Why do Chinese people talk so fast!?

Question

Blimey it sounds a tough language to learn! When I hear Chinese people talking it sounds like they're talking sooooo fast! For a person who likes to study languages I think this would be so difficult to learn because by the time you translated one word, he or she would have said 10 more!

LOL, is there a reason why the speech seems so fast to non-native speakers I wonder?

good point James but I speak other languages and I've found Chinese (Cantonese actually) so intimidating bcz the speech seems so fast that I can't catch up in time to translate it in time! :)

Fascinating Qw. I speak 11 languages but only Russian and Cantonese and Polish are this hard to me. I found Spanish and Dutch so easy it was like I didn't even have to work at it yet a Japanese friend found Spanish difficult - I didn't get how she found it so hard but it seems it's down to what you are familiar with in many ways. Very interesting! :)

"The Chinese also have a habit of not waiting for the person to finish what they are saying before starting to talk"....

I never knew my mum was Chinese!!! ;)

Answer 1

I don't think we talk fast...you're just not used to it! Or maybe it's because every word is only one syllable?
Like me, I failed my Spanish listening test because the woman talking was going too fast. My brain couldn't translate every single word at the speed she was going at. But I think this is the same for learning every other language...

Answer 2

Chinese languages are easy to speak quickly, the languages are all made up of single syllable words.

But you will find that women and people from the South of China tend to speak somewhat faster.

The Chinese also have a habit of not waiting for the person to finish what they are saying before starting to talk; they just bound in while the other person is talking, I know this causes me to get faster in my speech trying to finish what I was trying to say before I lose my train of thought.

Anyway, yes Chinese languages can be spoken very fast, but so can Spanish. Sometimes I lose my balance trying to figure out a Spanish conversation. LOL

I think it has a lot to do with ones listening ability. The better you get the slower it starts to sound because you're understading more.

Answer 3

I have a penpal from China and she told me that they have to speak fast. Just like Japanese, a lot off people in Japan doesn't watch their speed, they just talk and don't slow down for anything unless they are talking to a tourist who is not as fluent I their language (talking as fast as they do). Same with the Chinese people. If a sentence would take me five seconds to say. Depending on the person you'd asked to translate for you would most likely get it done in like 2.5 - 3.5. Again depending on the person, cause another one could have been slightly slower but still fast. What also allows them to read fast is the fact that all their words are in characters and a word can have as much as 3. But they try to find the ones that could be shorten by a character. 3 becoming 2 and 2 becoming 1. Again depending on the word. That's how they are able to read the sane story that was written in English and Chinese is because their words are much shorter than ours.

Answer 4

I speak English and Spanish well and some German and French. I understand a lot of Italian and Portuguese. I've concluded that a language sounds very fast when you don't recognize the sounds, although some people speak their own languages very rapidly. If you don't recognize the sounds of the language, then it's all babble to you and seems to be a stream of machine-gun-like sounds. This is the best way I can describe the situation. If you don't speak Chinese, it's natural that it sounds very fast. I'm teaching a Chinese couple spoken English. They have a hard time understanding me because I speak too fast for them to understand when I speak at normal speed. So, you see, it's true for anyone who can't understand another language that the speakers of the other language seem to speak very very quickly.

Answer 5

It is not that fast it is that , it has to be in a flow over wise the over person can not understand what they are saying just like most languages if we talk very slow it gets irritating ,Most country's have their own style of communication and it works for them like all places !!!! Oh by the way I am half Chinese and my dad speaks Mandarin also and also Agah very old school !!

Answer 6

Maybe because you don't know the language very well...since Cantonese is a hard language, 9 tones and they do not speak written Chinese maybe thats why, they seem normal to me. Northern Chinese speak very fast. AND one word is one syllabelle ( or one character at the least ) the is maybe why it is faster for you.

Answer 7

Chinese for dummies? It's so easy even a dummy could do it. It's pinyin, not ping yin, even though in most non-Mandarin dialects pinyin truly is "ping yin" or something similar. Not a lot of things are in pinyin. Most of them are in either Traditional or Simplified scripts. Pinyin are for kids and adults who don't know the Mandarin dialect [you could be a foreigner trying to learn Chinese or are a speaker of a non-Mandarin dialect trying to learn Mandarin].

For the best answers, search on this site https://smarturl.im/aDBV8

Answer 8

Hi there,
If you want to start learning chinese, you can find here a good course http://www.goobypls.com/r/rd.asp?gid=314
It's a good free solution.
Bye

Answer 9

my brother speaks Cantonese and my father in law was born in Shang hai. They do speak quickly, but so do Italians and we do too - to anyone trying to learn English we also speak too fast !

Answer 10

If you are a novice who is aware of really little if any Spanish but you will like to discover a lot more then you have to get a course https://tr.im/1EGvC the on-line program of Spanish