Chinese Teacher Reacts to Shang-Chi Stars Speaking Mandarin Chinese! | Simu Liu & Awkwafina

Sup everyone, this is Rita aka Fan Laoshi, your accent coach and Chinese teacher. Let's talk about Shang-Chi, this new Marvel movie that finally has an Asian MCU superhero. And it is fire. The cast, the classic Chinese parent-kid story, the Marvel production, and even the music. If I didn't have a 94-year-old in-law at home, I would have gone straight to the nearest cinema to watch it on opening night. Babe, we have Disney Plus, right? Yes. And from what I've seen so far on the internet, the Chinese-Canadian lead Simu Liu spoke really authentic Mandarin. And Awkwafina. I mean, everyone loves her. So time for us to watch their Mandarin-speaking clips, see what we can learn, and maybe talk about something beyond the Chinese language as well. But first, make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit the little bell so you don't miss out on any Mandarin learning tips that you won't find anywhere else. Let's get into it. I have to confess that he didn't strike me as being super attractive. Although now I find him super chill and funny and nice and hot. But his Mandarin pronunciation, wow, like, he's Chinese, period. You may have noticed that it's pretty different how the director Dustin Daniel Curran called Simu Liu from how Liu called himself. And this is actually super typical English-accented Chinese pronunciation, like all the three vowels. For the I in Si, we don't really move our tongue when pronouncing it, because it's not the same as I in Bi, Pi, Mi, Li, etc. And it's a different vowel, basically, when we say it. And like I said before, when you say the Chinese zizizi, just keep your tongue flat and say zi, ci, si. Next, the vowel wu may not look that difficult or that different from the English wu sound, as in soon, cool, or too. But again, the simple vowels, we don't move our lips or tongue while pronouncing that wu. So instead of ci, wu, we will call him Simu. With tones for sure, but that might be asking too much for the average person. On the contrary, when it comes to compound vowels or deep tongues, there's definitely movement happening in our mouth. Like this super common family name, Liu. When English speakers say it, it sounds like a lu, which could be at least three other family names. The I in the middle of Liu should be pronounced clearly as well. But to be honest, Chinese people don't really say which sounds pretty English. We would just say Unless you want to emphasize that my English name is blah blah blah, or my Chinese name is blah blah blah. That being said, the rest of his introduction sounds super good, especially the way he introduced where he was born and where he was raised. For a lot of Chinese learners, you may just say Or even When natives introduce ourselves, we just use the shi de structure oftentimes, and shi can be omitted usually. The only point where he gave away that he's not Chinese-Chinese was when he said I'm being extremely nitpicking now, because his second tone just sounds perfect without a doubt, which actually could be super difficult for speakers of Indo-European languages, i.e. Western languages, especially when faced with the third tone. The thing is though that these characters aren't second tones. Of course, it's written as chi instead of qi, which is mainly to make it easier to Westerners. I watched this video, so you know what I mean. I believe if he pays a bit more attention to what tones the syllables are actually pronounced with, his Mandarin would sound like perfect. I mean really perfect. No wonder in the release clip from the movie Shang Qi, his Mandarin line just sounds like a Northern Chinese actor to me. A super clear third tone, which means the tone is low enough. Perfectly voiceless ba, perfect wu, perfect xi, perfect ang, bu xiang. Perfect Chinese er without rounding lips, and the perfect vowel e, which actually could be hard for lots of Chinese learners. Perfect Northern neutral tone on fan, ma fen. And perfect Fuzhou accent too. Another funny thing is that Liu Simu was trying to correct Agafina's pronunciation in the movie. That's what I said. Oh, you can turn it up? Yeah, you can hear me. This is hilarious, like a pronunciation drilling session. Well, despite the tones, we can see it clearly that Simu and Agafina said the word shang qi, shang qi pretty differently, even from outside their mouth. More obviously, Nora curled up the tip of her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Whereas Simu flatted his tongue through the whole sound. So we just saw the blade of his tongue. And more importantly, the tongue position of the English accented ang is higher than the Chinese. I'm really excited to watch the whole movie. Also because I heard that at least 10% of the conversation in the movie is spoken in Mandarin. I've worked with film crews and trained actors with their lines for more than 3 years now. And I even spent 2 straight months helping a foreign actress with her movie lines. Even though her pronunciation and tones were already really good back then, to say the lines exactly like how natives do is so many levels up to reach. There are just so many aspects beyond individual sounds in our speech that 99.99% Chinese natives are not even aware of. But these actually influence how we produce the sounds in real life. To get there, it takes even more time and effort. It's stuff like this that I'm gonna teach in my Chinese pronunciation course coming soon. Nostalgic. Well, singing and rapping can be helpful. And after looking through his Instagram posts, it started making sense to me why his Chinese is this good. He had a very close relationship with his grandparents who lived in Harbin their whole lives. It reminds me of so many Chinese-American or Chinese-Canadian students that I've taught over past 10 years. The ones who can speak close to native-level Chinese are usually the ones who are super close to their Chinese roots and vice versa. They might visit their family in China every year, watch a lot of Chinese dramas, listen to Chinese music, and a lot of them don't even speak Putonghua, but instead speak Wuhanhua, Shanghaihua, Beijinghua, Fuzhouhua, or Guangdonghua. This is what more and more Chinese families are like nowadays. Grandparents living in China and mostly in countryside, parents who move to first-tier cities or immigrate overseas, the young generation is born or raised in the US, Canada, Europe, or a foreign country. And the languages we speak are always a big part of our identity, accents included. I know a lot of Chinese immigrant parents feel conflicted about language education to their kids. In my opinion, multi-language ability is one of the best gifts that parents can ever give to their kids, because the world that their kids get to know and explore will be much bigger and more diverse, and probably more opportunities, like what Liu Simu got. On the other hand, I think Awkwafina represents kids from earlier generations of immigrant families, and her northern Chinese grandma can speak English with her, which is pretty rare for elder Chinese. She still has a lot of connection with her Chinese roots, but her spoken Mandarin carries more English-accented features. Have you ever blown up a duck, grandma? No, I never work in a restaurant like that. You don't put a tube in? I watched her Golden Globe-winning movie Farewell on a Flight. It is a really touching story that in a way shares a similar typical Chinese family relationship with Shang-Chi. Now let's watch a few clips of his brilliant performance, and listen to her Chinese. I don't know how good her Mandarin really is, but here I think she just used the English intonation into the Chinese sentences instead of pronouncing tones for each syllable. It's super common for Chinese learners if they don't really pay attention to the tones when practicing their spoken Chinese. So 没事 sounds really good, really northern given she used the 儿话 at the end of 是, but the second sentence, I'm just tired, in the north accent, we would say 就是, shorter and lighter, especially 是, because the word doesn't really carry a super important meaning. And a neutral tone is a big difference between the accents in the north and south. This is a wedding speech given on stage, and obviously she practiced more, so it sounds better, and definitely better than most actors who try to speak Mandarin in movies. But still, if I were her Chinese accent coach, I'd suggest she practice the Chinese 儿, the third tone change, and tones of words that we use every day, like 很多, 能, but Akrafina is hilarious, she's cool, she raps, and she was the first Asian woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress, so what more can we ask for? But I really hope there'll be more people speaking Mandarin in movies or shows, so I can analyze and help you improve your Chinese learning, speaking and listening, or join my pronunciation course that I'm gonna launch later this year. Anyways, if you are overseas Chinese, you are very welcome to share your Mandarin learning story in the comments. And let me know if there are any Chinese-speaking celebrities that you want me to make a video about. Remember, with Fan Laoshi, Chinese makes perfect sense. See you in the next video.