 I mean wrong words aside, as AccentedCinema pointed out, even the accent is off.
Yep, same with Spanish-it has it’s stereotype and accurate regionality/dialect representation is rare to the point sometimes there’s even some Italian thrown in there.
Ironically, most examples of "spanish spoken by non-spanish speakers" are intelligible, BUT they're still cringe because they combine dialects, use the wrong dialects, use wrong grammar/syntax or, as you said, they throw in another language entirely.
I never watched dune but seeing timothee absolutely nailing the pronunciation was so shocking for me after so many years of hearing the most unintelligible chinese come out of hollywood actors, wow, it was perfect, i had to listen to it again to make sure that i heard it right
Great video.
I'm the first in my family line to speak more than one language. I learned mandarin so I could speak to my gf and her family (in China). Since then, I went on to also learn Cantonese. I learned quick the differences of the two languages as well as small mistakes foreigners make. Initially I learned to speak casual Mandarin before knowing the formal. Then doing the same to Cantonese. Sentence structure was more complicated than learning tones and everything else.
Speaking as a Russian speaker(in Hollywood this almost always translates to either the antagonists of the virtuous Americans or at best a funny accent) and while I've learned to have a sense of humor about "faux Cyrillic" and poorly spoken Russian, it's sad that they reduce non-English languages to poorly-made props
It's absolutely the same for their use of german, they absolutely butcher language and culture.
But in the end, it's just a movie, and it's quite funny to see them failing...
@@ynnn991 It is actually a cultural attack. I don't think they do this without knowing what is going on or deciding poorly. I am pretty sure they know exactly what they are doing.
@@cabir.bin.hayyan.800 To call it a "cultural attack" would be a bit dramatic. The directors probably know they're butchering the language, but don't care enough or don't think it's worth the hassle to do it right. And why would they, if the film is made for American audiences who only know these "foreign" languages from other, equally stereotypical movies?
It's the same reason they choose famous American actors to play Russian, German, Japanese etc. characters instead of someone who's actually from that country. The directors know that their audience won't care.
@@mynamejeff3545 -
I respect your opinion and thanks for sharing. I still think they are aware of what they are doing. Especially choosing to do it. Maybe an attack as think or maybe just like what you say.
@@cabir.bin.hayyan.800 That would imply malicious intent of the whole filming industry. I don't think that's the case. I really feel like a lot of that comes from budget compromise or just them not knowing better...
In 8:46, the character Wen Wu is actually spelled the same way in Wade-Giles system and Pinyin system, while Xia Ling in Wade-Giles would be spelled as Hsia Ling. I believe a more reasonable explanation maybe both Wenwu and Shangchi used the old spelling system due to Wenwu lived a long life, while Xialing changed her spelling to signify a break away from his father’s old way of life, and would also make life easier using the Pinyin system since she lives and works in China. While Shangchi lives in America with a lot of Chinese American using a old way of spelling so he do not see a point in changing the spelling. I think the difference is explainable and conveys a deeper meaning for the movie
Also if the creators were to put Shang Qi instead, people would pronounce it as Shang Ki as they usually would. Pretty good reason to break away from the proper spelling if clarity is needed
Shiang-Chi also changed his name to an Anglo one, Shaun, when he moved to America. So, he may not have seen any point in updating the spelling.
Also it was made by Chinese people. Decisions like that are clearly intentional.
That's wonderfully insightful
I mean, "Shang-chi" was the spelling used in the original comic. So, that would be why they didn't change it.
This is so true for Dutch too. It has always made me instantly like a film a bit more when the languages have been treated with respect and actually DO sound authentic to me.
this video is very well made. thank you.
As a Thai-Chinese growing up in Germany who went and graduated from a Bilingual school, I relate to this on an exceptional level. But as a teacher, I work on myself frequently to lessen my subjective judgement upon accents and dialects. But what makes me cringe almost all of the time is that whenever people try to speak German they just always try to make it sounds angry and aggressive as much as possible. I am then always confused and cringe because during my time acquiring 7 languages it's one of the most beautiful and poetic languages I've ever learned.
This! I would never complain if an actor just tried their best and failed. But it kinda annoys me, when it's noticeable that they didn't even bother to listen to any normal german conversation and just make a Hitler impression instead. I sometimes just wonder how many of the people that call german an "ugly language" only know it from american movies and bad teachers.
I happened to try to teach a friend bad German words and we compared it to English and Hokkien 😆, to realise that German language is actually very polite in comparison...
Yess I had a conversation on this with my best friend who asked me why I chose to learn german instead of french...he talked about like the "german stereotype" like the way hollywood often portrays it and it being "aggressive or angry" sounding and i had to show him videos of germans just speaking naturally lmao.. I dont know but I find Deutsch much more beautiful and interesting to learn.. and i do think that its waaay underappreciated.
BRO IM HALF CHINESE HALF THAI IN THAILAND LEARNING IN A GERMAN SCHOOL
I'm always surprised when a film hires professionals to make a driving scene, or science scene or whatever are accurate as possible even if with fiction, yet, even films with heavy amounts of language due to the characters and settings, don't hire professional translators
I believe they dont really plan for these things, they just make the scene up at the spur of the moment to attract Chinese audience ( that's what they think attracts those targeted audience). Adding a quirk to the characters. Why cannot they just make the white character understand mandarin and then respond in English. Understanding the language is also pretty hard.
@@akashreddy2928 correct
@@akashreddy2928 yea, it's also kind of a weird thing how they are in the US, and speak chinese to eachother, because from my experience, almost everyone has made and effort to learn english, and especially chinese speaking people have a tendency to use every opportunity given to practice speaking english. Could be my bias though...
This video is criminally underrated
Love this! Language should be treated with respect, as a form of communication. I don’t understand that with Hollywood’s budget they can’t find one person who might speak the language they’re trying to represent. It’d be useful for proper pronounciation, and may help make the scene more natural. If they feel the need to include the language in the first place they should try to do it right. Of course, the English audience probably won’t notice flaws because of not hearing said language be spoken properly.
I totally agree. Whenever people speak German in movies it’s completely unintelligible except when the actor actually speaks German. It’s pretty disappointing when you consider that especially for extras you could just hire, that have that native language.
German in Inglorious Bastards was pretty good
@Big Boi Wombo-Combo No not really German gibberish sounds like gumdrops.
Even in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorius Bastards? I honestly thought language was masterfully used in that film (I'm an African-American fluent in French, Arabic and Turkish).
@@juniorjames7076 Well, Tarantino used German actors, so their German is correct. There is even a scene, where our many dialects are important. That was kinda refreshing for a change.
@@bjornk7749 I will never forget when I was in university, an international student from Britain said to us over dinner how the best thing she LOVED about being in America was that no one could tell where she was from, ONLY that she was British. We Americans could not know if she was from Liverpool, Manchester, Strathclide, or whether she was from the North, or South, or even judge what economic/social class she was from, ONLY that she was British, and she could reinvent herself here. And another student from Spain said the same thing. When I finally studied for a year overseas (France and Madagascar) I experienced the same sensation. It's an amazing feeling.
I especially love when studios dub Chinese movies and everyone is dubbed with a fake Chinese accent. Like, just dub it in normal English without the accent. I would just watch the original language if I wanted the accent.
I made the exact same rant back in film school!!
I have a similar situation. I'm watching a bunch of old Godzilla films on Tubi, and some are subtitled with the original Japanese audio (yay!) And others are dubbed in English. Or to be more specific, dubbed with bad Asian accents.
@Helsby many will disagree on the "fake accent" not being real. Anyways, just treat live action dubbing like animation dubs. Ang, Sasuke, Yugi, and Krillin spoke perfect normal English, even if some of these were dubbed by non-native English voice actors
This comment just brought the MTV Hip-hop all star dub of Volcano High School back to my memory. They weren't fake Chinese accents but...it existed.
0:43 holy shit I didn’t understand until you translated it… less than a minute and your point had been made perfectly
I saw the title and I gave a thumb's up. I'm from Taiwan, and I appreciate the fact that finally someone pointed that out.
Phffft wait lmao, That was actual chinese dialogue from cloudy meatballs2!? lol... it didn't even cross my mind it was chinese until you pronounce their dialogue properly
Do you know Chinese?
@@ostracostio64 I'm asian Chinese. So yes, I Know Chinese and the hokkien dialect
@Jav GH geographically speaking we are, and while it's not FULL of malays, they're abundant enough that I picked up enough to speak malay conversationally just by being neighbours
Yes! Cheadle was the only one that ever impressed me.
I think it’s a lot easier for English speakers to adopt Cantonese than mandarin. Both are difficult tho
Don cheadles was really good lol. Rob low from Wayne’s world was really good too lol alphachino too lol.
@@npcimknot958 Lowe tried.
Did you mean Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate? Neither was as impressive and Cheadle tho.
I’d say Cantonese is easier to have something that sounds similar but much much harder to get completely accurate. The 9 sounds and small quirks are very hard for foreigners to differentiate and much harder to completely grasp over mandarin
You missed the masterpiece of Charlie Day speaking "Chinese" in Always Sunny. To show him as a savant, he "learns" Chinese in three days, confidently speaking sounds with some resemblance to Chinese
very good video! as an icelander I've luckily never had to deal with this issue of my language being mangled, but dealing with americans' mysticism of icelandic culture and norse history caused by their media is very tiring
Damn I know that feeling being a russian person. John Wick in english turns into comedy for us when only about two actors actually know what they are talking about in russian. Especially scene in Chapter 3 when John said "I'm the child of Belarus" or smth like that the whole cinema exploded with laughter because they decided not to dub this particular part.
Yeah, "the child of the Belarus" part had me confused too, like is that how people from Belarus reffer to themselves?
Lmfao child of belarus
I’m from Singapore. When I saw Crazy Rich Asian (supposedly based here), I thought it was very weird that everyone spoke Cantonese because Majority of Chinese Singaporeans are Hokkien (another dialect grp) and the culture here is mainly Hokkien based (we look towards Taiwan and fujian area) but I get the Hollywood restrictions.
In Malaysia and Singapore, the only Cantonese majority area is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Cantonese also spoken in some part of Sabah, Central Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Perak.
Pffr nah as a Malaysian chinese who lives in Perak know that most of us can speak Cantonese, like me, my family, friends, relatives use Cantonese most of the time except in school
@@Andy0770 In Sabah the majority are mostly Hakka, but yea most do speak Cantonese for example my family is Hokkienese but I only ever seen my dad and his eldest sister ever speak Hokkien everyone else in my extended family speak Cantonese.
Most Malaysians in West Malaysia understand and/or speak Cantonese. (Mainly Chinese ppl but there are other races that know how to speak it too) Idk about other places thou. The only place that I know of, where most ppl speak another dialect is Penang.
I'm from Selangor and majority of my family speak Cantonese.
I love this video essay . I am half Asian and half Hispanic and I’m not fluent at all in either of my heritage languages but I did grow up hearing it and I can immediately tell if the actor is fluent in that language or not . Most times they sound like they are just reciting a rehearsed phrase with no feeling and garbled pronunciation . I always wonder why film makers just have a native speaker dub the lines for them. Not that hard to do .
But then here is still the trope of the all knowing white man speaking any given language and impressing the “foreigner “ into shock . Always happens and probably will always happen.
Great work
I often notice a similar problem with german in hollywood productions, the stereotypes, the lack of understanding for the different accents and german cultures are most of the time missing in american entertainment.
Didn't they effed up with the bad guys in Die Hard and then the German dub had to fix their accents?
Why does it have to be 100% accurate though? If you fail to 100% nail a sentence from a language which is not of your native tongue, say korean, does that automatically mean that you have stereotype and you have a lack of understanding of different accents? Or does it just mean that people who are not used to a certain language just have difficulty speaking pronouncing words from a different language?
@@mic7095 not being able to pronounce something correctly is not the problem (for me at least), just that you often see that some foreign language is thrown into something for the pure stereotypical effect (like mentioned in the video).
That people are incable of pronouncing something perfectly is completely normal, it would just be nice to either at least try to use the language with a bit more thought behind it, besides having it in a movie just to sound "foreign".
Was the German good in Inglorious Bastards?
@@mic7095 there's multiple ways to go about it. The use of a language in film can be very symbolic but if treated with less care just doesn't work especially for the speakers of said language. It also feels a bit disrespectful to not butcher it and treat it as a prop.
1. They could practice learning how to say lines properly. Words can be hard and just like how some actors bulk up to fit their action scenes, spending some time to master lines should be fine too.
2. Get someone who can actually speak the language. If the plot of the story is the mc is proficient in a language then they should be. They could either shorten the lines so they can practice it or if it needs to be long, get someone who can say it.
3. If all else fails, then just don't use the language at all. Like the video mentioned, language is beautiful and carries a lot of history and meaning. It's disrespectful to use it for glamour points.
It sound like the actors memorize their lines in small short phrases, that's why their Chinese sentences sounds so choppy & stilted. I never realized how bad it was until you made this video.But I think that Hollywood inserts the random Chinese dialogue to appeal to China's box office, not realizing how offensive their dialogue is.
I agree.
Yes. You are quite correct. Even for a non native of the language it IS quite possible to detect if someone speaking that language is also a non-native speaker even more so if you know a bit about linguistics: Accent, pitch, rhythm and intonation are some of the key areas to focus on if you want to "sound like a native" but in this case with Mandarin as it's a *tonal language* , "tones" also have a very important role to play. I'm not at all fluent in Mandarin but my ears have become accustomed to hearing the language by spending countless hours watching Cdramas so I can pick up quite easily when something is "off" with the way the language is being spoken. Anyone with good listening skills can do this with any language providing they have been exposed to the language in some way. So in other words, if you've never heard the language spoken before, I wouldn't expect you to know how it's supposed to sound...!