A French man speaks very impressive Putonghua

[apache]

I find this Youtube clip of Julien Gaudfroy. His English is already very impressive for a French speaking person, then he showed his Mandarin / Putonghua skills around 6.00 in the clip. I don't know how good his Chinese accent is as I don't speak Mandarin, but it sounded impressive.

For me, trying to be fluent in two languages is really challenging and I don't know how he manage three so well (I assume his still speaks fluent French )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL-MriW6 ... re=related

I find a lot of Youtube clips show native English speakers speak fluent Mandarin, but very few clips the other way round? This may be because Youtube is banned in China and not many people can upload their English speaking demos?

[Poohblah]

I've seen this man speak before. If his English and his Mandarin are that good, his French must be amazing. There are some other examples of foreigners speaking fluent putonghua/guoyu here: http://blog.skritter.com/2011/11/famous ... inese.html

[Fabien]

And it is even more impressive when you know how badly foreign languages are tought in France. And I know what I'm saying!

French people are aware for decades than learning grammary and how to write in english/spanish/chinese/.... has never been of any use when it comes to live in another country.

Things are just starting to change (and SO slowly...) and those great thinkers up there are just beginning to understand that the first thing to learn is how to speak with people.

But the main effort continues to be put on writing/reading, it will take us 10 or 20 more years to achieve a correct foreign language level for a whole class of age.

And another issue is the fact that young french people are probably those who go the least in other countries. It's quite a tradition in Germany or northern Europe countries but not in France.

So, yes, seeing a french guy speaking fluently two other languages is really not that common, especially when it comes to chinese!