'Cute' Chinese

I was warned it would happen.

Before I even really started to learn Chinese I was warned by a couple of old hands that most foreign guys sound like women when they speak Chinese.

Really, there's not a lot you can do about it. Most Chinese teachers are seemingly female. Most straight guys will spend more time talking to Chinese girls/girlfriends/wives then they will talking to guys and, for some reason, it is typically not that easy to make male Chinese friends.

It's hard enough speaking Mandarin Chinese at the best of times (the fact that it's tonal, uses characters instead of letters, is full of cultural references that foreigners typically don't understand, has so few distinct sounds and particularly the fact that lots of Chinese people don't speak it very well either) so to cap that off there are a few things that make it much harder.

1. People "listening with their eyes" - particularly true of older people. You'll speak - they'll look at you as if you're an alien but not actually respond. You'll repeat yourself - same response. Eventually, you'll just walk away but probably not before you've got rather annoyed. Occasionally you'll speak Chinese to someone younger and they will respond with "I'm sorry... I don't.... speak English" which is also irritating.

2. People laughing at you. The first few times I speak Chinese in front of someone that I don't know I can speak vaguely passable Chinese (particularly my Chinese colleagues) they laugh. As I speak. The more I speak the more they laugh. Once they've got over the 'the laowai can speak Chinese' phase and move on, it's not too bad but it's really quite offputting.

3. People that have, a couple of times said "你说的好可爱!" - you said that very cutely - this typically happens if I'm trying to be 凶 fierce because I'm annoyed about something. It's not the words per se that sound cute but the intonation and the other noises that you make for emphasis (啊,呀,哎,嗯, 哇) etc. around them.

The best way to learn a language is to imitate a native speaker but, unfortunately, in this respect women don't speak in quite the same way as men so angry foreigners end up sounding like angry women. Which makes people laugh.

哎呀!