Let's Speak Chinglish -Lesson 1.1- Bon voyage, Ending Consonants!

Let's Speak Chinglish

-Lesson 1.1-

Bon voyage, Ending Consonants!
Watch this lesson on Youtube

In this lesson, you will learn the core of Chinglish, also the most noticeable feature of Chinese language(especially Mandarin), is the rare case of final consonants in any syllables. So far, I can tell you that there are only n and ng (as [n] and [ŋ]. However, the [n] in Chinese language is usually done by the middle instead of the tip of the tongue. And Mandarin [n] has less vertical space.) One must wonder, what happens to the final consonant(s) in the syllables while people speak Chinglish? The very first way to produce Chinglish is to drop off the final consonant(s).

ex

English words	often done in Chinglish as	special note
Chinese food	Chinese foo [tʃainis fu]	Chinglish speakers often use [s] in the case of Chinese
fried rice	fry rice [fɻai ɻais] or fry rye [fɻai ɻai]	[s] can be related to ㄙ or [sɨ] in Mandarin. Most of Chinglish speakers have the ability to successfully pronounce [s]
tall	to [tɔ]	Chinglish speakers can identify the space [l] needs in the back of the tongue, but not necessarily able to hear the tip of the tongue making [l]
want	wan [wan]	There are two consonants at the end of the same syllable. Chinglish people can use their similar [n] sound in Mandarin but they could still omit the ending [t] while speaking.
Robert	ruber [ɻabɚ]
rectangle	retango [ɻɛtɛngɔ]	[k] in the first syllable and the [l] at the end are dropped.
cup	ca [kʌ]	There could be a [p] formed to stop the vowel without being audible.
breath	brea [bɻɛ]	There could be a [t] formed to stop the vowel without being audible.

Try this!

I love Chinese food.

I want fried rice.

*For Minnan speakers, there are more final consonants, [t], [p], [k], [h] and [~](nasal sounds based on different vowels). However, [t, p, k, h] would be formed by the articulators to stop the previous vowels and make them shorter without actually being audible. Nasal sounds other than ng[ŋ] also exist in Mandarin but I never learned to identify them from the education system other than living my instinct. (For instance, the word, 它, is spelled as ㄊㄚ or [ta], but many native Chinese speakers pronounce it like [tã]. *[ã] here does not mean the same as the [ã] in French. This one is just based on [a] with nasal sound.).

There are also double or more than double consonants at the end of one syllable. We will discuss them in the next lesson!


"Thanks to my parents, every Chinglish speaker, and every diction coach in my life for being my inspiration."

Let's Speak Chinglish -Introduction-

Chinglish, a well spread virus on earth, is spoken by a huge amount of Chinese English speakers. To defeat this disease or to blend in with those Chinglish creatures(just in case that you have great potential to earn a fortune by communicating with them), knowing how Chinglish is formed will help you cure them or join them. With my personal background and experience, I specify on few different regions of species, especially from Taiwan(ones with Japanese influence, Minnan and Mandarin speakers). In this project, there will be more about the pronunciation. If the project goes smoothly, there will be another project emphasizing on the grammar point of view.

How is Chinglish formed? We know that the accents are easily formed when people learn new languages by relating the new sounds to the similar ones in their original languages. For Chinglish speakers, this means we will be looking into Chinese language(Mandarin and Minnan speakers)and apply the logic of Chinese language to English speaking. To make this project more fun and clear, I will make videos to demonstrate absolutely atrocious examples of Chinglish Speaking for you to witness online.

As a trained opera singer, I've studied diction in English, French, German and Italian. For most of this project, I will be using the IPA(International Phonetic Alphabet) learned from the great teachers, Kathryn LaBouff(Eng), Marianne Barrett(Ger), Thomas Muraco(Fren), Corradina Caporello(Ita), and etc. I've also done some research online to see how Chinese people write their own alphabet. I will use most of those with some of my own ways to explain.

So, let's move on and have some fun!

Great books for diction learning~(The pictures are the links to them on Amazon.com. If you like to read more detail or to make a purchase, just simply click on the picture.)

(I have all of them except I didn't get them with their price listed on Amazon today... )

Canada~ Here I come!

All set! My Canada debut as Suzuki from Madama Butterfly(Mercury Opera in Edmonton) Jarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred and I will spend some time up there as our vacation before the production weeks. I'm absolutely excited. Hmm, what should I eat over there?

Survived from hiking!

Jarrrrrrrrrrrrrred and I just got back from the day hike in the Catskills. It was very nice. We geared up with our new investment(a pair of five finger shoes for him and a pair of hiking boots for me), my homemade bento box[Curry fried rice covered by one egg(side effect: farting like crazy later...) + bok choy with ginger + turkey sauce] for lunch, snacks(Clif bars), water, and etc. After 2 hours driving from Apalachin, we arrived the blue line from Spruceton trail. Upon our first arrival, I experienced my long forgotten outdoor peeing.(I kept worrying about my butt getting bitten by bugs. I still can't imagine that people can camp for days, weeks, or even months without using the indoor toilets.)

Jarrrrrred went easy on me by picking up the blue line. (Rumor says that he may have run out of hiking friends because he likes hiking on the extremely challenging ones. He is hoping that I will hike with him more than once a month!)The weather was superb for our trip, no sun, no rain, with a little breeze. On the way up to the top, we only met 4 people with a dog coming down. We got to the peak around noon and we brought the bento box up to the top of the tower. After a few bites, out of no where, a ton of people arrived. There were four ladies with huge skirts reminding us that the tower can only take 6 people at a time(Sub text= Get the F out of here!). After taking a few pictures, we decided to go down and visited Colonel's Chair Trail on the way back.
Colonel's Chair Trail took us to the chair lifts place for skiing. Lots of people took the chair lifts up to the top instead of climbing, hmm. It was beautiful and kind of strange to see a skiing place in green. The air was great except the flies were aggressive. They even tried to into my hair. Colonel's Chair is a little bit more challenging than Spruceton. I got it easy because Jarrrrrrrred basically carried all the stuff(camera, 4 bottles of water, lunch box, snacks, jacket, flashlight, another pair of shoes, Catskill Mountain Guide book, and etc). And more amazingly, he wore his five fingers throughout the entire journey. He is indeed an incredible companion. He's not only fun, smart, thoughtful, but "durable". It shall take me more words to praise him. So, let's leave him alone now.

On the way home, we stopped by 3 other places for food, ice cream and coffee. I was contented. The trip did make me appreciate the hard work people have to put in in order to build things on top of the mountain. Now, I need some serious massage!

Oops! Almost forgot about something, we ran over a groundhog. Go in peace, little one. It was a weird day. There were many suicidal animals getting in front of our car while driving. We successfully avoided 2 birds and 1 squirrel. Couldn't save the groundhog. It seemed so determined to run under the car...
:(

Here are the picture links to Amazon.com
If you like to know more about them, just click on the picture icon.

Go hiking!

In a few min, Jarrrrrrrrrred is going to take me to Catskill. We will hike over there. This boy packed everything for me. All I wanted to bring is my video/picture taken sunglasses. If I survive it, you will get to see some further posting later tonight!

I just realized that I paid double of the current price when I got it.

The very first post on my new blog!

Well, I saw my sister posting on her blog a few days ago. It occurred to me that this is not a bad idea at all. I was searching for a new platform to speak my mind. My current website is definitely not a user friendly kind. So, I am here, starting the life of my new blog!

And what I want to blog about? I thought about publishing 2 books but they either got too technical or in the other word, boring. With a blog, maybe I cam somehow more vividly deliver my ideas from words to images, or even movies!