Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[brunette]

You know many people said Sichuan girls are very affected because they always like mimicking the Taiwan accent to sound sweet and coquettish. That's a huge misunderstanding. In most places of this province, people don't have round sounds, either. The girls speak in a delicate way even in their local dialect. So when they speak Mandarin, their use of /s/ instead of /sh/, and their use of large amount of interjections like 嘛"ma", 呀"ya", 呢"ne" etc make some people feel a little uncomfortable.

[brunette]

I think part of the reason people laugh is because they are surprised to hear almost 北京话(Beijing Accent) come out of an Americans face.
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I think you are right, beancurdturtle. In fact some people in our country are even not used to seeing a foreigner in their daily life, not to mention hearing them speak very fluent Chinese. One foreigner was a little annoyed because when he walked on the road with a bunch of banana, he heard about 3 times by different people,"瞧! 这老外吃香蕉嘿!"(look! That foreigner eats bananas!) That's a suffering, I suppose. But what these people actually mean is not that eating banana is a previlige of Chinese people, but that they've hardly seen a foreigner in person, and are excited to find you have something in common with them.

I remember once watching a basketball match between two elementary school. Nothing was special about this match except there was a little blond running and jumping in the field, ocassionally saying something very arrogant or commanding to his Chinese teammates in very standard and fluent local dialect. The whole audience was focused on him, wondering what he was gonna say next. Well, we are not accustomed to a foreigner speaking too fluent Chinese, even if he was born here.

[beancurdturtle]

[brunette]

[beancurdturtle]