@Kalevipoeg Your anecdote about your wife reminds me of an experience that my mom had in Taiwan. She moved from Taiwan to the USA at age 26 in '89. 20 years later during a visit in Taiwan, the cab driver remarked that my mom must be American because the way she spoke had already changed from the way everyone else spoke there.
As much as we admire this guy’s insane mastery of Chinese, are we just gonna ignore the fact he speaks fairly good English for someone who’s never lived in any English speaking countries
Fuwei Yang, I had the same reaction as you did at how flawless his English was also! I am French too, I have lived in the USA for 37 years, and I can say that English is tantamount to my first language now as I have spoken it longer than I have my own native language, French, although I still speak it with my wife...
Can I just say, it's a pro move from Xiaoma to have a deep conversation with someone in Mandarin. Sure his videos have clickbaity over-the-top titles, make of that what you will. But he's not a charlatan just ordering food and making chitchat for clicks. He legit speaks Chinese.
@@eksibaklava1434 I agree with this completely. For any white person to have even a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese is impressive and surprising. Most people in China Towns across will probably go their entire lives without ever encountering a white customer capable of ordering food comfortably in Mandarin. Xiaoma has already made several videos featuring languages in which he is not fluent, and they are still entertaining.
@@jojag5 so you saying there is lot of black or hispanic people ordering in chinese? Because i dont rly understand why say it like that. I would assume its pretty rare for them to hear non chinese speakers of their language no matter the skin color.
@@wdvnge You have a strange interpretation of my comment. Saying that it's rare for white people to speak Chinese does not imply that it is common for black or hispanic people. Not really sure why you took it in that direction. To be clear, there's a lot of non-native Mandarin speakers out there who aren't Chinese, but most are Asian. For example, form Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia etc. Not particularly uncommon to find people from those countries who can speak Mandarin as a second language. It's very rare to find non-Asian people who learn Mandarin. There's a reason these people are so shocked when they see Xiaoma. Probably the first non-Asian person they've ever seen speaking Mandarin.
"I was a professional cellist" this is actually quite important in relation to how his accent and pronunciation are this spot on. Cellists tend to have an abslute or close to absolute hearing. I would bet money this is a factor in here.
Doesn't matter if he was cellist or factory worker. He was gifted by nature with that talent. Same as Xiaoma. But this factor doesn't play big role between Xiaoma and Julien. Julien speaks better because he live in China last 20 years and every day speaks Chinese language . Xiaoma practicing Chinese in China town USA. He is even more talented than Julien but he is practicing another 14 languages. Julien only focused on Chinese lang. Plus he is older than Xiaoma.
as a professional classical singer I'm with Julien; we're used to practicing a LOT *and* in the case of singers, we're literally trained in perfect diction. I can basically make any sound. He is absolutely right; when people ask me about music, this is what I say: there is not room for mediocrity in classical music. You literally will never have a job. Perfection is expected. Always. Forever. It's a burden but it's a particular skill set and perspective as well.
Technical perfection may be ONE of the goals in classical music (and not particularly the most interesting or meaningful one), but how often is it actually achieved? I guess a case could be made for Heifetz (violin), Michelangeli (piano), Fischer-Dieskau and Schwartzkopf (lieder).
@@enriqueali do you work in the field? Cause technical perfection (or akin to) is achieved literally daily by everyone. Your listing of random musicians is really comical honestly. All I can say is that technical perfection is the baseline upon which all of the other goals of artistic expression are expected to balance atop of.
@@enriqueali many many musicians would have this obsession, and they work to have it. after the technicalities come the personal way to deliver the plays, maybe you talk about those musicians because you love them better ?
I've always felt how weird for music to need litteral perfection but I mean you can't perform if it's not... Other arts are surely not like this. Maybe it has its own advantages. Maybe I can try learning languages huh.
Honestly he makes him look/sound like a noob. Xiaoma would not be offered or allowed to work as a host as his overall Chinese is not good enough. His accent and tones rule him out
Right dude he’s so well-worded, he speaks so natively, it’s insane. I’m blown away by his Chinese, I can’t believe it. It’s such a pleasure to listen to him talk. Anyways, it’s a pity I don’t speak Chinese
This is where the term "speaking fluently" really shines, quite literally Julien's pronunciation sounds like a wavy stream of words with so much dynamics and natural intonation, it's crazy!
Julien speaks Chinese better than most Chinese natives. The way he talks is just elite style that few Chinese natives without elite education could dream of. It is self-evident that the way he studied Chinese is just "Shi Zi" class - a practice that ancient Chinese intellectuals followed for thousands of years. The "Shi Zi" class would learn and read for decades to satisfy the desire to be knowledgeable to the extent of extremity.
@@Joseph3391399 "harder" really depends on what language you're coming from, Japanese speakers often report that English is one of the hardest languages to learn and Mandarin is a lot easier because they have so many similarities, whereas for most Europeans, English is an extremely easy language to learn because it's so heavily based in Romance and Germanic languages, but Mandarin would be extremely difficult because it's nothing like any language here
@@xenotypos he probably speaks English a lot living in China. He probably doesn’t get to speak french as much because even Africans are learning Chinese now, so unless he’s in France or Quebec, he’s speaking Chinese dialects and English.
@@xenotypos Yes, I think he even said that he also taught French and possibly also English to Chinese mainlanders (and vice versa) when he was living/working overseas in China... If I ever needed a teacher to learn either of those 3 languages; I know that Julien would be the one that I could trust 100% !
My first language is English. I understood English rules and parts of speech better by learning Spanish than I did growing up speaking English/learning English in school. Why? Because when you learn your native language, there's a lot slang and there are a lot of shortcuts you learn growing up with the native language. When you study a second, third, fourth, etc language, you usually learn the rules FIRST and then the slang comes way later. There's more structure when you learn a second language, therefore, you're probably going to speak it better than a native, naturally. It also might affect how well you understand your native language, when you learn a second language.
Very good insight from Julien at 41:53 about how nowadays, in America and in China, most of the pressure to censor oneself comes from peers ("cancel culture") rather than from authorities.
I mean. Some people are motivated but 10 hours a day learning .. is on a different level for 5 years. That was the part of this whole hour conversation that chocked me the most and made me realize that there is always someone working harder then you do hahahah
You have to bear in mind most people don't have this time to dedicate to a language. I am a physicist so unfortunately although I like Spanish I can't spend 10 hours a day on it.
I don't know Chinese but you can hear the level of expertise (if you will) between the two. Xiaoma still has an American undertone but Julien I couldn't tell if I closed my eyes and heard his voice for the first time. 14:20 Yeah _"I hear a little something"_ too 😆 17:40 He basically adopted another art form (57:45), from playing cello to learning chinese (reading, writing, learning tones). He's very passionate about his craft, whatever it may be at the time (15:42 19:56). 1:12:23 Shout out to Moses aka Laoshu 🥺❤️ -still not over his loss- *For those in the comments:* it's about his _tone_ and the flow of his words, you can _hear_ he's been at it longer....which he has. 🙃 Xiaoma is still great at what he does, no one is denying that...wouldn't be here if he wasn't. Smdh
@Betta Warrior Well, good point but Portuguese is mostly spoken in like only a few select countries or regions tho... Plus, most Dutch or Norwegian people can already speak English pretty well. But still I can see your point, and I'm not saying that it could hurt to know a few more languages tho!
In France we often says that we are not very talented for foreign languages. That guy proves it's not true for everyone! He is so brilliant! Bravo Julien, je vous admire!!
@@mynameiswalterhartwellwhite420 not really, actually we spend way more time learning english than german, also usually we have to choose between learning spanish or german, and even those who choose german are rarely fluent.
@@hukijiki1828 Interesting. I know many French do speak English, but I figured German would be more popular, Switzerland speaks German ( Swiss German is a dialect but still same language I believe) Belgium speaks German (French is also an official Belgian language though) and obviously Germany itself all border France.
@@hukijiki1828 French is a somewhat popular language in the area of the US I live in (pretty small town) but here it's either Spanish or French. Although they teach mandarin too, but not many people take it.
Xiaoma's chinese is insane but the difference between him and Julien is that Xiaoma's brain still sees 2 languages, still distinct in its matter while for Julien, french and chinese is virtually one language.
I kinda get what you're trying to say, though I look at it slightly different. I know french a bit. But when I think to say a simple word like cheese/fromage, my brain has to translate cheese to fromage. And if a French speaker says fromage, I'm translating in my head to cheese. Even though I'm proficient, if I was a master then when a French speaker said Fromage, I wouldn't have to think about what it is. Fromage to me would simply be what it is to a native speaker, Fromage.
It's crazy how he is fluent in both Mandarin and English as well as of course French. If he added Spanish fluency to that, he'd be able to speak to most of the world in some way...
Well it's very common for continental Europeans to start off with a base of being fluent/ near-fluent in their mother tongue plus English just from normal schooling and watching tv shows and playing games before they turn 18. That's not to say they didn't put a lot of work into learning those two (or more) languages, but it's very common. And then if they learn new languages from there, then they become trilinguals, quadrilinguals, and so on
@@RemplacementTV Not really. I work in a department in the UK with many foreigners and most of them don't speak English this well, this guy's English vocabulary is good. Most of them couldn't hold an interview in English for this length of time and hold interest.
So I guess the difference that everyone can tell is the way Julian is speaking fast with a perfect accent while xiaoma is taking pauses. The other dude is not even thinking about any words but you can sense that Xiaoma is trying to figure out words at some times.
I’ve been learning mandarin for three years already, but I am nowhere near as good as xiaoma and especially Julien, but watching this I became much more motivated to become more fluent. Thanks for this!
3 years is already quite an investment in time and energy... Don't give up just now, my friend. Keep on working HARD at it, and you WILL eventually conquer it!
same! It's my 3rd years of learning Chinese but i can't speak it at all >< I'm going to learn every day from now on and going to achieve hsk5 till the end of the next year haha (also will learn english more) 加油
Omg I've been watching your channel a lot and idk any Chinese but I watch a lot of Chinese drama and tvshows and I never really heard any difference in your Chinese but now that hear julien in a side to side comparison I can definitely hear a difference, he sounds just like the people in the cdrama I watch 🤣
I have a lot of respect for old people, grandparents, etc. It's really cool to see a young person such as yourself spending time with your grandmother and cherishing her life's stories. I am European-American, but I rarely see people our age have this kind of respect for the older generation here in the US. Cheers.
It seems like the highest form of respect for a culture is to learn their language, because it’s difficult it takes dedication. I respect them so much. I’m Latin American and I wish I had this type of dedication when learning Spanish. My family does but my parents don’t really have one specific reason they didn’t teach my siblings and I. My grandparents spoke to us and we’d answer in English. I do feel grateful for any amount I do understand and can speak but I’m not confident in it enough to speak it, so I still answer in English.
A real shame, same for me and my mother tongue Bengali. It’s important to speak your mother tongue to have a good sense of your cultural identity and maintain relationships with family. This is a real tragedy in my own life
My mother's father was an Italian immigrant but he died when she was very young. She doesn't know the language at all and I have been fighting to recover it. It will be my 4th language when I am fluent
This is a shame when this happens. When I was in Bolivia one of the people we were we with was from the US but one of her parents was Mexican, her Spanish was actually worse than mine.
@@starlessnight1164 Actually, no, this is not the typical English skill for Europeans. His accent is almost natively American...VERY slight French accent. That rarely ever happens.
Apart from the accent, his English is good. There are many Europeans in the department where I work and most don't speak English this well. Actually some of them speak it surprisingly badly considering they have to present and write papers in English.
@@holliswilliams8426 Your anecdote doesn't mean fuckall. My point is that his grasp of English is absolutely the fucking norm among English speaking Europeans. Ones that hold fluency level. It's not special in any way shape or form.
What an entertaining and educational video! It is indeed a out-of-body experience hearing you guys talking. Julien’s Chinese is even better than mine and me is a native Mandarin speaker. The perfect pronunciation of the standard Mandarin, the use of idiomatic expressions, and the thinking in Chinese are legendary. Xiaoma’s Chinese is perfect, Julien is... It beyonds perfect.😂 I enjoy this video and thank you for inspiring me hone on my English.
LOL I JUST REALIZED THAT To be honest he probably has a fan or some bright lights for the camera facing towards him so he’s blinking because it’s irritating his eyes
I notice he does it in other videos too. It could be a tic (Tourette’s Syndrome). I have a friend who blinks (also rolls her eyes uncontrollably) like that too and she told me they are tics.
You can tell Julien really knows what Chinese people are like, either good or bad aspects of them. Some westerners need to hear some of this. Their concept of China is so limited and stereotypical, it's sad.
I'm one of those people who saw the picture and thought "oh this is the foreigner who was on TV all the time!" but couldn't remember his name. I'm sharing this video with all my friends who are currently studying Chinese because it's truly inspiring. Thank you Xiaoma!
Saw Julien for the first time on “Chinese Bridge”. He was one of the judges. I was taken aback by how fluent his Mandarin was/is. His pronunciation is also flawless and accent-less.
Only learnt a few words of Chinese but I am fascinated by the language so I come to these videos often. As a Frenchman having lived in the UK for over 25 years, I have a reasonable grasp of English. Julien says his English is not as good as his Chinese, wow, f...me, his English is fantastic! (Even if American). His French substrate is discernible BUT you have to pay attention. I am in awe. Inspiring.
The most important thing he said in my opinion is that people complimented him for being talented, but in fact, he was putting in 10 hours a day of practice. That has more to do with his accomplishment than talent. It's a great message for younger people, and why I think sports are a great example. You can't claim to be a victim, not put in the work or rely on others and get results. The pandemic has shown a lot of people would rather be taken care of rather than have the freedom to chase a dream. Do what this guy did. Overcome adversity and go get what you love.
100% agree. So many were jealous of my accomplishments and some even told me God just gave them to me. They didn’t see me working 80 hours per week towards my goals. They didn’t see the sacrifices I made they were unwilling to make. They only saw the result and wanted to steal or devalue my success with calling it “luck”. You don’t get lucky doing nothing. Even one has to buy a lottery ticket to win.
Xiaoma (aka Arieh Smith) always reminds me of my best friend who died a few years ago. I swear he is his doppelganger. I love this channel but sometimes I get chills watching it. I'm sure this is a very rare case and people wouldn't understand, but it blows my mind how two different people can be so closely alike down to the exact looks and even the eye twitching and the seemingly spaced out look.
hey xiaoman, love this video. nice to see you tackling more cultural / sociological / expat-life related topics and getting the chance to hear about Chinese comedy scene, thoughts of a host on entertainment industry in china for a foreigner, etc. for those of us who are interested in the 'lifestyle' aspect of diff countries, it can be hard to get good info about china that is balanced and not super polarizing
Classical music is a perfect launch pad... as it's a pursuit where there is NO WHERE TO HIDE. Classical musicians are use to "stand and deliver" so Julien's work ethic was already well developed.
Funny thing about accents is that I've noticed, they're really, really difficult to change for most people completely and totally, almost impossible. For example Julien who's Chinese is amazing clearly, but I still feel like I can still once in a while hear hints of a Parisian "R". I think French is a good language to come from to learn Chinese because the cadence, tempo, and even the sounds of both languages share some simliiarities.
I lived and worked in Singapore as an IT consultant for 5 years. But my chinese can last for about a 3 minutes phone call. LOL And these guys are making my senses go crazy. WOW To be a linguistic is my second dream job.
Guys he's not sleeping. It's a tic caused by weather and allergies, especially if he wears contacts. It's a subconscious thing. I do it to sometimes. It can also be an anxious/nerve thing.
Mr. Julien has zero foreign accent when speaking Chinese. His accent is mostly northern Chinese accent(or Putonghua). What an inspiration for anyone who's studying a foreign language.
The cross really reminds of another kind of stand-up in Japan called "Manzai". In that, you have a straight man and someone who reacts, and it's usually fast-paced and involves a lot of humorous "cross-talk" and anedotes between the two (although it doesn't have to be just two, it's just that's the most common), as well. I'm guessing that Chinese cross talk was the origin of Manzai. Which would make sense as there are a lot of thing culturally that began in China and Japan eventually adopted and changed to fit their culture.
Thanks Xiaoma. I’m going to start learning chinese. I’m from Spain and I’m musician too. Felicidades por tus videos, son entretenidos y animan a la gente a aprender nuevos idiomas.
You both speak perfect Mandarin. Admire. I'm pure Chinese and I'm sure it is going to be a long time for me to keep learning Mandarin in order to keep up with your Mandarin advance level. High five.😀
That's the thing about the insane classical musician work ethic - you apply it to anything, I mean ANYTHING, and you'll get really, really, really good at it in very short order.
In no other video have I noticed Xiaoma's being plagued with nervous facial tics. Is it just specific to this interview for some reason? I empathize and am curious. Am beyond grateful for all his videos😘👌
