How Chinese Speak English This morning, an ABC (American born Chinese) friend sent me this. I thought it was so hilarious that I would like to share this with you. This is how most US English native

Jeff

How Chinese Speak English This morning, an ABC (American born Chinese) friend sent me this. I thought it was so hilarious that I would like to share this with you. This is how most US English native speakers including ABCs perceive other Chinese looking persons to speak English like this. (ABCs don't see themselves as Chinese, they are bananas, yellow outside, white inside!) In a way, I can't blame them since this is so stereotypical and yet so true. If this is not the case, the joke cease to be funny at all. So I strongly urge all of you non native English speakers, regardless whether you are Chinese or not, to work harder and dispel this racial prejudice. Another reason that I am such a hard ass when I correct your essays. No matter what color you are or what creed you may be, you are always subject to the butt of jokes made by native speakers. This is a human trait. We cannot run from it but we can control and prevent. I shall post the transliteration in the correction box for those who could not decipher the Chinglish version. So bad and yet so good. Mae West's version is the best, "To err is human but it feels so divine."

Dec 22, 2011 8:25 PM

Corrections · 8

Oops after all those cut and paste, left out a crucial word in my first sentence, "My phoentic spelling is NOT accurate."

March 29, 2012

My phonetic spelling is accurate either. Your entry for the pronunciation of Japanese is correct too. However, one must always beware of the caveats (UK http://www.thefreedictionary.com/caveat US http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caveat, I pronounce the American way, the UK sounds so strange). Take the word "garage". US and UK the correct way to pronounce is http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/garage but you can hear (which I deemed uneducated) it pronounced by many as "gare rage" (gare pronouced as glare without the "l" sound). Worse still is the US dictionary "wrong" pronunciation of "ingenue". The correct one is the UK http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ing%c3%a9nue I say you are uneducated when you try to pronounce it as http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ingenue

March 29, 2012

'It is wrong to pronounce "Japanese" as if you pronouce "Japan"and then followed by "ese". The accent is stressed on the "Ja" sound. The correct way is "Jap-pin-ese".'Jeff，我觉得你好像说得不对，有可能你重读Ja是某一个地方的英语的口音，但是字典里写的，就是重读pa，而且，有可能，重读ja是美国口音，重读pa是英国口音。http://www.thefreedictionary.com/japanese，你看看他的音标标注，再点点看左上角的喇叭。你仔细听听。不管怎么说，你对我有启发，我还是第一次注意到有这样的区别。

March 29, 2012