A few things imaemidtely spring to mind as I read through the initial post and the comments that follow. (Note: Please replace English with whatever non-Chinese language you prefer, I don't intend to be English centric, it's just that I speak English.)1. A common thing I find when speaking mandarin with native speakers, who live in an English speaking area, is that they often need to switch their brains in to mandarin-mode to understand what I am saying. This is something many other people, whom I have spoken with, have commented about also. I'm not sure how much it occurs in the reverse context as I do not live in a mandarin speaking area. Whether it is a phenomenon that only occurs in this EnglishSpeaker-to-ChineseSpeaker direction or not, it is still a valid language barrier which makes me less likely to attempt speaking mandarin to someone in the same situation again. Until you explain that you are trying to learn mandarin, the other person has to consciously make that switch to processing mandarin. It creates a social barrier between the person willing/wanting to engage in the other person's native language.2. The emphasis on certain words in a sentence structure has a direct correlation to the final message as seen in the following examples:That pen is too expensive.THAT pen is too expensive.That PEN is too expensive.That pen IS too expensive.That pen is TOO expensive.That pen is too EXPENSIVE.And just to be fair, a Chinese example:那支笔太贵　- That pen is too expensive.那支笔是太贵 That pen IS too expensive.Unless the speaker places emphasis (or no emphasis at all) on the correct word, it can create a barrier that is not perceived by the speaker and could potentially offend the listener without the speaker's intention to do so.3. Inflections vs. Tones: This may seem like a very obvious observation, and it is sort of related to #2, but it's yet another example of how easily an incorrectly spoken sentence can infer the incorrect meaning and create further distance between the speaker and the listener. For the English speaker, inflections are used to emphasise, create questions, statements and so on. In Chinese, tones are used to differentiate between exclusive meanings of basic sounds.There are so many things to get past to close the distance socially, and this is just at the basic language level without taking into account social statuses and other factors that grossly affect the judgement of both the speaker and the listener in every situation that they happen to be in.Seems I've made this post into a book-length reply.. sorry about that but I am really passionate about social sciences and sociology.