The blogosphere and mainstream media followed-up the next day with superfluous stories questioning Huntsman's Mandarin fluency. Though this was a topic for a lengthy discussion last night, the consensus was if he is understood by Chinese statesmen and able to communicate effectively with them- Who is to say he isn't fluent?
In China, there is a unique dialect every 50 miles. Often times, these differences even prevent native speakers from easily understanding each other. How big of a problem is this? Well, at my school today, students had to take speaking tests that award scores for their proficiency in Mandarin. That is right, they had to practice pronunciation and take a government issued test to ensure they adequately spoke their mother tongue. The multitude of dialects are just one more reason why learning Chinese is so awesome.
By the way, the native speaker in our group affirmed our consensus that the only significant mistake Mr. Huntsman made was transposing America (meiguo- 美国) to an incorrect position in the sentence but the message was still understandable. I wonder how many of the critics posses any familiarity with Mandarin. Further, I wonder if they even possess the ability to speak a second language. The beauty of being a pundit is the ability to criticize everyone and best no one.
Additional Fun Fact of the Day: Chinese newspapers use a unique vocabulary almost never utilized in speech so that they truncate stories as much as possible. Thus, newsspeak is literally employed :)
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