on language

Living overseas, you're subjected to a variety of accents amongst English speakers. Obviously, I'm getting chink mostly here ("sank you velly much," and "me ruv you rong time")(just kidding)(about the first one), but there's the occasional other that throws me for a loop. We had a meeting today with someone from an outside educational institution (read: I'm afraid to name the organization for fear of getting sued, or worse, hurting this poor woman's feelings), who appeared to have an Australian accent. But there was something wrong with it. At first I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. I must have looked as if I were concentrating intensely on the vocabulary lesson she was describing, when in fact I was figuring out that...

she was British with a speech impediment.

"Alwight then, ay suppose that you would wont to mix the wessons togethew so that they would have weeding and whiting at the same time, is that wite?"

yowzah.

In other language news, I am getting along alright in Chinese, although I am reminded again and again that I do not come from here. Everyone from the human resources staffperson to the drive-thru window attendant at McDonalds asks me slyly where I'm from. It's usually phrased like, "You're from the mainland, right?" But when I lived in Qing Dao (on the mainland), everyone was like, "You're from Taiwan, right?"

Sometimes once I explain that I'm an abc, they're like ooooh, that's exactly what you sound like. But no one is able to answer the question of what an abc sounds like. What words do I say differently? Is my accent completely off? Is the fact that I'm nodding as if I understand you while I have no idea what you're saying until you ask me a question and I just do the peremptory laugh thing instead of answering your question, is that what tipped you off? I know that there are words that I mispronounce, like I say kwai(4) zi(5) for cabinet instead of guai(4) zhi(5), (or the other way around?!) but I didn't know I sounded like a goddamn american-born chinese. At least I can go incognito until I open my mouth. But I did that in Argentina too.

I'm sure it's at least partly due to my muddling around in conversations because I can't figure out what's going on. When I first got here, I needed to get some tiger balm for my mosquito bites, which is wan(4) jin(2) you(2) in Chinese. So I went into the pharmacy, and I knew there was a "w" sound at the beginning of the word and there were at least a couple characters, so I asked for wei(4) jin(2). That means msg. So apparently, I went into a pharmacy and asked for monosodium glutamate. The pharmacist looked at me a bit oddly, and I explained that it was a balm for mosquito bites, and eventually I got what I wanted. Then he was like, "So where are you from?"

Similarly, the other day I was at a bubble tea stand. I have to admit the I love living in the city that invented bubble tea. Not great for the waistline, but WHO CARES? :) I was in line behind someone who ordered a honey bubble tea, so I did too. Only, I got the word order wrong, so instead of a honey bubble tea, I ordered a bee bubble tea.

Finally, and this is my crowning glory, Parent / Teacher night. (And it's nice to be able to say parent, or mother, as opposed to your parent or guardian because your mom's cracked out and disappeared 5 years ago and you live with your grandmother or an aunt or get shuffled around) a mother just came in and was chatting with me, and all friendly and establishing comraderie and stuff, and her parting words were like, no matter how good we (as in she and I, We Taiwanese ) get in English, we still won't be as good as the whites. And then she quickly said goodbye and walked out the door. As soon as she closed the door, I was like, "Wait... but...."

Welcome to the motherland.