When I am watching Chinese tv, I like watching foreigners come on the tv and speak Chinese. Some foreigners are very good in their Chinese; some of them even sound like native speakers. My least favorite part of tv is when a foreigner comes on to a Chinese game show, and the host decides to speak to them in "foreigner Chinese." Basically, the host is mocking the way foreigners speak Chinese by messing up the tones completely. I don't like this because often times the foreigner on television actually is pretty good with his/her tones, but secondly, I can't understand anything the host is saying. Yet, the host speaks "foreigner Chinese" to the foreigner thinking that he/she can now understand him better because he is speaking like them. It doesn't work because Chinese is a tonal language. If you mess up the tones, the foreigner has no idea what you are saying, and then he/she looks stupid.
I had this happen to me in real life too. I went to buy a bag, and the sales person used "foreigner Chinese" with me.
After this pet peeve started growing, I have been trying to convince Alvin not to do accents anymore, esp. accents that make fun of the way non-American speak English. For example, Alvin likes to speak to our Australian friend in "Australian English," and to our Cantonese friend, he speaks to him in "Cantonese English." In my opinion, it is the same thing. Alvin argues that it isn't the same thing because English is not a tonal language.
By the way, we have an Australian friend who does a very good American English impression. We also heard about a former French classmate who did an impression of American English by dropping the F-bomb a couple times. Interesting what our international friends think about us.
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1 comment:
i'm with you, Bethany. i think it's the same thing. =)
Americans here do that with foreigners. they will speak louder and/or slower...they just need to speak more clearly.
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