Non-rhoticity: A sign of failure?

Another interesting conversation I had, this time with Taiwanese linguists, at IAWE Hong Kong.

One of them said: "I noticed that you have a British accent." So he noticed my non-rhoticity and connected that with a British accent. This is not surprising; after all, he's a specialist.

"But many students in Taiwan don't make that connection," I said. "They just think that I'm a poor speaker of English, just because I don't roll my /r/ like their junior high school teachers did."

He said something very important. He said the pronunciation of rhotic /r/ is so emphasized in Taiwan's English teaching that non-rhoticity is considered a failure in an attempt to produce it!

Unless you are a Caucasian from the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, etc., that is. (People often listen with their eyes, more than they do with ears.)

Indeed, in a book called "KK音標速成秘笈", the author says:
中國學生（尤其是說閩南語的同學）發此音時，舌頭大都不夠捲，也不夠軟，而中國北方省份的居民，如北平人，發此音就發得很好。若想把美語說得「溜」就得每天花一點時間練習這個音 (p. 50)

On another page he also says:
每天練習國語的注音符號「ㄦ」的聲音，可使舌頭變得較靈活。另外準備一面小鏡子觀察自己發音時的嘴型。(p. 25)

So I did a little experiment in one of my classes. I played a recording of a very typically British RP-sounding speaker, and showed them a picture of a Japanese guy at the same time. Then I asked them what they thought about the accent.

They said "Horrible! This guy's got to do something about his strong Japanese accent!" or something similar!

By the way, the above author says in his book that when he was growing up as a child, his parents were speaking in a "foreign language". (Of course he can't say they were speaking in Japanese! He's an English teacher for goodness' sake!) That's probably why he was drilled by his Mandarin teachers to pronounce the "ㄦ" correctly. So he transferred that to English.

So then, this has got all to do with the "正音 Ideology", then. Well, that's another topic.

In the meantime, if I want to keep my job as an English teacher, I should better get in front of a mirror and start going: "rr, rrr, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

Rhoticity in Hong Kong English: A Philippine influence?

I've wanted to write about this for a long time, but never found the time to do so.

I found this study about rhoticity in Singapore English (http://www.icphs2011.hk/resources/OnlineProceedings/RegularSession/Tan/Tan.pdf). In a nutshell, it found that many people in Singapore consider rhoticity (pronouncing the /r/ in words like "car" and "cart") to be a sign of good education and higher social status.

I was wondering about this for a long time. When I was living surrounded by Singaporeans about 20 years ago, none of them had a rhotic accent. Then I came across some very fashionable Malaysian students who tried to sound rhotic, seemingly in an attempt to appear "Americanized" and "cool". And recently, I started listening to Singaporean talk shows on internet radio, and noticed that more and more seemingly "upwardly mobile" people, especially female, are starting to "roll the r".

This is interesting because, from what I know, in southern England, having a rhotic accent is considered a sign of being a country bumpkin rather than hip and cool. (You sound like you are from Ireland or West Country or somewhere like that if you pronounce the "r". Even people in Lancashire don't do that anymore, you know!) So this is another sign of increasing dominance of American English even in traditionally British-oriented outer-circle Asia (minus the Philippines, of course).

Now, when I attended the IAWE conference in Hong Kong last year, there was a linguist from Hong Kong saying that some younger Hong Kong speakers are going rhotic due to the influence of the American media inputs. This is hardly surprising because many of the DJs and personalities on English channels of RTHK have north American accents. And if I'm not mistaken, among the expat communities in Hong Kong today, there are more Americans and Canadians than Brits.

I asked him if this could also be because many Hong Kong families hire Filipino helpers to take care of their children. In fact, quite often, those helpers are the only people with whom many Hong Kong children converse in English, so it would not be a surprise if Hong Kong youngsters picked up the Philippine rhotic /r/ from them, even if they are still taught the non-rhotic RP at school. But the linguist in question categorically denied this possibility. I was not quite convinced. Maybe some research is needed.

置いてある素材がメニュー：屋台麺店でのオーダーの仕方。

台湾の麺店には外省系（牛肉麺店など）と、本省系（麵攤）があることは、すでに述べたとおりです。前者は壁にきちんと値段を書いたメニューが張ってありますし、ガラスのドアの冷蔵庫には、お皿に持った小菜がセルフサービス用に入っていますから、漢字さえ読めればオーダーの仕方は簡単です。後者は、住宅街などでとてもポピュラーで、営業時間も長いので小腹が減ったときにとても便利ですが、看板もなければメニューもないところも多いので、ちょっと敷居が高いかもしれません。本稿では、こういう屋台風麺店でのオーダーの仕方を書きます。（なお、東南アジア各国の麺屋台も同じスタイルが多いです。）

まず、席に座る前に、どんな麺が良いのか指定します。ガラスケースの上に、乾いた麺の玉が置いてあるから、食べたいのを指定すればよいのです。外省麺、つまり白い小麦麺は、細いのと平べったいのと二種類あることが多いです。黄色いのは油麺という本省風の麺です。日本のラーメンの元になったのではないかと感じます。あと、灰色でちりぢりなのは意麺といって、インスタント麺に似た食感です。香港の意麺（スパゲッティ）や伊麺とは違うのでご注意ください。ついでに言うと、香港のような細くて黄色い麺は麵攤にはありません。あれが食べたい人は、香港風のロースト肉やお粥を扱っている店に行けば食べられますが、台湾では特殊なものなので、そうあっちこちにはありません。

次に、スープ麺（湯）が良いのか、ドライ（乾）が良いのかを伝えます。また、バリエーションで、日本の坦々麺のようなゴマだれに絡ませたようなものも出来ることが多いです。この麺が主食となります。なお、ビーフンやフォー（クイティアウ）、春雨などは小麦粉で出来てないので、中華系では麺として扱いません。でも店によっては、バリエーションとしておいてある場合もあります。スープ麺の場合は、自分で白胡椒をかける人が多いです。

さて、上記の麺には、ねぎぐらいしか具は入ってないです。ですから、今度は、ガラスケースに入った豚の臓物類、乾豆腐や、昆布などから、好きなものを切ってもらうことになります。僕は見ても何がなんだかわからないので、適当に一人前切ってもらうこと（黒白切）が多いです。大体、新鮮でおいしい肉が食べられます。上には甘い醤油のペーストがかかっていますが、テーブルの上に置いてある激辛のラー油をお好みでかけると、とてもおいしいです。

もうひとつ、こうした麺屋台で食べられるのが、青菜です。屋台では、中華なべで炒める設備がないことが多いため、湯がいたものに、ラード少々や甘いにんにく醤油とのペーストをかけて出てきます。野菜不足の人に良いです。

さて、メニューに値段が書いてないからといって、ぼったくられる事はないから大丈夫です。食べ終わったら、経営者に「ごあつぉえ？」というと、数字だけで値段を言われます。たとえば「ぺーつぁっごー」といわれたら85元のことです。あまりにも安くて驚くことが多いでしょう。経営者の気分によって（？）よく負けてくれることがあります。ぜひ試してみてください。

Train ride from GZ to HK: IAWE conference in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Day 5-1)

It's been such a long time since I last took a train in China. Looking forward to the trip!
Fast food restaurant in Guangzhou train station was Chinese style with Bruce Lee on the sign.
 

The "international" train to Hong Kong leaves from upstairs. Saw many adverts for "男科醫院" here...

Never heard of 男科 in other countries...!
 

Waiting for the immigration gate to open. Come to think of it, this is my first time crossing a boarder on a train.
 

There are two kinds of trains between Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The China ones and Hong Kong ones.

Of course, I chose the China one!

Hong Kong trains use made-in-Japan carriages and it would be the same as any other ordinary train ride experiences.
 

I'm glad that the Soviet style uniforms are still alive!

I hope they won't "modernize" those communist-style uniforms because they are one of the tourist attractions for foreigners.

Although it's also true that British-style uniforms in Hong Kong do look good!
 

"Ruanzuoche"
 

Very comfortable.

I love the color of seats and the design of the carpet!

It would just be the same as any train anywhere in the world without those Chinese characteristics.
 

No more conductors distributing hot water with a big kettle! (Sayang!)

It would have been more environmentally friendly than distributing bottled water, which many passengers don't drink anyway.

In China, people USED TO bring their own cups. In other countries, people are JUST STARTING to do so for environmental concerns.

By the way, I was told off by this conductor for taking pictures in the train!

 

A much more modern and faster train that connects Guangzhou with Shenzhen.

Guangdong must be one of the best part of China. Clean and green!

Such a stark difference from typically arid and dusty landscape of the rest of mainland China!
 

Arrived in Shenzhen.

This ultra-modern city used to be a sleepy farming village until Deng Xiaoping came here in the early 80s.
 

Crossing the boarder! On the right is the China side.
 

The ultra-modern city landscape of China turns into a squeeky clean natural-park style countryside once the train enters Hong Kong.

In my opinion, one of the best legacy of the British rule in Hong Kong is the separation of commercial/residential areas with natural reserves.

If this was in Taiwan (or in mainland China for that matter), those green hills would already be teeming with fake-European-style residential towers, hot spring resorts, night markets and graveyards.
 

Arrived at Kowloon station (Hung Hom).

I realy like the traditional Chinese fonts used for signs in Hong Kong MTR. They are traditional, yet modern.
 

Hung Hom station looks like one of the more modern train stations in Europe. Big glass windows and metal roofs are really unsuitable for tropical weather and wastes a lot of electrcity for airconditioning.

 But I think the European aesthetics are still very much alive in Hong Kong. And they have enough money to afford to look good, I think!
 

Trilingual medical personnel in Taiwan

Medical personnel in Taiwan are at least trilingual. At the physical theapy room in a hospital where I visit twice a week, the language I hear most often is Taiwanese Hokkien. This is because most of the patients are elderly. The therapists communicate with them in Hokkien, of course, but I can tell that many of the young therapists are not very fluent in it. They must have grown up speaking almost exclusively Mandarin like other young people in Taiwan, and received special training in Hokkien to deal with Hokkien-monolingual patients. When they converse with other therapists regarding something they don't want their patients to overhear, for example someone's medical condition, they switch to English (Another instance of the boundary between the Outer and Expanding Circles being blurred). This is normal because medical training in Taiwan heavily use English. Aside from this, many doctors and nurses can speak Japanese as well.  I also know of some Filipino doctors practicing in Taiwan who are multilingual in this way. (They can speak Mandarin, Taiwanese-style Hokkien, as well as English, Filipino, Philippine-style Hokkien and perhaps even one more Philippine language!) I also know of a second-generation mainlander who had aspired to become a doctor in Taiwan, but gave up because of her failure to master Hokkien. It's difficult being a doctor in Taiwan and unable to speak Hokkien, because many patients are elderly.

Zhanghua Yuanlin (彰化員林) accent

My wife has a cousin who is a lawyer in San Francisco. Despite the fact that he has lived all his life in the United States, he speaks Taiwanese Hokkien (Hoklo, Amoy, Southern Min) fluently. How fluently? I would say much more fluent than someone of the same age who has lived in Taiwan all his life. He can make a speech in Hokkien ad lib. But there's one marked feature in his Hokkien: A Yuanlin accent.

Yuanlin accent probably is one of the very few accents that have features conncected only to one locality in Taiwan. Other marked accents, for example those closer to Quanzhou accent can be heard in many places along the west coast. Those markedly close to Zhangzhou accent can be heard in Yilan as well as in the south.

The special feature of the Yuanlin accent is that "eng" is pronounced as /eng/. So people say: "ki-a-BENG, BENG-BENG LENG-LENG. (枝仔冰，冰冰冷冷。)"

What is more interesting is how this feature survived in cousin's accent. His mother grew up in Taichung City, with her roots in Zhanghua. Her father had worked in Yuanlin for a time, and that's how he picked up the feature. Cousin's mother then immigrated to the United States while she was still relatively young.

Had she stayed in Taiwan, I think this feature could have disappeared by assimilation to the mainstream Taiwan accent, which is to pronounce "ing" as /ing/ or /ieng/. And had the cousin grown up in Taiwan, he could have lost Hokkien altogether in favour of Mandarin.

This is similar to how Hokkien-speaking girls in Taiwan tend to preserve marked features than men, because they seldom use the language outside of their own families. This is a topic I will write about some other time.

Sacred Heart Cathedral: IAWE conference in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Day 4-2)

After the end of the conference, I hurried to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart to attend the anticipated mass. Thanks to Wendy's help, I was able to take the bus and find the place easily. The area seemed to be the old trading part of Guangzhou with many small warehouses and shops. The building there are very similar to ones seen in places like Kuala Lumpur, where a lot of Cantonese people migrated to. I love old southern Chinese shop houses. I wish I had more time to explore the old part of Guangzhou. Another reason to go back.

The Cathedral was built by the Paris Foreign Mission, just like many churches in Japan. So it has a familiar French Gothic feel, similar to the one in, for example, Ho Chi Minh City. A bit different from the Spanish style more prevalent in Taiwan, Xiamen and the Philippines. 

Back of the church. Renovated very well. When I first visited the St. Ignatius Church in Shanghai back in 1997, it was quite dilapidated with bullet holes still visible on the wall, possible caused by the red guards during the cultural revolution. But the condition here and now seems even better than the cathedral in Saigon. 

The church was packed with young people. I noticed that most of them were non-Catholics just visiting. It seems that there are quite a lot of young people who are interested to "come and see" to find out about the Christianity. There were also quite a lot of catechetical materials being distributed at the entrance of he church. I often hear the argument in Taiwan that the general apathy among the youth toward religion is because of affluence. But Guangzhou is not much less affluent than Taipei! 

Look how well-dressed those children are. Another evidence of the high standard of living in Guangzhou.

After feeding the spirit, now it's time to feed the stomach. I went into the first restaurant I saw after coming out of the gate of the church. A 小菜 made with potatoes is very uncommon in Taiwan. Taiwanese people regard potatoes to be something foreign. That's why it's called 洋芋. On the other hand, 土豆, which literally means "local bean" and used for potatoes in the mainland, means peanuts in Taiwan. I don't think many users of "土豆網" in Taiwan know that they are using the "Potato Net", though...

Even in the world capital of MSG, the wave of health freak food is coming...

I know I'm not in Beijing, but I have to eat this at least once whenever I'm in any part of China. Thanks to the presence of migrant workers from northern China, one could get good zhajiangmian even in Guangdong.

I was quite surprised that I had to pay nearly NT$200 for this dinner for one. And I don't think I got ripped off, like most foreigners used to do in the past in China. It just shows that food in Guangzhou is really no cheaper than Taipei. (I was going to check out a massage place after this, like I always used to do whenever I visited China. ) 

 

Wendy was so kind as to get those shouxin (sauseun; Cantonese for souvenir) for me, and brought them all the way to the venue of the conference. I appreciated it very much, because I really had no time to do any shopping at all. Thank you, Wendy! A kind of old southern Chinese shophouses is featured in the packaging of the first shouxin.

By the way, if you are in Guangzhou area right now, I strongly urge you to visit the cathedral at least once. It's well worth a visit!

(To be continued)