Brought to You by The Letter 'H'
I can't get mad. I'm a guest in their culture.
I can't get frustrated. This is their country.
But if these folks don't start pronouncing some H's real soon, I'm going to go insane.
While Taiwan possesses its own dialect called Taiwanese, virtually everyone also knows Mandarin (国语: Guóyǔ), the official and 'educated' language of China. However, the Taiwanese have considerable accents. This might seem odd at first, but it makes total sense, as every society has some speech variation. Americans certainly have our regional differentiations and slang among California, New York, Minnesota, and the South (I couldn't imagine someone trying to learn English wanting to be immersed in Texas. Actually, I can't anyone wanting to be immersed in Texas.)
The Taiwanese method of pronouncing Chinese is to eliminate the letter 'H' from most everything. Although it's hardly a problem to the natives, foreigners taught the language by professors born and raised in Beijing have been trained with a different ear.
This might not seem like a big problem if one has never studied the language. But take as an example 'chi' (meaning 'to eat'). Without the H, it reads 'ci,' which happens to be many other words on their own, but it also sounds like 'zi,' also with many meanings. So when I tell people I can speak a little Chinese and they ask me a simple question that I should be able to understand but all I can emit is silence, they regard me as a total poseur. After staring blankly for a few seconds, I finally catch on to what they mean, but by then I'm so self-conscious I don't want to speak anymore. Rrrgh.
However, in lab today Zhuo worked hard to make the 'H' sound when practicing his English:
Chen: You know, Zhuo knows kung fu. He used to live in mainland China.
Me: Yeah?
Chen: And he also used to be a monk.
Me, looking skeptical: Oh really?
Zhuo, shakes his head: That is...ummm...Bullshit?
Zhuo looks at me to see if he is correct, and I smile and nod.
Zhuo, looking at Chen: Ha-ha! BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!!!
I can't get frustrated. This is their country.
But if these folks don't start pronouncing some H's real soon, I'm going to go insane.
While Taiwan possesses its own dialect called Taiwanese, virtually everyone also knows Mandarin (国语: Guóyǔ), the official and 'educated' language of China. However, the Taiwanese have considerable accents. This might seem odd at first, but it makes total sense, as every society has some speech variation. Americans certainly have our regional differentiations and slang among California, New York, Minnesota, and the South (I couldn't imagine someone trying to learn English wanting to be immersed in Texas. Actually, I can't anyone wanting to be immersed in Texas.)
The Taiwanese method of pronouncing Chinese is to eliminate the letter 'H' from most everything. Although it's hardly a problem to the natives, foreigners taught the language by professors born and raised in Beijing have been trained with a different ear.
This might not seem like a big problem if one has never studied the language. But take as an example 'chi' (meaning 'to eat'). Without the H, it reads 'ci,' which happens to be many other words on their own, but it also sounds like 'zi,' also with many meanings. So when I tell people I can speak a little Chinese and they ask me a simple question that I should be able to understand but all I can emit is silence, they regard me as a total poseur. After staring blankly for a few seconds, I finally catch on to what they mean, but by then I'm so self-conscious I don't want to speak anymore. Rrrgh.
However, in lab today Zhuo worked hard to make the 'H' sound when practicing his English:
Chen: You know, Zhuo knows kung fu. He used to live in mainland China.
Me: Yeah?
Chen: And he also used to be a monk.
Me, looking skeptical: Oh really?
Zhuo, shakes his head: That is...ummm...Bullshit?
Zhuo looks at me to see if he is correct, and I smile and nod.
Zhuo, looking at Chen: Ha-ha! BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!!!
posted by Shannon @ 8:20 PM
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