Pardon Me?

My wildest accent related story took place in Chinatown Los Angeles.

After one day of touring the city, my husband and I were exhausted and hungry. We picked a quiet and clean restaurant. As soon as we sat down, the waiter brought us water and gave us a few minutes to look at the menu.

We have been living in the Midwest US for years. Chinese food there means American-ized Chinese food like General Tsao’s Chicken. Needless to say, we were eager to try some real Chinese food in California.

So I asked the waiter if he has any recommendations for us.

“Honey, wanna shrimp?” he asked, looking at me and smiling.

Who is he to call me honey? The waiter is clearly at least 10 years younger than me. Can’t he see my husband was sitting right next to me? No decent woman in her right mind would respond to such a question.

My husband was apparently surprised too because he asked the waiter to repeat what he just said.

“Honey, wanna shrimp.” The waiter said again, this time looking at my husband and still smiling. This was getting way out of line. I managed to keep my silence and dignity.

I am glad I did that, instead of protesting, because the waiter then pointed at these words on the menu: “honey walnut shrimp”. In his Chinese (maybe Cantonese) accent, walnut turned into wanna.

From that day on, “honey wanna shrimp?” became our secret code whenever my husband and I consulted each other whether we would have shrimp for dinner.

By Spread Your Wings

Accent Seduction

I was listening in a Skypecast of the non-native speakers practicing English the other day. The topic changed almost randomly, and the speakers often struggled with their words along with it. It’s typical in such group conversation. I was a bit bored after a while.

As it was dragging on, some speakers started to drop off the conversation, gradually leaving only three in talking. Little did I know, my boredom was about to take a sharp turn.

All three were my fellow Chinese; well, two and an half Chinese, to be accurate: one attending a college in Australia, another working in Netherland, and the third (one of her parents is Chinese) living in Japan.

This was rare. Not that Chinese talking to one another in English, but how well these three speak—no Chinglish here, unless they deliberately made fun of it, and no traceable accent; I can recognize an accent from a Texan talking much easier than from them.

And they focused on one topic like a laser: is it better to speak English with an American accent or British one. Judging by their talking, I would say American’s has won, although one of them reveres London accent the way that some revere British royal families. I was disappointed that no one mentioned the Australian’s. I became quite fond of it after watching a few interviews that the Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowne gave.

At the beginning, they were comparing notes on how to reduce their accent further. I was worried on the side. They can easily fool me as native speakers already. How much purer would their accent get? Sounding like “Press-one-if-you-are-calling-about-your-checking-account” greeting that I was subject to listen each time I called a bank while being put on hold?

As the conversation went, their politeness began to wear off. The tension was building up, as if they were engaging in an undeclared competition of whose accent sounding more like an American. They threw sentences to one another in order to score. It went on for a while before the smoke was cleared.

The guy from Europe retreated first. He felt defeated because he couldn’t pronounce several vowels as clear as the NBC News anchor Brian Williams does. That left two gals in dog fighting for the championship. For a while, I couldn’t tell who was talking; they both sounded the same to me.

I guess it’s a draw.

Memories of Chinese New Year

For those who celebrate lunar New Year, I’d like to wish you a most delightful one in the year of the pig!

Chinese New Year doesn’t always fall on a Sunday like it does this year. This makes it hard for us “Overseas Chinese”, as we are called by folks in China, to celebrate this holiday. Somehow I always sense a tone of pity in this name, because they think we are missing out a lot on this special holiday. And they are right. I miss everything about it.

I miss the aroma of food. Having abundant food on New Years Eve is an auspicious sign of a prosperous year ahead. And fish is a must-have. I still remember the smell of deep fried fish traveled all the way from our kitchen, to every room in our family; up the staircase, to the neighbor’s home; out the window, to the narrow alley of about 20 households. With skyscrapers emerging overnight in every city in China nowadays like bamboo shoots thriving in spring, I wonder whether I could still smell the delicious food on every street I stroll on.

I miss the deafening firecrackers and and the laughter of children. For kids, this is their happiest moment of the year. Before the dinner table was cleaned on New Year’s Eve, they rushed out to watch firecrackers and fireworks. If you walk in the small alley of our street, the sound of firecrackers would make you wonder for a second that you were on a battle field instead of a busy city.

The children went to bed with a stuffed belly, red envelopes with "good luck money"(红包，pronounced as Hong Bao) carefully tucked under the pillow. Exhausted, after all the eating, jumping and laughing, they quickly fell asleep before the next round of firecrackers lit up at midnight.

Most of all I miss my family and relatives in China.

No matter where I am in the vast overseas, they will always be as close as ever in my heart.

More On Native Speakers

I was in an English practicing Skypecast yesterday. A guy popped his head in, figuratively speaking, for a second. He turned his back on us the minute he found out none of us in the chat room were native speakers.

Although he treated us like thin air that barely existed, I don’t blame him so much. It reminded me of a scene at the famous Shanghai People’s Park English Corner, when I visited there last summer. Situated in downtown Shanghai, this free English club went way back decades ago. In fact, I almost believe the Chinese phrase “English Corner” was coined after this particular club.

When I got out of the subway that day, it started to drizzle. I went in the park anyway. There was a little sheltered area already packed with lots of people. I quickly walked towards there, passing many more standing in the open area.

After chatting with a few friendly faces, I saw a Chinese ushered an Anglo-Saxon looking guy to the place. People quickly swarmed around them. Several guys who were talking to me got a bit uneasy, itching to get over there and join the native speaker too. Soon there were maybe 30 people around the new comer. The eager learners who were at the outermost circle could barely hear anything. Nevertheless, the intent look on their faces made me wonder whether they would worship the native speaker more than the Pope himself.

Soon thunder rolled in. The rain came pouring down. Thunderstorm is almost a daily sight on summer afternoons in Shanghai. People obviously came prepared with umbrellas. They continued to stand in the rain, their umbrellas dripping, listening to the foreigner in awe. No one was fazed by the little obstacle called rain.

My friend Lingual Bee posted an interesting blog last week suggesting that talking to native speakers may not be the best way to practice a new language. If you can get a native speaker who speaks slowly to you and does not make you nervous, who is also willing to dedicate sufficient practice time with you, I’d say by all means go for it. Otherwise, you are probably better off talking to some other language learners who are at an equivalent level as you.

Granted, I've been in some bad skypecasts, because of inexperienced hosts, rude participants, boring topics … the least of which is lack of native speakers. Personally I felt sorry for that guy who left our chat room. Without a single native speaker, we participants from Japan, Turkey, Estonia and Brazil, had an educational session and no less fun.

Who’s Accent Is More Funny?

I’m not a football fan. But I don’t miss the Supper Bowl game—the American Football League Championship—either. It’s the biggest sport event in the U.S; probably the biggest social event too. Not watching it is like to serve no turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner. To me, turkey may taste like a mummy’s cloth, and football may resemble a battalion battle—leaving hamlet on but spear out—more than a modern sport. Missing either, however, is to miss an ingredient of the American culture.

I was well seated in the couch when Indianapolis Colts kicked off the ball on Sunday night. Rooting for neither Colts nor Bears, I didn’t get pumped up much like the fans in the stadium. I glued my eyes on the TV screen anyway, particularly during the commercial breaks.

For the lukewarm fans like me, that’s when the action starts—the 30-second Super Bowl ads are running. The major players usually are beer producers, car manufacturers, and dotcoms who have other’s money to burn. In the past, some Supper Bowl ads were more memorable and entertaining than the touch-downs during the game.

This year, all the car ads suck (Ford wasn’t especially desperate), but all the beer were entertaining. In particular, the one made by Budweiser got me rolled on the floor each time it was played. Carlos Mencia, the comedian of South American decent, acted as an ESL (English as Second Language) teacher to a group of immigrants. You can watch it from Youtube:


In the past Super Bowl ads, Budweiser used to have a giant frog sitting in a pond, uttering “Bud, erh”. It’s very funny. Now, we know frog’s accent is nowhere near as funny as that of our immigrants.