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The college I work for wants to pay my wife less than me
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RPMcMurphy

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 90
Location: Australia

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 3:42 am Post subject:

Teacher Jack wrote:

And RCMurphy, to hear someone mispronounce the word Nike or the word forty when they claim to be an expert English speaker is humorous.

Nike, taken from Greek, if pronounced like similarly written English words which are mostly abbreviations - mike, bike - and others such as hike, of course sounds "wrong", but not hilarious. George W. Bush made no attempt to learn how to pronounce countries like Iran and Iraq - eye-ran and
eye-raq were his versions - properly, and American attempts to deal with Brisbane and Melbourne always raise a chuckle. The American voiced promo they screen on China Southern flights coming into Melbourne is memorably uproarious, so let's not get started on foreigners who can speak English properly!

Teacher Jack

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 63
Location: China

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 4:23 am Post subject:

RPMcMurphy wrote:

Nike, taken from Greek, if pronounced like similarly written English words which are mostly abbreviations - mike, bike - and others such as hike, of course sounds "wrong", but not hilarious.

It's hilarious when a)it is one of the most famous international brands and b) when it said by someone claiming to have the same expertise in English and Western culture as an American.

Teacher Jack

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 63
Location: China

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 4:44 am Post subject:

rioux wrote:

Thanks TJ.

In terms of what you said about university graduates I completely agree.
While living there I would see many of them and yes there are a select few that can keep up a good/great conversation but wow so many couldn't get beyond a few expressions such as:
Hey, what's up?
What's your name?
Where are you going/Where are you from?
The female students seemed to know quite a few of the pick-up lines (i.e. Can I join you?).

Once the conversation went more than 1 minute things would break down pretty quickly.
I am a Permanent Resident there and I sent my resume out to tons of universities/colleges and personally showed up at several of them in the city where I used to live. The response? Perhaps 3 got back to me...with of course terrible offers.

Here's one for ya....a guy I know (American) who was really desperate for a job started working for this call center. The boss decided to put a Filipino in charge of the pronunciation class. My friend told me that it was a disaster. The guy would pronounce words like "gigantic" as "guy-gantic". The others in the class would always seek my friend out afterwards just to be sure what was said in class was the correct way to say it or not.

That was exactly what I experienced. Many filipinos can fake good English with a few lines, but go very long or very deep and you can pick out that they just don't understand. When I first started interacting with Filipinos, I thought, like mcmurphy, they understood what I saying. Later my wife would talk with them and realize they had no clue what we talked about. Filipino English teachers will confide with other Filipinos that they find it difficult speaking in English(a nosebleed!) Now, I test for understanding when I talk with filipinos, the same I do for Chinese.

We spent 2 years in the Philippines and my wife went to work at a call center. In the English training, it was hilarious. She found many words mispronounced wrongly. It was clear that the woman didn't understand the culture she was supposedly teaching to the trainees. My wife corrected many of the errors.

It was funny meeting people who lamented about the fact that they grew up speaking English so they should be considered native speakers. I'd ask them, what language did you speak with your friends? What language did you speak at the dinner table? What language do you watch the news and entertainment in? For 95% or more of all Filipinos, the answers to them are not going to include English.

Rioux, I say again, market her not as a Filipina with a Masters. She has something unique that makes her a better hire than most other Filipinos and that is her knowledge of western culture and the fact that her language at home is English.

youtalkingtome

Joined: 19 Aug 2012
Posts: 16

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 8:04 am Post subject:

Personally, I don't think anyone should be working for 5000rmb a month.

RPMcMurphy

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 90
Location: Australia

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 11:06 pm Post subject:

choudoufu wrote:

RPMcMurphy wrote:

This obsession with accent is amazing.

sez the australian........ Laughing

Although you are clearly widely travelled and knowledgeable, did you know that 20% of Australian residents were born overseas, with the largest group from the UK? Certainly when I was teaching there no-one called me Australian. But so what, unless this is a taunt?

MisterButtkins

Joined: 03 Oct 2009
Posts: 1221

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 11:59 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Many filipinos can fake good English with a few lines, but go very long or very deep and you can pick out that they just don't understand.

So I saw my Filippina friend today and you are totally right. She can't understand me. She just makes 'oh' sounds like she knows what I mean, but she doesn't really understand anything besides the basics. Honestly, I had been thinking the reason our conversations were boring was that she was just a bit slow, but actually, she just doesn't speak English.

IvanaShaanxi

Joined: 18 Jun 2012
Posts: 100

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:11 am Post subject:

MisterButtkins wrote:

Quote:

Many filipinos can fake good English with a few lines, but go very long or very deep and you can pick out that they just don't understand.

MisterButtkins, but what about your previous girlfriends? Did they have good English?

RPMcMurphy

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 90
Location: Australia

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:52 am Post subject:

Its like "can the English speak French?" Well, yes and no. Some are excellent, most not at all, and quite a few "a little". The same with English in China. But the OP [remember him?] told us his wife's English was excellent, but that she was getting paid less than him because she wasn't a "native speaker". I opined that it was racism, not first language, and that China is rife with it. No-one has picked up that idea. Why not?

MisterButtkins

Joined: 03 Oct 2009
Posts: 1221

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:14 am Post subject:

IvanaShaanxi wrote:

MisterButtkins, but what about your previous girlfriends? Did they have good English?

I'm asking myself the same question. It seemed good at the time but now I'm not so sure.

Teacher Jack

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 63
Location: China

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 6:47 am Post subject:

RPMcMurphy wrote:

Its like "can the English speak French?"
Well, yes and no. Some are excellent, most not at all, and quite a few "a little". The same with English in China.
But the OP [remember him?] told us his wife's English was excellent, but that she was getting paid less than him because she wasn't a "native speaker".
I opined that it was racism, not first language, and that China is rife with it.
No-one has picked up that idea. Why not?

Every Filipino teaching in China thinks they have excellent English. Now for the shocker, thinking something doesn't make it true.

I've suggested that he find a way to back up that assertion and then demand higher pay.

And back to racism, it's not racism because we aren't comparing apples to apples. On one hand, you have a teacher that supposedly speaks excellent English and comes from the Philippines. The school wants someone who is from a western country to teach English and expose its students to western culture. The Filipino doesn't meet that job description, it's not racism.

If on the other hand the OP was saying that his US born and educated wife of Filipino descent was being offered less then we could call it racism.

RPMcMurphy

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 90
Location: Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 4:44 am Post subject:

Teacher Jack wrote:

Every Filipino teaching in China thinks they have excellent English.

How on earth do you know this?
And being a "native speaker" doesn't mean the same as being from a "Western" country. There are many native English speakers from African, Caribbean, Oceanian and Asian cultures, but they tend to have darker skins and non-inner circle accents. Let's be honest and say racism, and let's not pretend that China isn't a racist country.

7969

Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 5782
Location: Coastal Guangdong

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 5:02 am Post subject:

RPMcMurphy wrote:

Teacher Jack wrote:

Every Filipino teaching in China thinks they have excellent English.

A lot of the English spoken in places like the Caribbean more closely resembles Ebonics than real English. It may be "English" but it's heavily influenced by linguistic elements or cultural factors that make it difficult or impossible for outsiders to understand. The same is likely true for those "native English" speaking Pacific islanders. No doubt there are exceptions but I wouldn't hire most of these people to teach conversational English to anyone.

RPMcMurphy

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Posts: 90
Location: Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:44 am Post subject:

7969 wrote:

RPMcMurphy wrote:

Teacher Jack wrote:

Every Filipino teaching in China thinks they have excellent English.

By definition they are native speakers. Maybe Chinese employers need to become more specific......"white, from inner circle speaking countries with accent native to that area". Except that will keep yer average Scotsman in the loop, as he should be.
And what is "real" English, exactly? Maybe black American street language isn't everyone's "cup of tea" [how British], but it has grammar and a vocabulary, and is spoken by many millions. Possibly "linguicism" is only in linguistics dictionaries, but its worth thinking about.

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