Originally Posted by
UA_Flyer
i am told the UA Chinese American flight attendants speak terrible Chinese and Chinese passengers have problem understanding them.
This is also true at AA. Many fluent Chinese speakers speak terrible Chinese (this is not a contradiction).
Chinese Americans typically speak with American English syntax, which sounds funny to native Chinese speakers. (The Chinese translations of the flight safety video is an equal hoot to read along.) And if they do not continue to learn Chinese past around the 8th grade, they also tend to not know idioms that help express ideas with fewer words. (In the reverse, those of us more acclimated to English would find "You are welcome to travel by our plane," which comes directly from Chinese syntax, to be comical or perhaps even confusing, knowing that "Welcome aboard" gets the same point across.) Native Cantonese speakers also tend to struggle mightily with Mandarin, in both accent and verbiage, further compounding the language problem with mainland Chinese customers.
Now that there are more Mainland Chinese immigrants in America, the bigger pool of native Mandarin-speaking applicants will eventually (hopefully) resolve this issue.
Americanized Chinese sounds like this version of English. Found the photo!
