Things other expats do that drive you insane

I think because there are relatively few foreigners (particularly white foreigners I guess) who speak 'good' Chinese (although this is changing and depends where you are), those who do often feel a sense of pride in their accomplishment which may come across as  superiority or even arrogance (AKA 'douchebaggery') to other foreigners.

There are also plenty of foreigners who falsely believe they are fluent language geniuses because they get praised every time they say anything more than 'ni hao', and because none of the other Laowai around them can speak more than a few gabled words.

Also, as someone who has been banging his head against the brick wall of intermediate Chinese for years, I'll admit a little jealousy of people who have made it to relative fluency.  Stop showing off dam it!

Oh I don't know, I've met plenty of foreigners who speak decent Chinese without sounding douchey. The douches, to me, tend to be the folks who affect really strong erhua-yin, and who try really hard to put on a Beijing or Dongbei accent, using a lot of regionalisms that they presume make their language more "standard." I think stuff like "ge-men-er" sounds kind of douchey coming out of a foreign mouth (apologies to anyone who uses it). You can certainly speak absolutely fine Chinese without sounding affected. A douchey Dongbei accent is not a prerequisite for speaking decent Chinese, and just because you use a douchey Dongbei accent doesn't make you fluent either.

I don't think people speaking beginner or intermediate level Chinese sound stupid either. We're language teachers here! What sort of message does that send to our students? As long as you're making an effort to learn how to say more than "pijiu" then you shouldn't feel like an idiot speaking Chinese. The Chinese themselves are very forgiving about this since they think their language is the hardest thing ever invented.

Apart from over, and unnecessary and inaccurate, use of varieties of "douche" in the above posts, isn't it fair to expect non Chinese in China to use their Chinese interlanguage in daily life, without being labelled? After all, we accept and expect ESL speakers in our fair lands to do their level best, and generally encourage and support them.

You are right gonzo.

Douche should be saved for only those people that publish the full name and the address of people they don't like on a public forum.

I feel like a total douchebag that I still find really easy conversations difficult snf like when I learned Italian when I evertually do get to an acceptable level I am absolutely planning to go around asking shopkeepers stupid questions like 'where are these apples grown?' 'Is that an apple region?' etc

Learning Chinese is fucking difficult, from absolute scratch with no references and since it's not necessary anyone who manages it deserves credit imo

it might turn out that they are a total dick but still hats off

I do not claim fluency in Chinese at all, but I do not feel like a douche when I speak it. On the contrary, when I go to the farmers market and can communicate to the stall-owners what I would like to purchase without resorting to pointing and eager nodding, I feel much the opposite of a douche. I am in China, people speak Chinese here...I would feel like a douche were I to attempt communication in Danish or English with any of the stall-owners...

I do not claim fluency in Chinese at all, but I do not feel like a douche when I speak it. On the contrary, when I go to the farmers market and can communicate to the stall-owners what I would like to purchase without resorting to pointing and eager nodding, I feel much the opposite of a douche. I am in China, people speak Chinese here...I would feel like a douche were I to attempt communication in Danish or English with any of the stall-owners...

I absolutely agree. I think it is far more douchey (sorry, gonna keep using that word, it seems to fit) to willfully refuse to learn a language and get irritated when people don't understand your English/sign language/pantomime combo. More douchey even than being pretentious or affecting a silly Chinese accent or trying to be the next Da Shan.

I get that Chinese is hard to learn and anyone who is making at least a minimal effort to use it should feel pretty good about themselves.

I really doubt we have any pretentious language jerks on this board, for the record. Those people tend to be students, not teachers. I think they are also very highly concentrated in and around Beijing.

Whenever anyone is a straight up snob or dick about Chinese that does annoy me.
But I can't agree that foreigners that speak Chinese sound like douches. I'm in agreement with Kitano that anyone that puts in the effort to learn a language deserves some respect for being able to do it.
That being said language douches just tend to be douchebags that can speak a second language. It doesn't have anything to do with the person speaking French or Chinese just that they are plain old douches.

Sometimes I'll correct some of the newer teachers more dreadful attempts at Chinese but not anyone else. I have trouble with tones but no trouble with pronunciation like with initials and finals. And real fresh newbies tend to make a huge mess of those so I'll try to throw some helpful advise their way.
What annoys me is when they completely ignore it and just listen to Chinese people and disregard any good advice you might give them  about learning Chinese as a foreigner. Most Chinese are terrible at teaching Chinese to people but it seems to be the same effect with some foreigners as the white native teacher effect that Chinese people tend to have. 

Well, this douchebag learned his (limited Chinese) in his first three years in Dongbei. And with that, the retroflex (er and ar).

Living near Shanghai for the past few years, the "nali" and "zheli" as opposed to the northern "nar" and "zher"  grate on me here. So I "affect" the northern accent here. Call me a douchebag. ("Old, you're a douchebag!")

But I have a pronunciation point here: When I'm up north, I find the students who CAN speak English, speak a clearer form of English to my (American) ears. Because they often use the retroflex (er) and (ar) in their native dialect. Down Shanghai way, it's all (ah) and (eh) and their English comes out flat (to my ears).

So I DO retroflex (can I use that as a verb?) my "ers" and "ars" down here Shanghai-way to help them  (a) improve their American English pronunciation, and (b) help them improve their "official putonghua".

Old the Douche

 

I was taught the 'er when being taught Chinese.  I had a Chinese teacher not a student.  Because I lived in Dalian, it was the normal way to speak Chinese. Also, I was the only teacher in the group of teacher friends that spoke any Chinese (except Ni hao).  I was expected to order the food in the restaurants etc.  I was in an intermediate Chinese class but I had a LONG way to go to be fluent, partly because my vocabulary didn't include enough words. 

I was taught the 'er when being taught Chinese.  I had a Chinese teacher not a student.  Because I lived in Dalian, it was the normal way to speak Chinese. Also, I was the only teacher in the group of teacher friends that spoke any Chinese (except Ni hao).  I was expected to order the food in the restaurants etc.  I was in an intermediate Chinese class but I had a LONG way to go to be fluent, partly because my vocabulary didn't include enough words. 

None dare call you a douchebag. N'est ce pas?

Well, this douchebag learned his (limited Chinese) in his first three years in Dongbei. And with that, the retroflex (er and ar).

Living near Shanghai for the past few years, the "nali" and "zheli" as opposed to the northern "nar" and "zher"  grate on me here. So I "affect" the northern accent here. Call me a douchebag. ("Old, you're a douchebag!")

But I have a pronunciation point here: When I'm up north, I find the students who CAN speak English, speak a clearer form of English to my (American) ears. Because they often use the retroflex (er) and (ar) in their native dialect. Down Shanghai way, it's all (ah) and (eh) and their English comes out flat (to my ears).

So I DO retroflex (can I use that as a verb?) my "ers" and "ars" down here Shanghai-way to help them  (a) improve their American English pronunciation, and (b) help them improve their "official putonghua".

Old the Douche

 

You Old Douche!

Hey, if you learned it that way, you can't help it. You're forgiven. I learned Chinese saying "nali" and cutting off my "ngs" and confusing my "f" and "h" sounds and I don't do it on purpose but I can't really help it.  Although helping the Chinese in Shanghai improve their putonghua ... I'm gonna give you the side-eye on that one. 

I had a friend, on the otherhand, who learned his Chinese in the South, Yunnan, where I used to live. He went up to Beijing for one summer program and came back all er this and er that. We gave him a lot of shit about it because it did come off as totally affected, especially since he had only been in Beijing for about a month. No one down there had any interest in using erhua and it sort of confused things because people tended not to really understand it. I am positive the locals were thinking he was a douche because they told me as much. Same guy also sublet an apartment to my friend, who was an American too, and introduced himself over the phone in Chinese, using his Chinese name, gave her directions to the apartment in Chinese, and only stopped when she called him on it and asking why the hell they were speaking Chinese when they were both Americans and certainly important transactions like directions to the apartment and details about subletting would be best handled in English. This dude also went on to do a PhD in language douchery Chinese Literature and sometimes posts obscure stuff in Chinese on my facebook wall. This guy is pretty much the archetype for any and all bitching about foreigners and the Chinese language. So irritating, so pretentious.

If you listen to Chinese on CCTV news, they use the "er" only sparingly (words like "wan-er," 玩儿 or "na-er," 哪儿 where it is considered standard, but not words like "di-er" 地儿-- for "difang" 地方, like they do here in BJ). In Beijing it is everywhere, and it isn't standard Chinese, it is actually local dialect, but lots of students (when I'm talking about students here I mean students of Chinese -- foreigners -- I guess that wasn't clear. I don't care what variety of Chinese actual Chinese people are speaking) here think that this is the way you have to speak because obviously Beijing has the most "pure" putonghua, right?

I get a little bit ragey about this topic because I think people get too hung up on accent. We don't encourage that in English (I get annoyed with the "which accent is best" talk, who doesn't?) so we shouldn't really perpetuate the idea that one must speak like a Beijing taxi driver in order to be really fluent. Maybe that's just because I'll never sound like a Beijing taxi driver though and I would be pretty horrified if I did in any case.

Hey, if you learned it that way, you can't help it. You're forgiven. I learned Chinese saying "nali" and cutting off my "ngs" and confusing my "f" and "h" sounds and I don't do it on purpose but I can't really help it.
 

This is also how i've learned. The way God Mao himself spoke. (ok better than that)

I suppose an affected erhua accent could be compared to a kind upper crust speaking and so if you are a second language learner and put on a Kennedy going sailing in the Hamptons kind of accent, you might be viewed as a douchebag.

But isn't the term douchebag now reserved for that Italian, East coast, Jersey Shore, muscle head kind of guy with the spray on orange tan, 10 pounds of gel, 25 ponds of chains, wearing a wife beater and a duck-face pose?

+1 for erhua making locals sound like ignorant yokels to my ears, and foreigners who emulate that "super douchey"... lik eyou should be wearing Zubaz and a mullet douchey.

Actually, language purists would argue that there is really only one proper usage for the term "douche bag" which is, according to my OED, "a small syringe used for douching the vagina, especially as a contraceptive measure". It does state that it can also, as a North American slang term, denote a loathsome or contemptible person. If this applies to people from New Jersey, then so be it. I can't say as I have never been to the Garden State. However, I can safely state that I do not now nor will I ever feel like a female contraceptive product when I speak Chinese, furthermore, if anyone actually does feel like such an object when attempting to communicate in a foreign language, I strongly suggest that they should consult a mental health specialist. By the by, a "douche" is also a shower-like object used for cleaning the body for medicinal purposes, especially female contraception. So it can be reasonably stated that both the terms "douche" and "douche bag" have been erroneously applied in this thread.