I got an email recently from a student studying Mandarin Chinese at a well known "School of Higher Language Learning" in the US. The heart of the student’s email to me was that she is constantly getting ridiculed by her Mandarin Chinese teacher for not "Sounding like a native." The student said that this teacher would say things like "Yeh, OK.., but you don’t sound like a native." Well, has this "teacher" ever sat down and figured out that the student doesn’t sound like a "native" because, well …she isn’t. I’m sure this will ring a few bells from some and whistles from others.

First of all, I think one needs to sit back and define what a native Mandarin Chinese speaker should sound like. Most Mandarin Chinese teachers should only in the primary stages teach "Standard Mandarin Chinese." Today, the names that often refer to this language standard are: "Standard Language [pŭtōnghuà / 普通話 / 普通话 ] 〞in mainland China, "National Language [guóyŭ / 國語 / 国语 ]" in Taiwan, Han Yu [hànyŭ /漢語 / 汉语 ] or Hua Yu [huáyŭ /華語 / 华语 ] in Singapore. Now remember that these terms for the most part are referring to the same language. Now Standard Mandarin Chinese is largely based on the spoken Beijing dialect (běifānghuà / 北方話 /北方话) that was the dialect used by the imperial governing class of old China.

As China is certainly a large country, regional "local languages" and accents of people from different parts of the country is just as vast and in some cases completely different. The differences of accents in China is a lot more distinct than say the accents of an American from Boston compared to that of an American from Tennessee. I mean a lot different. We all carry an accent that sets the greatest impression upon us during or before our adolescence. The differences in North American English accents aren’t vastly different. In most cases, a person from New York City has no problem speaking with a person from Alabama, although both speak with slightly different regional accents. Dialects or "local languages" carry a lot more distinction than just accents. So because of vastly different accent retroflection and phonologies a person from Xinjiang Provence may have a slightly more difficult time using Mandarin Chinese to orally communicate with a person from Heilongjiang Provence. Does it really matter who is a "native speaker"?

When learning a second language, especially after adolescence, most people will speak the second language with the accent of their mother language. What is more important is that pronunciation is kept within proper "pronunciation guidelines." This means that proper pronunciation should adhere closely to the standard pronunciation of the language being learnt. So if you are saying the word for "cat" it shouldn’t sound like you are saying the word for "dog" as the correct pronunciation of the two are very different.

I can’t say for sure that this particular teacher’s ignorance of language learning or culture will develop into a stereotype of other "non-natives" attempting to learn Mandarin Chinese. It isn’t that important to sound exactly like a native speaker. What is more important is adhering to pronunciation guidelines and getting the message across.