Experts Rank Chinese Speaking Celebrities - Best to WORST!

I now have an ice cream I want to be the next president of the United States What the hell have you just said to me? I speak Mandarin Chinese Yes, I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese Hey everyone, welcome to Learn Chinese Now and we've got a bit of a fun video for you today because guess what we're going to be doing? We're going to be ranking Western celebrities who speak Chinese That's right Yeah And we've got two experts in the studio today We've got Jared Madsen Why don't you tell a little bit Tell the audience a little bit about your qualifications, Jared Sure, I have a master's degree in Chinese medicine I lived in China for about five years and I have been the emcee for Shen Yun Performing Arts for 16 years Wow, and that's a global tour in some of the world's biggest theaters, isn't it? Global tour Yes, we tour for about five months out of the year and so I go on stage I introduce the pieces in both English and Chinese Yeah Nice, well, my name is Ben Hedges I have a degree in modern and classical Chinese I was rated the number three online celebrity in Taiwan for the year 2014 I know it's a random statistic for my show, Lao Wai Kan Zhong Guo or A Foreigner's View of China So I think both of us have spoken Chinese for a long time in a professional setting and we've heard a lot of foreigners speaking Chinese so I would say that we are qualified to assess We are absolutely qualified We are the authorities We are more than just qualified So let me tell you how this works, right? So we got five tiers We got the god tier Let's see if anyone makes it into that That's like ultra mega Chinese speaking Lao Wai We've got the accomplished, you know, doing pretty good needs work, train wreck and then faking it just for people who you know, they just spoke a few lines in a movie or something that don't actually really even speak Chinese Right, okay So we got all these stars Some of them you may know some of them you might not but let's listen to our first one and we'll look at a couple of clips of this person speaking Chinese and then me and Jared will talk about it and we'll give our reaction, okay? All right, let's do it You're ready? All right That was it That was it, wow! Well, I'll give you another clip in a second Okay I just want to get your reaction He says one word 大家好, hello everybody Yeah And then we're like, yay! They lost it Chinese, they're so nice That was so nice Wasn't it? So nice I mean, can you imagine a Chinese guy comes to the US or the UK and he's like, hello everybody Oh, oh, that's, yes! You totally crushed hello You say hello so well Right I got another clip of him because he does say a few more things So let's check that out Let's fast forward to this next clip So what do you think of his pronunciation? Okay, so if I were to break it down I mean, okay, first off the simple fact that anybody anybody tries to speak Chinese who didn't grow up speaking Chinese I have to celebrate that because it is a very hard language to learn Good old Mark's Chinese in particular the pronunciation wasn't horrible The tones were horrific The tones were non-existent Or the 中文很糟糕 Yeah, yeah, that was like every tone was wrong So it was a valiant effort I think it seems more like maybe he learned the pronunciation not the tones and the tones are kind of everything Yeah, some people just find the tones hard I mean, like They're hard, they're hard It's very different than English That's my take What did you think? I thought, yeah I mean, it's obvious that he's still a learner Right, right, right And yeah, his tones were pretty horrific Someone did actually mention to me though a while back was like I was like, you know, do you find I said to a Chinese person, you know Do you find like some Westerners their tones are just horrible? Can you understand them? And this person said, yeah, it's true But you know, in China there's people with all sorts of different accents and they speak dialects as a main language and then they speak Mandarin Their tones are horrible too That's true That's actually interesting because sometimes we'll hear people say you've probably heard this, right? You speak Chinese better than most Chinese Yeah, I think so Which can be true because most of China most people there don't speak standard Chinese They have their dialect and then Chinese is not really a second language because they grow up learning it but it's very heavily accented So Mark, I don't know What do you think? What are we going to give him? What's... Oh, that's all he gets We get ranked after that We've got to choose a tier for him I, you know I mean, he's definitely not faking it He's not faking it because he was, you know Is he a train wreck? Did he make a... I think it's either of these two It's either train wreck or musical Yeah, I'd want to hear more I mean, his tones are the big thing that kind of kills it for him Okay, so what are you going to say? He might see this Oh, that needs work Just a little work, Mark And then that's all It's great All right, needs work Yeah No, yeah, I would say needs work It wasn't a train wreck because he did put it together The grammar was okay Yeah Okay, all right Let's go with that Let's go to the next one Needs some work All right, this one's going to make you laugh So this is John Cena He's a pro wrestler You know that WWE wrestling Wrestler turned actor And yeah, he was in Fast and Furious 9 and he went to China to promote it Anyway, this was... I'll play you a couple of clips So this is the first one Okay Yes, I like that a lot Probably not for the right reasons though I didn't understand some of the words The grammar was a bit weird, wasn't it? Yeah It sounded like he was going to say one thing and then he sort of got it wrong and said it in a different way Yeah I think he wanted to say Speed is better than ice cream But then he changed it to I like it the best Oh, okay Yeah He lost me there for a second But he was excited He's excited If there's a category for excitement of speaking Chinese I think he's top of that Oh yeah, he's totally top with that But his tone's a little bit better than the Zuck I think But his grammar... I was laughing so hard Let me think Yeah, the tone... A little bit better Ice cream! Ice cream! He likes his ice cream! He likes his ice cream Oh my goodness Okay, do we have more of him? So I guess he's promoting the film, right? It comes out in two weeks Okay 两个礼拜以后 Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, I like... Just getting caught up in the silliness of it Yeah, his tones were not that bad Yeah, not that bad Yeah, okay Maybe a little something There might be something there I'll play you one more of him Okay This is him apologizing Because he accidentally said that Taiwan was a country, I think 更尊重中国更中国人 I think he kind of messes up the words sometimes Because I think he should have said 尊重 But he said something like 尊重 Something like that Yeah The tones were not as good that time No Wow, that felt kind of intense He felt like he was locked away somewhere or something Well, he was forced to say that, I guess, yeah Oh my, that was rough to watch More because it was like so weird Like as in, what's happening right now? I think they can threaten to pull the movie or something Oh, so then he... Yeah, and then the whole studio is like, John, you better apologize You better do it, you better do it quick You better get some Chinese together Yeah, exactly, do the party trick So, I don't know, what do you think? I feel like, you know what? I feel like he's either a train wreck or he needs work I feel like he's probably better than Mark Zuckerberg That's the question Maybe we move Mark down and we put him up Ooh, Mark, don't be upset But, you know, somebody's got to fill the train wreck Yeah, wait, why don't we do that? We find another train wreck Mark, we might put you back up to needs work Yeah, yeah, if we find it All right, there we go So Mark goes down there John's seen it Isn't that a lovely photo of him? That's, yeah Yeah, that's the best photo I could find of him It's a really good photo All right, now this one is... This is a kid So it's a little bit different But she does... No mercy! No, no, no, it's okay So this is Trump's granddaughter, Arabella Kushner And she's been learning She's been learning And this is her... I think this must have been a few years ago During the Trump presidency But she's welcoming Xi Jinping and his wife to the US Okay, I have never seen this Okay She crushed it! Crushed it, didn't she? That was great! Yeah That was really good Tones were, like, okay Like, a little bit Western-ish But pretty good Yeah, you want to hear the song? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's hear the song Pretty good, right? That was great! That was very good I got one more of her reciting I think it's 三字经 Pretty good, right? Pretty good! I wonder if she knows... Very good If she knows what that all means, though Because my kids, they memorize poems And I say, all right, what does it mean? And they go, I don't know Well, that's kind of the Chinese thing, though Right? Like, kids, you memorize first And you eventually know what it means And then eventually you'll learn what it means Yeah That's the theory Okay Yeah So what do you think? Yeah, really good How old is she? Probably, like, eight or nine or ten So she's obviously been studying So there is no... It's not like somebody just gave her some lines Probably got a home tutor or something Who spends a lot of time with her Definitely You know, her accent wasn't really... And she's only eight If she sticks with it She could easily get rid of that And sound basically... She is very close... To the god tier? To god tier Give her a few more years Let's put her as a compliment You immerse her I'd even say you give her an immersion for one year And she's already going to be sounding... Yeah So definitely at least accomplished On a solid path To god tier She's only eight though, right? Well, I don't know if she's definitely eight Whatever, however old she is She's about eight Stick with it for a few years, you know Yeah And yeah, she'll definitely be speaking with... Crazy fluency Okay, so this is a funny one This is... So this is just a clip from a TV show The Big Bang Theory Where he's learning Chinese So this person doesn't claim to be able to speak Chinese Alright It's a fun clip anyway Okay 我的姓是Sheldon No, it's 我的名字是Sheldon I don't think even the grammar is right She's reading it out of a book, right? Yeah Normally people just say 我姓 And then their name, right? They don't say 我姓氏 Is that what he's... Yeah 我的姓是Sheldon Oh, 姓 And then... I see Yeah, no, the grammar is not even right Wow Okay Is there more of that? Yeah, there is See if you can figure out what he's saying here Because this is kind of funny I used to love this show I used to watch it a lot But... 给我看你用的橙皮 You understand? Well, like, give me your pen, your pencil What's the... 橙皮 Your orange peel Give me your... 给我看你用的橙皮 Give me... Let me look at your used orange peel So the story is He went to a... He goes to a... How did I not get that? Of course that's what you would say So he's practicing it Because he goes to this Chinese restaurant And he thinks that the orange chicken is no good Or it's not real orange chicken So he wants to... Like it's oranges from a can Right, so he's learning the lines To go and question the boss there To be like 给我看你用的橙皮 我看你用的橙皮 So my wife says that That's not even what you'd say Anyway, you'd be like 把你的橙皮拿出来给我看一下 Something like that, right? But yeah, it's kind of an amusing episode But what do you think? I think faking it, really Yeah, you can't really say I mean, the first ones were definitely faking it And that was also faking it All right, let's find this next one Okay, so this is an actress called Vanessa Branch And I think there's three clips There's two clips from the movie Entourage Where she speaks Chinese And then there's an interview with her as well So let's take a look 今天晚上我们有七点半的晚饭和蒸笼 是想用中国的最老的武侠片 但是... Was that her actually speaking? I think so Yeah, although it's kind of weird the way they cut it Because the other guy just sort of like goes He says something else, you know Yeah, it looked like a dubbed thing Well, the mouth is slightly off Just because I downloaded it from the internet I see But I'm pretty sure it is Okay It's definitely, I can tell you It's definitely her speaking it All right Here, you can get another little bit 她说邱克是我的最爱 很好,她说邱克就是她最喜欢的导演 真的,看中国的很好 Now imagine Cui Hark on three bottles of Red Bull Yeah, so Cui Hark What's he called? 邱克,or something, right? 邱克导演 Okay Movie director of Kung Fu movies I forget his name in Chinese We'll put it on the screen But yeah, she's kind of They're like having a meeting, selling a movie to the other guy The other guy, the guy who's speaking Chinese He actually doesn't even sound that fluent anyway Maybe he's a Cantonese speaker speaking Mandarin or something I wasn't paying attention to him Yeah And there's actually another clip of her A little interview, what I want to show you Because she's quite bold in what she says Look, look what she says Yes, I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese And so I've done This is my third film that I've done in China for the Chinese market All right So she's pretty bold I wouldn't even say I speak fluently I would be like People ask me, I say, yeah, I'm advanced Yeah I'll let you decide if I'm fluent or not Wow But she is answering in English Like if a Westerner asks you, are you fluent in Chinese? You'd say, yeah, I'm fluent in Chinese Would you not? No Really? I'd say I'm advanced I'll let them decide if I'm fluent I don't know, maybe I'm just more 謙虛 Yeah If it was a Chinese person, I definitely wouldn't say 哇,說得很流利 Yeah I'd be like, oh, 一般般 Yeah, yeah, for sure From what I heard, it was good It was good, right, yeah You know, the tones were okay They were a little off Yeah It was good It wasn't quite enough Yeah To really get into it What do you think? Accomplished or needs work? I think it's one of those two, isn't it? If John says, I think she I'm pretty sure from the little bit we heard I'm pretty sure she's better than that But she wasn't as good as No, she wasn't, was she? Yeah I think she'll wipe the floor with her in like 10 years' time Absolutely Well, let's put her in accomplished anyway Yeah, let's put her in accomplished for sure I mean, she was able to film a movie in China So she must have talked enough to Oh, she filmed a movie in China? Yeah, yeah, she did Oh, okay So, yeah, probably enough Yeah All right, let's see who's next So this is Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister And he actually went, I think he studied in Taiwan Okay I don't think it was the same school as me I think he went to Taida Okay I went to Shida But we were told about him a lot in Taiwan by the teachers So he's been speaking Chinese for a while That's what it sounds like Okay Mr. Chairman, you are our most respected guest in our country I hope you can take a break Look at our beautiful places Look at our beautiful scenery And our beautiful city So that's the first clip Pretty good Yeah He's reading Ah, but you're going to see him speaking naturally in a minute Okay, okay The tones were okay Yeah A bit Western-ery, but A bit Western-ery But not terrible He knew to slow down in certain parts, but it wasn't the right parts Oh, really? But he kind of knew to And they sped up a part they might not speed up on But he was getting in a flow that was very similar to a flow you'd want to be in Okay So, you know, he's obviously It is not his first time speaking Chinese Oh, no, definitely not Right? Not at all Check out this next clip 百闻不如一见 虽然此前已经听过您说普通话了 但是呢 亲耳听到 我还是不得不要说 您的普通话说得实在是太好了 陆可文先生 我的普通话说得非常不好 越来越差 我还是个百分之百老外 Quite humble Yeah Okay He's got the cultural aspects in with the language as well All right I'm liking it So he says his 我的普通话很不好 But then he goes on to answer this question Check this out 将怎样通过您的外交努力 来使中澳两国的关系能够保持长久健康的发展 肯定我们两个国家的政治系统是不一样的 我们政治价值也有一点不一样 所以当然在这些不同的观点 我不知道任何国家跟另外一个国家 有百分之百的共同的看法 Pretty good, right? Pretty good But also I realized something He is 100% a politician He's able to say nothing There was no He didn't actually say anything That's right It's very diplomatic It was very diplomatic That was great that he could do that in Chinese For a Westerner who did not grow up learning Chinese Who learned later I mean, he is totally crushing it Totally crushing it We could put him in Godlike Because when you compare him to Vanessa Branch I mean, there is no comparison That's true Like he's like wipes the floor That's true Yeah, let's do it All right, let's do it God tier Let's do it Yes Kevin Rudd I would like to meet him in person sometime And speak to him Yes, speak to him You're welcome to come on the show Come to Shen Yun Yeah, come see Shen Yun We'll hang out and we can I would love to I don't know Maybe he'll teach me a thing or two, you know Okay, so this is Xiao Ma So he's a YouTuber And he blew up with these videos They're basically all the same They're like Clueless Westerner speaks with perfect Mandarin Restaurant staff shocked Or something like that Okay His Mandarin Well, you can judge for yourself Let's have a look All right, let's have a look What's going on? It's Xiao Ma And today we are in New York City's Chinatown It's amazing His English is so-so It's amazing It's Xiao Ma His English could use a little work But I'm sure his Chinese is better So This is delicious So that's the first clip Okay I'll show you the second clip Hold on This is delicious Okay Then But can I have a smaller one? Because I'm not very hungry right now It's all the same size Okay Then It's pretty fluent, isn't it? It's like Can I have one? Yeah, he's got the little talk down Then Can I You can tell he's used it Yeah People talking It's not like politicians speak Right It sounds like somebody who Did he maybe live in China for a bit Or was hunkered down in Chinatown for a bit He was very comfortable In the restaurant setting Yeah, you see this is the trouble with him Because you've only have We only From his channel You only really hear him ordering food And talking in restaurants Right So that's the only thing Like from his fluency I feel like he's God tier But from We just haven't really seen enough We haven't seen enough Because We haven't seen him talk about percentages For example If you didn't really speak English But you got used to eating at restaurants Right You could be like Let's see What do I want? Well, you know You could learn a few phrases like that Hmm This Is this good? Because they're not really even complete sentences Yeah But for what it was It was good He could be anywhere He could be anywhere on the scale Honestly Yeah Because he could be totally faking it Because you could teach somebody how to say That This One bowl A little less I'm not that hungry You could teach somebody like five to ten of these things And they could probably fake it But he could totally be legit He could be a hundred percent legit So just from that clip What do you think? I mean From that clip I got to rank him high Yeah Right But probably not God tier From that clip It's from that clip It's hard to rank him at God tier Because it's just He's ordering fish balls in a restaurant How you can't achieve God tier with that? I'm sorry No matter how good it is So what do you think? Accomplished? Yeah, sure We'll go with accomplished That's the assumption we're making We're He did say that he had been learning Chinese for a long time But he doesn't look that old So I don't know how long a long time is Yeah, he's in at like 25 or something probably Right All right So We got a funny one now I think you're going to like this Okay So this is John Huntsman Who was a presidential candidate back in the year when Mitt Romney ran As they would say in China Mitt He doesn't understand this situation He doesn't quite understand So that's him using Chinese at the debate Like He doesn't understand this situation He busts out Chinese Yeah, just busts out a line of Chinese That's a move That's a pro move right there He won the debate The guy needs to get extra credit for that Right Like just Yeah He's got my vote Yeah, yeah Just for busting it out there in front of everyone Here I'll give you another I'll give you another clip Because this one's This one's kind of funny as well This is him being interviewed by Piers Morgan So Governor This is the big moment for you Because only one member of the Republican field Can speak the native tongue Of America's biggest commercial ally Enemy Whatever you want to call them We haven't tested everybody else How do you know that? I'm pretty sure none of them Because I can't imagine Michelle Barton Jabbering away in Mandarin So Here you go Speak to me in Mandarin That is spectacularly Spectacularly Average Yeah I mean he might have been nervous Because the cameras were on Sure It was It was not faking it No, it wasn't He had learned He definitely has learned Chinese But he was You could see he was sort of thinking of like Oh, what should I 你不太会知道 Yeah, he was struggling looking for the words And he shouldn't have said 知道 Actually, he should have said 听得懂 or something Right 你不会听懂我说的话 Right So his vocabulary was probably quite limited Yes His tones were quite off But he's not faking it And I I kind of think he probably needs work But I don't know Really Trainwreck Is he a trainwreck I mean, is he as bad as Zuckerberg What do you think Oh You know, could we compare him to Zuckerberg Or is he a John Cena I think John's probably better than he is What do you think Oh, really Okay Yeah, probably Yeah, maybe Right I would rank him pretty similar Those three are all kind of in a similar category Yeah I think it was Maybe we only needed four tiers really Maybe I think that John's vocabulary He probably has a wider vocabulary John Cena They're both called John No, they're both John I'm sorry John Cena Then John Huntsman Huntsman He didn't seem to have a very big vocabulary Right But it's hard to tell off of just a few clips But just him struggling To get some basic words out there It's a struggle It was a struggle Everything was a struggle So maybe it's a trainwreck Yeah, from that point of view Mark was maybe better Mark at least had the words there Should we put Mark up like that? What do you think of that? It would probably be something like that Like if there was an in-between Mark might be in-between Yeah Maybe That's what I'm thinking Based off the limited information that we have here Just the few clips we saw Well, there you have it I think that's it I think it's solid I want to see the little girl go up to God tier I think she can Give her five years Yeah, yeah, yeah A year in Taiwan I think she can do it Yeah, oh, I said Taiwan or China Oh, no, no I'm very, very, very Should I get you an ice cream? Do you need an ice cream to say this? Respect for Jiang Guoran Respect for the Chinese All right, and I think that's where we're going to end it So thank you so much, Jared And if you guys want to see Jared on stage speaking Chinese You gotta come and see Shen Yan this year The tour's starting when? Very soon, right? It starts mid-December And then we go to mid-May Okay, and we'll put the link to it below You can click in there and you can see all the tour dates You can watch the trailer It's really, really beautiful Awesome myths and legends on stage You can see the Monkey King And you can also get a discount, can't you? A waived booking fee That's right Waived booking fee by using our link So thanks a lot, Jared And good luck on the tour And we will see you guys in the next video Don't forget to subscribe We'll see you next time Bye-bye