Something I should have done when I lived in China

When I lived in China, I let a wonderful opportunity pass me by, but I may be able to do something similar now that I live in Quebec.

It is a not altogether uncommon thing for children or mildly racist grown-ups to imitate other languages by making sounds that are both nonsense to the speaker, and of course, to a speaker of the language being imitated. I’m sure we’ve all heard at some point, an English speaker imitate Chinese, by uttering a stream of disconnected monosyllabic exclamations.

When I used to live in China, I had more than a few friends who could not speak a word of English, and I have a hard time believing that only English people do this sort of imitation of other languages.

I wish that I had recorded a native Chinese speaker with no English ability pretending he was saying something in English. Now that I’m in Quebec, though, I might be able to find some French-only speakers, and get them to imitate English.

Or, who knows? Maybe there’s a Quebecois equivalent of Foux du Fa Fa (an excellent example of an English person making up words that sound French).

This is interesting to me, because as a native English speaker, I don’t really know what English sounds like. I’ll work on this. :)

Published by

The Grey Literature

This is the personal blog of Benjamin Gregory Carlisle PhD. Queer; Academic; Queer academic. "I'm the research fairy, here to make your academic problems disappear!"

6 thoughts on “Something I should have done when I lived in China”

  1. Soo. . . mystical [CENSORED] is a mystery no longer? Or did you live in China at some other time? Also, I totally got married to that guy I talked to you about so long ago. You aren’t on facebook, so I figured I’d tell you here. :)

  2. Who ever said anything about [CENSORED]? There’s nothing controversial about going to China. It’s a wonderful country with a rich past and a beautiful culture that is worth exploring on it’s own merits and for no ulterior motives.

  3. One night at Loop during supper I was talking to you and Pickles about a “just friends for now” relationship that I was sort of in. We made it official when I was on project, got engaged in January and married in August.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.