The Biggest Obstacle to Chinese People Speaking English Is Other Chinese People

At an international conference, during a coffee break, a Chinese delegate asks a question in English. The grammar is not perfect. The th sound is not interdental. Some past-tense verb is missing its -ed. But the other side understands. The question is clear. The exchange moves smoothly.

The meeting breaks up. The Chinese gather together. The first comment is not “That was a good question.” It is:

“Did you hear that accent? So Chinese.”

“He used the wrong word.”

“And he dared to speak English like that?”

The person who spoke English was not stumped by the foreigners. He was judged first by his own people.

So we have to admit something a little absurd: for Chinese people, the biggest obstacle to speaking English is often not English. It is other Chinese people. Especially those who have nothing better to do than nitpick you, who nag endlessly about your pronunciation.

They are like an invisible panel of examiners standing at every intersection where you might open your mouth. Before you finish a sentence, they have already graded you in their heads: pronunciation, grammar, fluency, whether you sound enough like a foreigner. If your score is not high enough, they will use a tone that mixes pity with superiority: “Your English still needs work.”

The question is: work for whom?

Native speakers are usually not this harsh. When an American, a Briton, or an Australian hears a foreigner stumbling through English, the first reaction is usually “You are trying to speak my language. Thank you.” If they understand, they keep talking. If they don’t, they try another way. Unless the other person explicitly asks, few interrupt to correct your pronunciation or mock your grammar.

It is fellow Chinese who have the sharpest ears, the highest standards, and the least patience.

Why? Because many Chinese treat English as an exam subject, not a communication tool. Exams have standard answers, right and wrong, scores, rankings. When you speak English, they are not listening to content. They are doing a listening comprehension test. You drop an article, they deduct points. You put stress in the wrong place, they deduct points. You carry your hometown accent, they deduct points. After deducting, they slap the paper in your face and tell you where you went wrong.

But language is not an exam. Language is a road, a bridge, a hand. You reach out, the other person takes it, and the purpose is achieved. Whether the hand looks good, whether the nails are trimmed neatly, that is another matter.

People who nitpick may not care about English. They care about themselves.

One reason is status anxiety. In China, English has long been given a meaning beyond language. It is tied to education, class, internationalization, respectability, being cosmopolitan. Good English seems to bring you closer to the elite. Bad English seems to leave you behind. So when they listen to someone speak English, they are not listening for information. They are confirming their position: Is your English better than mine, or worse? If worse, they can relax. If better, they must find fault and pull you down. Nitpicking becomes a way of soothing themselves.

Another reason is face culture. We were taught from childhood: “If you can’t say it well, don’t say it at all.” Mistakes are shameful. Bad pronunciation is shameful. Grammar errors are shameful. So the safest choice is not to speak. But when someone actually opens their mouth, those who dare not speak feel a faint threat: If he can communicate even with bad English, then what were all my years of silence for? To defend their choice, they must prove that “if you can’t say it well, you shouldn’t say it.” Mocking others is a way to justify their own retreat.

A third reason is perfectionism. Many people treat accent and errors as moral defects, as if inaccurate pronunciation means lack of seriousness, as if wrong grammar means lack of effort. But language learning has never been a game for the squeamish. It is a process of making mistakes, correcting them, making a fool of yourself, and repeating. The more afraid you are of losing face, the less you learn. The less you learn, the more sacred English seems. The more sacred it seems, the less you dare to open your mouth.

In the end: collective silence.

Why has English been placed on an altar? There is history behind it. One source is the British Empire. The British brought English to colonies, and English became the language of power, trade, administration, and education. Another source is the United States after World War II. Hollywood, Netflix, YouTube, pop music, technology, brands, universities, business culture, all pushed English out into the world. English is everywhere like air. Over time, many people mistake it for something that should naturally appear in every corner.

But English is not air. It just caught a historical tailwind.

If you count native speakers, Mandarin has the most. English is not the most logical language, nor the most efficient, nor the only language qualified to represent the modern world. It simply happened to ride the colonial era and the rise of the United States. Even native speakers spend their whole lives learning new words, and the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is often maddeningly chaotic.

A comparison chart illustrates this well: words related to water in Chinese, English, and German. In German, a faucet is “water rooster,” and a capybara is “water pig,” very close to the Chinese way of naming. English, by contrast, has faucet, spirit level, and capybara, none of which have anything to do with water.

What does this show? Every language has its own logic and its own oddities. No language is naturally superior. English became the international lingua franca by accident, not because it is perfect.

I once saw the reflections of an American after living in China. When she first arrived, her biggest culture shock was not food, not customs, and not even language barriers alone. It was the realization that the vast majority of people here simply do not speak English. Hotel front desks, restaurant servers, train station staff, taxi drivers, English is almost absent from daily encounters.

At first she was confused: China is one of the most populous and largest countries in the world. Why is English proficiency so low? She kept a sliver of hope that someone, somewhere, would understand English. Reality disappointed her again and again.

Later, she began to reorganize the logic of the question. Her point was this: The key is not why they do not speak English. The key is: why did I assume they should?

That sentence was the turning point of her reflection.

She realized that she grew up in Europe and America, exposed to Hollywood films, Netflix, YouTube. English was like air to her, so she assumed English should appear in every corner. She took apart this default setting and saw two historical sources: the colonial expansion of the British Empire and the cultural export of the United States after World War II.

Then she did an economic calculation. China has 1.4 billion people and is one of the largest domestic markets in the world. Most people speak Chinese their whole lives, study in Chinese, work in Chinese, and are served in Chinese in shops and restaurants. Tourism accounts for roughly 4 to 4.5 percent of China’s GDP, while Thailand is 12.8 percent, the Maldives 6.1 percent, Japan 7.4 percent. Those countries’ livelihoods revolve around international tourists. China’s economy, put bluntly, revolves around Chinese consumers.

Her conclusion was blunt: China is not “a tourist attraction with people living in it.” It is a country full of ordinary people living their own lives. Sometimes tourists forget this. Why should a taxi driver spend years learning English just to wait for you? That is not part of the job.

Her reflection also shows another predicament for Chinese people speaking English. We are not only judged by our compatriots. We often judge ourselves. We assume English is superior, necessary, a ruler for measuring people. We think that if we speak English, we must sound like a native speaker, or else it is shameful. We forget that English is first a tool, not a statue.

The American said at the end that her parents always made her learn a few phrases before every trip: “Hello,” “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” “Where is the bathroom?” She did this in Korea, Japan, Hawaii. It did not matter if her pronunciation was a joke. The point was to open her mouth in the other person’s language.

Her main point was direct: When you go to someone else’s home as a guest, it is your own choice. You are not inviting them to your home; you chose to go. If you fly thousands of miles to study in Nanjing, that server did not choose to have you walk into his restaurant. Why should he spend years learning your language instead of you spending fifteen minutes learning to say thank you?

That can become a principle: If you choose to travel, accept the discomfort that comes with it.

This principle, in reverse, also applies to Chinese people speaking English. When we deal with the English-speaking world, we are not performing for native speakers, not entering a pronunciation contest, not proving whether we are international enough. We are communicating, exchanging, making things clear. Our accent is where we come from, not our shame. Our mistakes are part of learning, not defects of character.

A healthy language mentality is to be a guest. Not a servile guest, but a guest with boundaries. When you go to someone’s home, you try to learn a few local phrases, you respect their habits, but you do not kneel because you speak poorly. You know you are there to communicate, not to take an exam. You also know the other person has no obligation to serve you perfectly, but you have no obligation to become someone else.

When you speak English, do not make native speakers your examiners, and do not make your compatriots your examiners. Treat English as a road, not a wall. You walk on this road to get somewhere, not to perform your walking style.

Toward yourself: allow an accent, allow mistakes, allow Chinglish. Communication is victory. Toward others: unsolicited correction is rude. Unless someone explicitly asks, do not interrupt, do not mock pronunciation, do not judge a person’s worth by their English. Toward society: acknowledge the diversity of English. Indian English, Singaporean English, African English, Caribbean English, they are alive and in use. Chinese English can have its place too.

English is still important. It is a common tool in international exchange and a working language in many fields. But “everyone should speak English” and “if you speak English, you must sound like a native speaker” are increasingly untenable.

China is already the second-largest economy and will one day be first. BYD, Huawei, Alibaba are running at the front in their fields. The world is changing, and the balance of linguistic power is changing too. English will not disappear, but it should not remain on an altar.

The American said her video was never about English, about language, about China, or even about travel. It was about perspective.

The world does not revolve around her. China made her understand that. The value of travel is not that everything goes smoothly. On the contrary, it is because things are hard. Because they are hard, you are reminded that your way of living is not the only way.

For Chinese people, the liberation of speaking English is not just about standard pronunciation and correct grammar. The liberation is letting the examiner in your head retire. That examiner may be your middle school teacher, a classmate who once mocked your accent, a stranger online, or yourself. He is always saying: You are not good enough. You do not deserve to speak. You will lose face.

Show him out.

English is not an altar. Your compatriots are not examiners. The world does not revolve around you, and it does not revolve around English either. You open your mouth not to prove anything, but to go where you want to go, say what you want to say, and meet whom you want to meet.

Say it wrong, start again. Pronunciation bad, keep going. People laugh, let them.

When you no longer fear other Chinese people nitpicking you, English will step down from the altar and become a road. Then the obstacle will no longer be other Chinese people. It will be the next place you want to go.