Hot spring and Sichuanese

 

Went to a hot spring resort with two kids in Beitou. The place is a hotel called but is not officially open yet. But we saw quite a few tourists there, mainly from Hong Kong. It had a nice big library near the lobby. The hot spring was OK but I felt it was a bit overpriced. Emi was so excited about her first time hot spring experience that she peed on the floor.

 

The deal included a Sichuanese meal for two. First, we were taken by hotel staff to the French restaurant. After looking at the menu which did not seem Sichuanese no matter how hard I looked, we discovered the mistake and finally got to the right restaurant for eating 水煮牛肉 and 担担面.

 

The food was good, but was not very filling, especially because Emi exhibited an unusual appetite, perhaps due to having had so much fun in the water. Dandan noodles were really not bad at all. Most of all, we were able to enjoy the meal in a relaxed atmosphere because Lisa slept all the way through.

 

上の娘は物心ついた時から、ピザが好物です。

いつも書きたいことがいっぱいあるのに、子供たちが起きている限り、暇がありません。寝たと思ったら、こっちもくたくたに疲れて、書く気がしなかったり、何を書きたかったか思い出せません。今もそうです。子供たちは珍しく、早く寝てしまいました。仕方がないので、どうでもいいことを書くことにします。

台湾はおいしいものがいっぱいあって有名なのに、どうしてピザなんか、と思うかもしれません。台北では外食はいつでもどこでもできるのですが、出前というものがあまりありません。弁当でも、3個以上じゃないと持って来ないところが多いです。うちは大人二人と、子供二人でも、弁当は二人前しかいらないので、弁当の配達を頼めません。すると、ピザに頼ることになります。

米国資本のドミノとピザハット、台湾ローカルのミラノがありますが(昔は確か日本のシカゴやピザーラもあった)、私の好みはドミノです。生地が甘くて、好みだからです。ぶよぶよで甘いスパゲッティも、アメリカ風なので好きです。チキンはミラノのほうがおいしいです。

30分以内に持ってこなかったら、ピザの無料券をくれます。一度、こっちの間違いで、配達が遅れたことがあったのに、ちゃんと無料券もくれたし、サービスでコーンスープもくれたので、サービスはいいです。

もし、ピザを食べ残した場合、翌日の朝に食べるんだったら、冷蔵庫に入れないほうがいいです。冷蔵庫に入れると、生地があっという間に老化します。入れるとしたら、冷凍庫です。ドミノは生地がポイントなので、これは重要です。

上の娘は、食欲がなく、家ではお菓子以外ほとんど何も食べてくれません。幼稚園ではちゃんと食べているらしいです。それでも、ピザは少数の好物の一つです。物心ついたばかりの時、最初に発した完全な文章の一つが、「ぴじゃ、おいちい」だったと記憶しています。

Why non-prevocalic /r/ and /æ/ are becoming more prevalent in ELF

I notice that more and more Europeans are starting to have rhotic accents. I also notice many of them use /æ/ for the BATH vowel. This is interesting because they are supposed to have been taught British pronunciation at school. Those two are notable features of American English. Not only I notice this among Europeans, even some Singaporeans and Malaysians are starting to manifest those features. Singaporean/Malaysian Englishes are traditionally non-rhotic, because they are British-based.

In sociolinguistics, many specialists hold that unmarked features prevail and marked ones eventually phased out when different dialects come in contact with each other. They also posit that regular features will win over irregular ones. Of course, this presupposes that all other things being equal.

So, it is understandable that why those two features mentioned above are prevailing. It makes more sense to pronounce the /r/ whenever there's an R in the spelling. Also, non-rhotic accents have complex rules on exceptions. This includes: the /r/ should be pronounced if the next word starts with a vowel; an /r/ should be inserted even if there is no R in the spelling, if a word ends with a vowel and the next word starts with another vowel, etc. It's too complicated for learners.  In the same way, using /æ/ both for TRAP and BATH vowel seems more straightforward, since both are spelled with the letter A.

There is even less reason to stick to the RP-type pronunciation, since almost half the people in the UK itself share those two features. For example, people in the north of England, Scotland and Ireland are mostly rhotic and have /æ/ for BATH.

If this is the case, why did non-rhotic and /ɑː/ came to be considered the prestige British pronunciation to be taught to foreigners, then? I think this is to do with prestige by dissociation. Groups set up linguistic rules that are difficult to master, unless you have spent a long time within this group. That's why in-group jargons are difficult for outsiders. In the same way, upper-class society in the southeast of England used those hard-to-master features as a "shibboleth" to distinguish themselves from the masses. Indeed, it's hard for an outsider to figure out why we should say pass with /ɑː/ and mass (Catholic liturgy) with /æ/!

But just because London happened to be the capital of the Empire, and people with power had such kind of accent, it was promoted as the standard, both within Britain and overseas. Later on, along with the social transformation, RP lost its prestige in Britain itself, but it was continued to be taught to foreigners because textbook writers and teachers needed an established standard.

The situation is somewhat similar to that of erhua rhoticization (兒化) in Beijing Mandarin. When to erhua and when not to erhua is quite arbitrary and difficult to learn unless you have grown up in Beijing. This is why people from Xi'an erhua practically everything, while in southern China, people omit erhua altogether.

By the way, the fact that English people are so conscious about the /ɑː/ - /æ/ issue proves that this difference does not affect intelligibility at all. All the more reason for us "foreigners" to adopt the one that is more regular!

In the international media, RP-type accent has become marked, too. So if  it's true that marked accents won't prevail, RP will likely not. Many foreigners and even Americans have positive attitude toward RP-like accents, because they associate them with imagined high-class British aristocracy and sexy men/women. Paradoxically, many sinister characters in Hollywood movies also tend to have a British accent. This shows exactly how "marked" RP has become in the American-dominated world of the media. It is used for a special effect, just because it is special. It is not plain and ordinary like the genetic American accent. So this means that few people will be putting on an RP-like accent if they are in serious or formal ELF situations, such as job interviews. On the other hand, those who can put on an RP-like accent may still be in demand for taping commercial messages that need to promote a posh image.

Is "English only" really unhelpful for Taiwan's learners?

A mass of evidence supports that using learners' first language is helpful for their learning of a second language. That's why a bilingual local teacher is much superior than a monolingual foreign one. Education experts in Hong Kong are now advising teachers to use Cantonese effectively in English classes. In the past, only English was to be used. A bit of common sense is enough to understand why it is much more efficient to use students' first language when teaching some abstract concepts or tongue positions in pronunciation, etc. Why, then, is it that monolingual foreign teachers are still so valued in Taiwan?

Aside from strong parental support for white teachers, hence the need for white faces on prospectuses, I think "supposedly" monolingual teachers are valued precisely because they are considered "English-only" teachers. I say "supposedly" because I know most of the foreign teachers are multilingual and can speak Mandarin very well, but Taiwanese people "presuppose" that only English is to be used upon seeing a white face. Learners will feel obliged to speak English, which they won't in the case of a local teacher. They feel awkward to be speaking in English to a teacher whom they know they can communicate much more efficiently with in Mandarin. Thus, they accomplish the goal of practicing spoken English better with "monolingual" white teachers than with bilingual local teachers.

On the other hand, some Taiwanese people seem to presuppose that people with East Asian faces necessarily speak Mandarin, and therefore it is awkward to be speaking English to them. I'm Japanese and I'm in a classroom where the medium of instruction is supposed to be English. So it should be natural that they should be talking to me in English. But when I try to talk to them in English, they tend to insist on using Mandarin in response. It's sometimes REALLY hard to get them to say any English word, even just "yes". They would insist on saying "對" instead! What a contrast with a Caucasian colleague of mine, who speaks better Mandarin than I do! I often overhear students doing their very best to answer him in English, even though the question was just asked in Mandarin?

Is it just me? Is it because I don't look at all like a non-Mandarin-speaker? Would they try to speak to me in English if I looked more stereotypical Japanese, with an anime hairdo and really tight clothing? (Thank you, Lauren, for your advice!) What about ethnically Chinese teachers who grew up overseas? Since their surnames sound Chinese, wouldn't people expect them to speak Mandarin all the more?

Is it always better for children to be taught in their "mother tongue"?

Under normal circumstances, yes. But it seems to me that the medium of instruction is not always the sole problem. There are other factors like school infrastructure, teaching materials and teacher training.

English-medium (or French, for that matter) is often blamed for poor achievements in many countries. But there are countries where the medium of instruction from Elementary 1 is not necessarily the L1 of the students, and yet have very high academic achievements. Singapore and Taiwan are good examples. Enough support existed for lower-achieving students in those countries, compared to their poorer counterparts.

Of course, the ideal is that everybody gets to study in their own language. But in societies where there are many languages, it is not easy to prepare teaching materials in all of them. As those countries often happen to be poorer ones, a lot of money that goes into developing materials in many smaller languages may actually reduce the money that can go to improving school facilities and teacher salaries.

In the meantime, students who come from richer families will always do better, regardless of what language they are taught in. They have the means to avail themselves of better support. So even if a country changes the medium into a local language, they might be disappointed to find that the economically privileged kids still do better all the same.

Is not promoting a language the best way to promote it? Examples from Hong Kong and Taiwan

I used to laugh at my mother who said in her blog posts almost everyday that she had spent the whole night writing a long post, and then it got deleted. Now the same thing has happened to me. Two lessons: First, you should not laugh at others, especially your own mother; Second, when you have written a post, publish it quickly. To do this, don't write posts that are so long that it needs to be reviewed before publishing.

Is not promoting a language the best way for the authorities to promote a language? I sometimes think it is. I'll show you two examples: Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The British authorities had a so-called laissez-faire approach toward languages in Hong Kong. But I have already written that this was a hidden way of promoting Cantonese, so that Hong Kong will have a different dominant language from mainland China. Although Cantonese-speaking people made up only half of the total population, it was possible to foresee that Cantonese would win out, given its influence in commercial and cultural spheres. In fact, Cantonese was so successful that it almost supplanted the local language of Hong Kong, Hakka, as well as other Chinese "dialects" originally spoken. Today, you could argue that Hong Kong is a pseudo-monolingual society in Cantonese. It is a symbol of Hong Kong identity, which is separate from that of mainland China. What a successful way of promoting Cantonese? And this was achieved by not promoting it.

Taiwan's example is somewhat reverse. Both the Japanese and KMT administration had very high-handed policy of trying to eradicate local languages and promoting Japanese and Mandarin respectively. They both did it by forcing those schoolchildren who transgressed the no-local-language policy to wear a dog tag that said something like "I am stupid". Intimidating local people succeeded in promoting the official language only superficially. Many Taiwanese people who grew up in that era, consciously or unconsciously, try to speak Mandarin with a very strong Taiwanese accent. Some even try to avoid the use of Mandarin altogether, sticking to Hokkien whenever they can. On the other hand, look at the younger generation who grew up after the democratic reform. The aggressive promotion of Mandarin was replaced by so-called "Mother Tongues" made a school subject. And yet, those people have now become native-speakers of Mandarin, fully comfortable with expressing their Taiwanese identity in this tongue that originated from Beijing! Recently, I often notice that some students even use the word "Taiwanese" to mean Mandarin, not Hokkien!

And what has happened to Hokkien, which is now "officially promoted" as a school subject? I'm sorry to say, but it seems that it is going the way of Irish in Ireland. Very soon, Taiwanese people will only be able to say some peculiar phrases and swear words in Hokkien, or hum some Hokkien tunes like "TiN-o'-o'" which they have learned at school, but not being able to convey any substantial message in Hokkien.

(But this will not mean the death of Hokkien; more than half of its speakers are outside of Taiwan; in China, Southeast Asia and Taiwanese communities in the U.S. and Japan. They will probably keep alive the language which will no longer be understood in Taiwan!)

Is a well-estabished community language an obstacle to second language learning?

I have heard some people say that the people in Japan, Korea and Taiwan are not as good in English as those in Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, etc. because the national languages of the former are too well-established and don't allow room for English. It's obvious this theory doesn't stand. What about Sweden, the Netherlands, etc. where the "national" languages are well-established and standardized, but people are phenomenal in English? What about Thailand? I think Thai people are as proud of their wonderful language as the Taiwanese are about Mandarin, and as insistent in using it to communicate with any foreigner who even has a tiniest bit knowledge of it, and yet do quite well in English? Conversely, what about Malaysia, which had once succeeded in codifying its national languages and even made it the sole medium of instruction in tertiary education in the 1980s, but then turned back to English afterwards?

But it is useful to know that for the majorities of people around the world, their "mother tongue" is not the same as the one that's taught in schools. Cases like Japan and Korea, where most people speak the same language at home and school and work and everywhere else, are really rare. It is a highly artificial situation, influenced by the nation-state ideology originated from Europe, i.e. France. It took many years and much effort on the part of the government of Japan, for example, to eliminate all "dialects" to arrive at the perceived "monolingual" state of today. In many countries, there are many languages that are spoken but not standardized enough to be used as a medium of instruction at school. It is expensive to develop those languages and compile textbooks in them. And most of those countries are poor. So the teaching has to be continued in their former colonial language, usually English, French or Portuguese, because materials are more readily available. (The situation in most former Spanish colonies is a bit different, because Spanish has already become the native language of the majority of people.) This creates many problems, of course. One is that it unfairly advantages rich people in urban areas, who have more access to English. (Or French for that matter.) And studies overwhelmingly show that people learn better when they are taught in the language they speak at home, or the one that's widely spoken in the community.

That leaves us with the discussion of the countries that have chosen one of the local languages as the national language. These countries can be classified into two types, I think. The type one are those which have already successfully developed and propagated that language, so much so that other languages originally used are dying out. The other are those which have taken more laissez-faire approach. Thailand is one example of the former. The government has standardized the language and developed enough vocabulary, so almost everything can be done in midland Thai. Many non-Thai speaking peoples first became bilingual in their own language and Thai, and then the young generation grew up knowing only Thai. Politically, Thai was propagated as the symbol national unity. So people started to feel very proud about this language. Minority languages became more marginalized, or even died out.

An example of the latter is the Philippines. Even though the constitution says English and Filipino are official languages, and bilingual elementary education in a local language and Filipino are propagated, it's largely up to each individual to choose which language to do what. As a result, a child from a upper middle-class Manila family may grow up speaking English or "Taglish" as his home, school and community language, all at the same time. On the other hand, another child from a remote area might speak his mother tongue at home, a regional lingua franca like Cebuano to be his community language, Filipino and English as his school languages. Obviously, under normal circumstances, it is so much harder for the second child to do well at school. Nowadays, because of the influence of the electronic media, Tagalog seems to be the winner in this laissez-faire competition. Even people from very remote places can now speak at least some Tagalog. Overseas Filipino Workers who have different first languages also seem to use Tagalog as the lingua franca once away from home.

Now which one is Taiwan, anyway? I think Taiwan was on the way to Type 1, then turned Type 2, but it's too late. During the authoritarian era, the government tried to eliminate "dialects" and promote Mandarin. The high-handed method of giving "dog tags" for those who didn't conform to this rule is notorious. When Taiwan was democratized, it moved on to a more laissez-faire style, with a renaissance of non-Mandarin languages, especially Hokkien and Hakka. But I think it's a bit too late. Very few of my students can converse fluently in Hokkien. Quite a few of them don't understand any at all, even if they are ethnically Hokkien. It's paradoxical, because those are the guys who went to elementary schools when "Mother Tongue" was already a compulsory subject. Hokkien might go down the way of the Irish language in Ireland. Significant things can be said only in English there.

I want to talk more about medium of instruction issue. I hope I'll get to doing it soon.

Is there still any point in teaching RP?

Some years back, I was attending a conference in Taiwan, listening to a senior Taiwanese scholar present on the Received Pronunciation (RP). It is roughly the same as "BBC accent" or "posh Southeastern English accent". The presenter said only 1% of the British population spoke with such accent. And yet he recommended it be taught to learners in Taiwan. So, during the Q&A session, I asked: If there are so few people using it, why should we teach it? Then my boss sitting next to me covertly reminded me that it was impolite to ask questions to senior presenters during Q&A sessions, so I backed off.

And to answer this question now myself, I think there is still a value in exposing learners to the RP, even though it's a dying (?) accent in England.

Even though RP has long lost its prestige in England, it is still widely taught to "foreigners", especially in Europe. So you are likely to come across a second-language speaker of English with an RP-inspired accent. In Hong Kong, Singapore, India and other Anglophone countries in Asia (with the exception of the Philippines), the teaching model at schools still derive from the RP. But many Taiwanese learners, especially those at lower proficiency levels, are quite unfamiliar with anything other than the idealized General American pronunciation. So they find it rather hard to understand second-language speakers who have learned British English back in their home countries.

Despite the fact that its speakers are considered "affected" and "cold" within the UK itself, the RP is a well-documented accent. There are many dictionaries and ESL textbooks that use this pronunciation, including authoritative ones like Daniel Jones's English Pronouncing Dictionary. Those are handy for teachers when they are not sure about pronunciation. On the other hand, most American dictionaries don't prescribe any one particular pronunciation. The phonetic symbols they use are designed to allow room for variation. Although language is and always will be varied (and that's the beauty of it), but that's not necessarily a comfortable situation for teachers looking for something "definitive". (Especially so for "non-native" teachers, who feel insecure for their perceived lack the authoritativeness as an authentic source of English.)

Plus, the RP has retained its prestige, in out of all places, America. I've seen many TV programs, commercials and movies where (fake) posh British accent is used for some supposedly positive effect. Even though very few people in Britain actually speak like that, Americans seem to associate it with some kind of fancy/fanciful European stuff. So if you are thinking of going to America, having an RP sort of accent might help. I must add though, that this might not apply if you are not European. My experience is that some Americans are not as favorable to non-whites with a British-derived accent. Maybe they notice you look like a foreigner and have an "unusual" accent, so they just conclude that you have a "foreign" accent. (Across the border in Canada, though, I notice that some people expect "foreigners" to be taught British English, even if their own variety is so much closer to that of the US.)

But in the context of Taiwan, all I'm saying is we should expose learners more to different accents including the RP, which is quite useful because it's taught to international learners. I'm not saying that they should all try to sound like the Queen with an exaggerated "aristocratic" intonation. Don't do this all the more if you are going to the UK. There, people with regional working class or black accents are considered cool nowadays. I'm saying that you will find it becomes easier for you to understand people from many different countries speaking English, once you are familiar with what they are being taught at school: the RP.

Will someone's "mother tongue" always be the language he's best at?

Not so, perhaps for the majority of people in the world. "Shifting L1" is a natural and common phenomenon. It means that your primary language shifts from one to another over time. For example, my wife was monolingual in Taiwanese Hokkien before she entered kindergarten. Her parents only spoke Taiwanese Hokkien at home. But after she started schooling, she became proficient in Mandarin. It was back then when the use of so-called "dialects" were discouraged in schools. She always chatted with her friends in Mandarin. So, soon, Mandarin became her dominant language. Now, although she can understand Taiwanese Hokkien with no difficulty, she's not very confident in it either; except for some limited purposes, such as chatting with elder members of the clan, or shopping in traditional markets.

The majority of people in the world live in multilingual societies. In such societies, the language you speak at home may be different from the dominant language of the particular location they live in, which may again be different from the official language or national lingua franca. For example, Juan, a Filipino adult, comes from an Ilonggo family. His parents spoke Ilonggo at home when he was a young child, so you may say that his "mother tongue" is Ilonggo, which is a regional lingua franca in some provinces in the central Philippines. However, his family lived in Manila, so none of his classmates spoke Ilonggo. They spoke "Taglish" (A mixture of English and Tagalog, the vernacular of middle-class manilenos). Soon, Taglish became his dominant language. But as the school he went to was a prestigious private school where people mostly spoke English only, so by the time he graduated from college, English became his dominant language. He can still use Tagalog to conduct casual conversations, but he can't really talk about all topics in straight Tagalog. Moreover, he has forgotten most of his Ilonggo, except some basic expressions. So does it still make sense to say that his first language is Ilonggo? And does it make sense to say that he's a non-native speaker of English, when it is the language he is most proficient in, even though he obviously does not sound like an American when he speaks it (in fact, he has a quite strong Philippine accent)?

Resisting the "accentism" in Taiwan

This post is about accentism in English in Taiwan. There is a whole lot of issues regarding the accentism in Mandarin/Hokkien in Taiwan. Hopefully, I'll get to write about it one day!

In this post I will discuss briefly the following three issues: whether we should be teaching students what is considered in the society to be a "less than ideal" accent; why local accents are always belittled; how accentism is related to racism.

I have argued that students should be equipped to communicate with people from all over the world, particularly Asia, and not only with the native speakers of English. As I have been telling you, this means de-emphasizing nativelikeness in pronunciation teaching, as native-speaker accents are not suited for lingua franca communication. Some people have told me: "But, petekobe, don't you think we're shortchanging the students by not teaching them the most privileged accent, i.e. the native-speaker accents? If they go to a job interview in the future, they'll be disadvantaged if they had a weird accent."

My response is: No. We are not helping the society change its unfounded prejudices in accents by conforming to those prejudices. Let me use an analogy. You and I know that the mainstream society is biased against, say, black people. Would you advise a black student who is going to a job interview to paint his face white, so that he will stand a better chance of getting hired?

How the society privileges one accent and belittles others are based on how people associate certain accents with certain groups of people, and how they think about those groups. It has nothing to do with intrinsic linguistic qualities of any variety. It is absolutely untrue to say, therefore, that an American accent is superior than, say, Singapore accent, because the former is clearer, more accurate, more correct, etc. A Singaporean can do an excellent job communicating with another Singaporean in English, regardless of what an overhearing American thinks of their English. So, if someone thinks that a native-like north American accent is "class" and pleasant; and a very proficient and effective communicator with a trace of Korean or Chinese accent is unpleasant, less fluent, etc., it's to do with how you are socially conditioned. Prejudices are prejudices, and should be treated as such. There's no need to conform to it. It will not help students in the long run.

Now you may say: "Yeah, but it's the Taiwanese themselves who are looking down on their own accent." I agree. Just listen to those ads for language centers on ICRT. So many of them are about how shameful it is to speak Taiwan English, and how they can drop it by enrolling to those centers where they will be taught by "real 道地口音 native-speakers". The same problem seems to be prevalent even in nearby places where the local varieties of English are robustly functioning, like Hong Kong and the Philippines. Why do people look down on the accents of their own kinds?

The privileging of native-speaker accents and belittling of local accents reflect how people perceive the economic structure in the society. In order for you to have a nativelike, say, Canadian accent, either your parents have to be affluent enough to have sent you to Canada as a 小留學生 when you are eight years old, or at least be able to send you to a reputable buxiban. Certainly, if you were educated in the regular Taiwanese system, and you really tried hard in your English, you should sound like a regular Taiwanese person who can speak English well, but not like a "true native speaker". Because once past the "critical period", you have little chance of attaining a native speaker accent, if not other areas of linguistic competence.

So it is no wonder that the ELT industry (language centers, buxibans, etc.) has to propagate the idea that the only way to be successful in learning English is to master a native-like accent. And it is a good news for them that few people are likely to reach that goal, because they'll keep paying and paying the tuition in the hope that they will succeed one day! (The sad fact, though, is that many of them get discouraged and give up English altogether.)

On a final note, I want to talk a bit about how some people listen with their eyes and not with ears. Everybody has heard anecdotes along the line of a white Ukrainian getting hired as an English teacher, while a British native speaker of South Asian descent is turned away. I also heard that an Asian-British teacher with a posh RP-style accent always got complaints from students regarding his accent, while his white colleague with a strong northern England accent got none! One even gets an impression: If it is a white person speaking and learners find it hard to understand him, they'll blame themselves for their English not up to the standard; while if it's a non-老外 whom they're having trouble understanding, they'll blame it on the "weird" accent that their interlocutor has. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that a Ukrainian shouldn't be hired as an English teacher. More often than not, they are no less good English teachers than Canadians or South Africans. Their grammar and vocabulary may even be better than an average native speaker, and I have repeated many times that a native-speaker accent is not important. What I want to draw your attention to, however, is how arbitrary and baseless some judgments people make about accents are. Presuming that most employers in Taiwan have proclivity toward native speakers, this hiring person may not have noticed the "non-nativeness" of the Ukrainian because of what she looked like. And the very same person may well become very picky, if the candidate was a non-老外-looking person!

How to speak English as a Lingua Franca

More often that not, we so-called "non-native speakers" use English to communicate with other "non-native speakers". When a Japanese and a Taiwanese or a Korean and a Thai are conversing with each other in English at an international conference, English is being used as a lingua franca. In this case, there are some things you can do to facilitate successful communication. And those can be quite different from when you are trying to communicate with native speakers of English. So please try the following tips, unless you are intending to immigrate to an inner-circle country (a country where the majority of people are "native speakers" of English; e.g. U.S.A.) and blend in to the mainstream society there.

1. Speak slowly and clearly. Enunciate each and every syllable. Never contract or omit syllables. If you do this, you will sound more "foreign" or less non-native-like to native-speaker ears. But believe me, all other people will find it easier to understand you.

2. When in doubt, use "spelling pronunciation". When you come across words you're not sure how to pronounce, just read it out syllable by syllable, as if you are pronouncing an Italian or Indonesian word. For example, if you are not sure how to pronounce "Abimelech", just say "ah-bee-meh-leck". Surely, you will sound very non-native-like. Native speakers may even think that your "foreign" accent is really strong. But don't worry, native speakers are in minority of English speakers today. If you are using English as a Lingua Franca, what native speakers will think of your accent is quite irrelevant. And I guarantee you that all the non-native speakers present will understand you better!

3. Avoid using any idioms or slang as much as possible. Some Asian people like using idioms, thinking that it can show how native-like their English is. But those idioms can be obscure to your non-native listeners. One of the reasons why native speakers of English are hardest to understand in international conferences is that they use many idioms that are culture-specific. For example,  many American idioms originate from baseball terms, when most people in the world are completely ignorant about baseball. (Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are obvious exceptions.)

If you want to use an idiom for a specific effect, make sure you explain the meaning. In some cases, you may use translated versions of some idioms if you are sure that the same idiom is used in the country where your counterpart comes from. For example, "having an iron rice bowl" is understood in many Asian countries as meaning having a very stable job.

4. Try to use as easy words and expressions as possible. Make sentences short. Stick to "one idea per sentence" principle. Some Asian people like to use "big words" to show that their English is good. But this does not help communication at all if it makes the meaning more obscure.

5. Optionally, you can model your English after a second-language variety, such as Philippine English and Singapore English. Native-speaker varieties, for instance American English, have some disadvantages. First, formal empirical research found that native speakers are not the easiest to be understood in international communication situations. Some people think that just because American English is the "standard" English, so it should be universally understood; but this was proven not to be the case. Secondly, a native speaker accent is unattainable for many. If you are already past the "critical period", it is highly unlikely that you will ever sound like a "true native speaker", no matter how hard you try. So you have to settle permanently for a second-best: "trying to sound native, but not quite there yet".

6. Finally, this is anecdotal and has not been proven yet, although some informed experts do recommend it: Try to pronounce all the "r's" in the spelling if possible, like in an American accent. I have a very strong hunch that this will make you easier to be understood by many non-native speakers. What I mean is this: if you learned English in such places as Hong Kong, Malaysia and many other countries, you may have been taught British English. In the so-called standard British pronunciation, the "r" in the spelling is not always pronounced, as in such words as "car park" and "Peter". There is nothing wrong at all with this kind of pronunciation; I myself was taught this way in Japan. But since people in many Asian countries usually learn to read and write English before they can speak it, it makes more sense to them that when there is an "r" in the spelling, it should be pronounced. In Taiwan or South Korea, some people may even think that your English is poor if you fail to pronounce the rolled "r", because those countries are under so much American influence.

Again, all these tips are applicable only if you are using English to communicate successfully with other non-native speakers. If your purpose of learning English is to communicate exclusively with native speaker, though this is becoming quite rare, I suggest you try to get as close as possible to a native speaker accent. Even people with extremely high proficiency in English, for example former U.N. secretary-general Mr. Kofi Anan, are still considered by many native speakers to have a very strong accent and sometimes even ridiculed, just because they don't sound American or British. (You may say that it's not good to advice students to settle for something "less than ideal", because they may be disadvantaged in future job interviews, etc. I will address this in a separate post.

Code-mixing in Taipei Mandarin

The most prevalent code among the young generation in Taipei is Taipei Mandarin, with extensive code-switching, especially with Taiwanese Hokkien lexis. Or so I thought.

I was recently surprised to have come across a young person who has lived all her life here in Taipei, but Taiwanese Hokkien was not among her repertoire for code-switching.

She could not follow the conversation I was having with my daughter and my wife, which was being conducted in Taipei Mandarin with some borrowed words from Taiwanese Hokkien. It was something along the line of: 「如果你把a-kong的te-koh kong-phoa的話，他一定會很生氣。」 I was being careful not to insert too many English or Japanese words in my utterances, in order to accommodate this young lady. But to my surprise, she only understood the Mandarin part, or so she claimed.

I didn't get to ask her background, but I would assume from her job description that she must have been educated in Taiwan at least until university. So it came to me as a surprise that she even didn't know some Hokkien words which I had considered to be basic.

In the past, I occasionally came across older generation people with roots in the mainland, who claimed that they understood no Taiwanese Hokkien, because they considered it to be a low-class dialect. It is rare to find this sort of ideology among the youth in Taipei nowadays, regardless of their cultural background. So I suspect that this girl I met yesterday was being sincere when she said she didn't understand us.

The lesson I learned from this incident is that I need to be more careful about accommodating my interlocutors, even if they are young people from Taipei, by sticking to Mandarin words whenever possible and appropriate.