Worst English in which TVB series??

[Crazy8]

i dont like most of the english speakable ppl in tvb. they seem to lack something, but i dont know what. maybe is experience or because they know english and there fore they got the job for certain movies or series. i like non-english speakers/lil english better cus then they can focus more on their job instead of trying to learn something very different from their normal habbits. yes english is good, but ur in HK, doing HK series so why use english when ppl in main land china or HK ppl dont seem to understand much. u know about half the support from HK series are from main land China. in movies is different, cus then you can try to make it to hollywood, the chances of making to it is very slim, but still good to know, more movie choices. Jacky Chan and Chow Young Fat are different, becuase they didnt depent on thier english to go to hollywood. They just had to learn english to do the movie, if english was not require for them i dont think they would waste the time to do it. so i think experience is more important then learning english. as long as the serie is good and you can feel the character, who cares about what they said in english as long as you get the point they are trying to make, anyways whatever the character said in English is not important most of the time.


yea. flora is good at english. very smooth. i would say shes top 1 or 2 actress in HK that knows english and also very good at acting.
danial wu is a good english speaker too, but he really need to learn how to act. he seems to use too much english when is not require. in every movie his in, he have atleast one line of english thats not really require.

[ghostdarTeal'c]

well, i dont know bout TVB people, but i know Teresa Lee is definitely an excellent actress and she speaks fairly well english

[tinyscrooge]

I don't know why u want everybody to believe u. What is the point of watching it again when I can understand what is he talking abt in the first place? Well, we don't have subtitles Vcd in my country when HH2 was released.. Subtitles series was only introduced last year.

lily2004. just making my point.. i'm not asking you to watch it again...and you certainly don't have to

From what I hear..I don't understand him.. and even if I did understand his other parts, i'm still rolling over with tears!

There are subtitles on my version but they do get annoying after awhile.

[tinac]

Flora Chan also speaks French, but my french is not very good to know whether her accent is OK .... at least she is better than me 8-)

Michele Yip grew up in US, so her English is very good.

As for Nicholas Tse, his English is good but I wouldn't say very good. He studied in Canada, but that does not mean that he speaks English very often. I studied in Canada and I know a lot of Chinese that do not speak good English, mainly because they like to stick/hang out with people who speaks their mother tongue. Actually, it's not that they are grammatically wrong, they just have problem speaking English without their local accent.

[bubcas]

Tho I dislike Winnie Yeung's acting but her English is great! I saw her hosting the Hong Kong Tourism Parade during Chinese New Year and she was the translator. She speaks like an American and presented it very well. Her English is good coz she is also a US Citizen like Flora.

[xox]

Originally posted by tinac
Flora Chan also speaks French, but my french is not very good to know whether her accent is OK .... at least she is better than me 8-)

Michele Yip grew up in US, so her English is very good.

As for Nicholas Tse, his English is good but I wouldn't say very good. He studied in Canada, but that does not mean that he speaks English very often. I studied in Canada and I know a lot of Chinese that do not speak good English, mainly because they like to stick/hang out with people who speaks their mother tongue. Actually, it's not that they are grammatically wrong, they just have problem speaking English without their local accent.

ohh nicholas study in canada i thought he was born here or thats what i was told that made me wonder why he didnt speak as good as Edison Chen.
I never heard Michelle speak English yet. but doesnt she miss living in the states? seems like she would be in hong kong lots doing series same with Flora.
I heard before Flora wasnt very good in chinese and her husband would help her with the script reading but they are divorce now arent they?

[delia_k_00]

You can almost tell who has good english though, even judging by the little bit that is thrown into the dialogue here and there. Those who grew up in the english speaking countries really do pronounce those words properly, such as saying someone has "hurt" them, or quoting english products etc. Those who only spent little to no time outside of hk (or china), tend to say those words with a bit of a chinese slant to it. Am i making sense????

[Sasuke]

Originally posted by delia_k_00
You can almost tell who has good english though, even judging by the little bit that is thrown into the dialogue here and there. Those who grew up in the english speaking countries really do pronounce those words properly, such as saying someone has "hurt" them, or quoting english products etc. Those who only spent little to no time outside of hk (or china), tend to say those words with a bit of a chinese slant to it. Am i making sense????

True, well to explain it in simple terms... if you talk chinese a lot, you would have bad english but excellent chinese and if you talk english a lot, you will have good english but bad chinese. So it depends on what you speak most of the time. Most of the actors talk in chinese a lot and that's why they speak SO WELL in chinese but sometimes horrible in english.

[christinatran]

I haven't heard much of the actors spoken in english at all except for a couple of scenes in "triumph ...." where the trainees were speaking in english. Even then I really don't know if they speak good english or not since I was just concentrating on the subtitles. But I have to say there aren't a lot of good english speaking actors but a great deal of good english speaking actresses. Now why's that?

[christinatran]

I totally agree with Sasuke, if you always speak in chinese but very seldom in english you could be born in the States and still speak poor english. Contrary, if you always speak in english more than chinese then of course, your english would be better. All languages are the same, if you don't use it often you tend to lose the fluency of speaking it or you start to have an accent.

[Sasuke]

Originally posted by christinatran
I haven't heard much of the actors spoken in english at all except for a couple of scenes in "triumph ...." where the trainees were speaking in english. Even then I really don't know if they speak good english or not since I was just concentrating on the subtitles. But I have to say there aren't a lot of good english speaking actors but a great deal of good english speaking actresses. Now why's that?

Well, there really is no way for us to find out unless we actually meet an actor/actress and ask them how they can speak english so well or not. The only thing we can do, is imagine and try to think using our senses. Most LIKELY, the actors don't speak english much while the actresses actually talk in english more often. Other than that, I really can't think of anything much other than their background.

[tinac]

Originally posted by christinatran
I totally agree with Sasuke, if you always speak in chinese but very seldom in english you could be born in the States and still speak poor english. Contrary, if you always speak in english more than chinese then of course, your english would be better. All languages are the same, if you don't use it often you tend to lose the fluency of speaking it or you start to have an accent.

Yeah, sometimes it's not whether their English is good or not. You will meet people who speaks very gramatically correct English but you'd not think they speak very good English because of their accent.

Changing/Learning a new accent is very very difficult, sometimes people end up thinking that you are a fake/pretentious. For example, in Singapore, there are people who speaks with a American accent but you know they've never been to US! What do you make of those people??

Besides, there are a lot of actors from HK who tries to make it in Taiwan/China but they are terrible in Mandarin! Or same case as those from US tries to make it in Asia but their Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) are horrible. Like Coco Lee.

[Arashi]

Well, in defence of Ada Choi in Fate Twisters, her character is supposed to be an "Obasan", so I suspect she was meant to have really horrible English in the series, and Gigi's comment that she was good is comic irony meant intentionally. Of course, I have absolutely no idea if Ada's English is any better in real life or not.

[delia_k_00]

I only have 2 questions:
1). i thought coco lee was fluent in mandarin. She isn't?
2). what's an obasan?

[Arashi]

'Obasan' means 'auntie' in Japanese and is a slang term for middle-aged, dumpy housewives. Ada plays a house-wife cum single mother with a heart of gold in Fate Twisters, so she really wasn't meant to be clever or competent. That's why I thought her bad English was very fitting of the character.

[tinac]

Originally posted by delia_k_00
I only have 2 questions:
1). i thought coco lee was fluent in mandarin. She isn't?

She can speaks mandarin but her accent is bad. As I mentioned, a person with a bad accent does not mean that they can't speak that languange. I have a Russian friend who once told me that the Russian spoken in those hollywood movies are very badly accented. Of course I can't tell the difference but since she is Russian, I take her word for it.

[JessCC]

Originally posted by afterpaige
Ada's winning scene was that elevator scene in Fate Twisters. I've went through her one-words thrown in here and there in HH, so it's not like I have no idea of what to expect but in that particular scene she instructs a foreigner some directional advices in a full sentence and then Gigi's character by chance (yeah right) impressively standing by watching, eventually compliments her good English speaking skills. Can we all smell the irony brewing by now? She sounded confused, absolutely incomprehensible and pushing the end, she made her best effort at mumbling the remaining out. I was just as glad as she was when she switched back to canto. I think she's a great actress and I'm not just adding that on this late hoping I won't get killed but c'mon. Isn't her best friend like Flora? Is it really that hard to hire a dialect coach of some sort? Damn TVB.

See, I'm currently watching "Fate Twisters" right now and I happened to stumble upon THAT particular scene you've just described a couple of episodes ago. I could pick up a few words here and there and then, after a few playbacks, I was able to conjure up the WHOLE sentence she said. Now, with that said, it's not HALF as bad as some of the people I've met, but it kept me wondering. I know she isn't one of those actresses who graduated with a degree, but could that 'incoherentness' be a put-on? I mean, after all, she's supposed to be this non-graduate, hard-working mother who doesn't have any time to help improve herself. This is by no way defending her, it's just something curious to me.

As for Gallen, it's VERY obvious he CAN'T speak English well enough, I mean, he's not even trying to FAKE it! haha....

[JessCC]

Originally posted by tinac
Flora Chan also speaks French, but my french is not very good to know whether her accent is OK .... at least she is better than me 8-)

You've HEARD her speak French?! When?! Where?! I'm interested in THAT!

[siuling]

Flora Chan spoke French in Burning Flame 2... there was this injured guy and the firemen couldn't understand him... and what he said was that he had a pet in the back of his car... well I think it was in BF2...

Um... well OK, so some actors have pretty bad accents... except, well, if you're actually fluent in english, I really don't see why it's hard to understand.. I mean, when I went to Spain with my school, I probably had a terrible accent (my teacher had previously asked me to work on my pronunciation)... and they all understood me when I tried to say something... I don't know about you guys, but I understand the english spoken, whether poor accent, australian accent, american, whatever... it really isn't hard... and like Ada Choi in Fate Twisters and Francis Ng in Triumph, yeah bad accent, pronunciation etc, but they weren't talking rocket science! I don't understand how you lot find it hard to understand.. seriously... and yes Moses Chan's english is really good! So are most of the Miss HKs... I mean, they mainly come from USA or just generally, abroad... so it's not fair to compare them with actors/actresses who had grown up in HK or Mainland.. oh and Raymond Lam probably does have fairly good English because he studied in USA... well at least university...

I agree it's quite funny in some parts... but it's not anything worth moaning about... I was born and I study here in London... I'm fluent in chinese, but I probably have an accent... so what?

[junny]

Originally posted by Sasuke
True, well to explain it in simple terms... if you talk chinese a lot, you would have bad english but excellent chinese and if you talk english a lot, you will have good english but bad chinese. So it depends on what you speak most of the time. Most of the actors talk in chinese a lot and that's why they speak SO WELL in chinese but sometimes horrible in english.

I can't speak for the actors, but I'm bilingual and speak fluently in English and Mandarin, both of which I use often enough. There are also people who are fluent in three or more languages, so that might put paid to your assumption.