Recently, Matt wrote a post on Lost Laowai concerning the overuse of the English word “delicious” by Chinese speakers. He basically states that it is an inappropriate translation for the much more common 好吃 in Chinese.

I very much agree with that idea. My suggestion would be to not only ask students to use it less, but also to enrich their vocabulary with the word “tasty”. It seems like a more, let’s say, relaxed option.

But what I also found interesting was that by pointing out and correcting particular common overuses in learner groups, overall language fluency can be greatly enhanced, couldn’t it? This should work universally for all languages, hence also Chinese. So I started wondering, what are common overuse mistakes that Laowai make?

A Chinese friend of mine pointed out that foreigners tend to add a 真 or 真的 to their sentences way too often. “We do use it often,” she admitted, “but not that often. Only foreigners do that.” I think this kind of critique – only foreigners do that – speaks for itself. There are certain speech patterns (but could also be overuses) that make someone sound foreign. That implication must come from a social aspect of our mind, where we much rather accept a native, familiar sounding individual into our circle of trust than someone whose speech subconsciously creates social distance within ourselves. Pragmatic mistakes interfere with successful communication. So let’s point them out and learn how to sound more 地道!

I am not exactly sure about English native speakers, but in Germany the word 当然 – “of course” – is overused commonly by native learners. Perhaps it’s an attempt to compensate language insecurity with very determined vocabulary. Matter of fact is, it makes our Chinese friends feel passive-aggressively yelled at when a Laowai says “我当然要去你那儿”. Have you ever experienced a situation like that?

Another thing that popped into my mind was the way Laowai use 看起来 – “looks like”. What occured to me many times before is that western languages are gramatically a lot more indirect or passive. For example does the question “Could you tell me where the train station is?” not ask where the train station is but simply if the person asked is capable of telling us. In Chinese, a more direct phrase like “请问，火车站在哪儿?” (“Please let me ask, where is the train station?”) seems appropriate. In that manner foreigners often try to add that more neutral tone to their Chinese by adding 看起来 (“looks like”) too often. When I said “他看起来很累” (“He looks tired”) or similar uses of this structure, I often felt I sounded weird. A Chinese buddy of mine pointed out that a “他很累吧” (“He’s tired, huh”) would have done the job better. Again, a little more direct, don’t you think?

So if you are learning mandarin – have you experienced reoccuring pragmatic mistakes like these from yourself or foreign friends? I’d love to hear your view.