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-- Oi Chinese speakers! How much English is there in contemporary putonghua and baakwaa?
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The girl on the left is indeed speaking Cantonese. She says "Sorry" @ 0:54 plus a standard Cantonese tone, which may reflect a statement rather than a question.

This mixing of languages is common in the younger generation of Chinese, especially those in Hong Kong, and it's due to two big reasons. America's culture (movies, music, corporations) and the Internet.

This isn't just happening in China though. I've seen mixing of English with German, Japanese, Spanish, whatever.

Personally, I pick the language based on how efficiently it helps me communicate. There are some things better said in Chinese, and vice versa.



Some reading:

In China, Computer Use Erodes Traditional Handwriting, Stirring a Cultural Debate

quote:

Originally posted by Scottaculous The girl on the left is indeed speaking Cantonese. She says "Sorry" @ 0:54 plus a standard Cantonese tone, which may reflect a statement rather than a question. This mixing of languages is common in the younger generation of Chinese, especially those in Hong Kong, and it's due to two big reasons. America's culture (movies, music, corporations) and the Internet. This isn't just happening in China though. I've seen mixing of English with German, Japanese, Spanish, whatever.

Well, the Japanese do borrow lots of words from English, but they don't treat them like foreign words. What they call 外来語 (gairaigo) is considered a "Japanese word" of foreign origin, and they don't seem to make any effort to make it comprehensible to foreign ears. Even in Portuguese, the few words we borrow are quickly integrated into the language either grammatically (so they sound Portuguese) or phonologically (so they... well, sound Portuguese ). For example:



However, what impressed me is that except for the Taiwanese girl that sort of says "papy" instead of "baby", the girl from Hong Kong seems to be very accurate in her pronunciation of English words, which makes me believe she still thinks of them as being "foreigner" and she doesn't seem to avoid them either. Here's all I could pick up:

0:15 - AA (does she say "size" too?)
0:16 - Okay
0:22 - Well (Really!?)
0:23 - AA Cup
0:48 - C
0:54 - Sorry (is the subsequent drawling the standard Cantonese tone you mentioned?)
1:02, 1:18 - C

That's quite a lot of loanwords in 80 seconds

quote:

Originally posted by Scottaculous Personally, I pick the language based on how efficiently it helps me communicate. There are some things better said in Chinese, and vice versa.

Oh, I agree with you, and I'm all for word borrowing. Depending on the person, I know I can use up to 3 languages and I know I'm being understood and not sounding pretentious.

quote:

Originally posted by Scottaculous Some reading: In China, Computer Use Erodes Traditional Handwriting, Stirring a Cultural Debate

Tell me about it! I suck at writing hanzi without a computer... I've got more interesting stuff to practise than the stroke order of words like 飛行機, really

my gfs mom is hardcore cantonese .
i have no idea what she's saying when she's clearly talking about. it's usually about "does he want something to eat? ask him" but somtimes i wonder....

quote:

Originally posted by BTG my gfs mom is hardcore cantonese . i have no idea what she's saying when she's clearly talking about. it's usually about "does he want something to eat? ask him" but somtimes i wonder....

I recently found out that Cantonese people call foreigners "gaylords". I'm much amused by that.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I recently found out that Cantonese people call foreigners "gaylords". I'm much amused by that.

haha really? we call them 'bumboys' seefutjai

quote:

Originally posted by KilldaDJ haha really? we call them 'bumboys' seefutjai

Yes, google gwaylo. I'm pretty sure that's Hongkongnese for gaylord.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Yes, google gwaylo. I'm pretty sure that's Hongkongnese for gaylord.

thats the word for 'white-boy'

theres nothing in the word that stipulates or suggests homosexuality..however if you remove the 'w' then ...

quote:

Originally posted by KilldaDJ however if you remove the 'w' then ...

My point, precisely. I believe it was coyly inserted to deceive foreigners... but I see what they did there.

i still like the seefutjai one better 'assbandit'

quote:

Originally posted by KilldaDJ i still like the seefutjai one better 'assbandit'

That's yet another useful word.

*writes down on notepad*

Good, my vocabulary in Cantonese is now awesome:

• Gaylord
  
• Assbandit
  
• AA cup
  
• C cup
  
• Okay
  
• Sorry
  

quote:

Originally posted by Lira That's yet another useful word. *writes down on notepad* Good, my vocabulary in Cantonese is now awesome: Gaylord Assbandit AA cup C cup Okay Sorry Hong Kong, here I come!

Use all of those during immigration and I will buy you a beer

quote:

Originally posted by FuzzQi Use all of those during immigration and I will buy you a beer

Because they're going to deport me to New Zealand? Deal!

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Because they're going to deport me to New Zealand? Deal!

ROR!



RAUGH OUT ROUD!

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Because they're going to deport me to New Zealand? Deal!

It's the preferred entry method

quote:

Originally posted by Vivid Boy ROR! RAUGH OUT ROUD!

RORRING ON FLOOR RAUGHING!!

quote:

Originally posted by FuzzQi It's the preferred entry method

So, all those Chinese people retained in New Zealand were denied entry in Hong Kong? What'd they do!?

Do you think the majority of the world will be speaking some kind of super-language at any point in the future?

I've read a couple cyperpunk novels that use an almost universal language (actually I think it was a Cantonese-English hybrid) in that fashion.

quote:

Originally posted by kadomony Do you think the majority of the world will be speaking some kind of super-language at any point in the future?

It could only happen under a very specific set of circumstances:

• Population bottleneck/massive transmigration: In order to set the optimal conditions for this to happen, either a great share of the human population would have to disappear and leave behind just one small group (preferably from a rich monolingual country) to repopulate the planet, or migration between different countries would be so massive that local languages would soon become obsolete and we'd need a global lingua franca (more popular than English nowadays). You probably agree with me that both scenarios are pretty unlikely, though they are indeed possible.
  
  It's hard to convince a whole population to change their language unless there's obvious advantages. If you speak Navajo, but everyone around you speaks English and has much more to offer than the stuff you can get in your village, you'd probably want to learn English... and, as your interactions with English speakers soar and your daily use of Navajo plummets, it's not surprising that you're going to forget Navajo sooner or later.
  
  However, at least 65 languages are currently spoken by more than 10 million people. It's hard to believe any of these languages will become obsolete in daily interactions in the near future (I could only think of two scenarios to reduce the importance of these interactions, you can probably think of a few more);
  
  
• Global mass media: I sort of sound like a Londoner (with some sort of speech impairment, I must say), because it was the variety of English I was most frequently exposed to during my teenage years. Why? Because I had access to many programmes broadcast by the BBC and Channel 4 that were based in London - it was only natural that I'd try to speak the way they did. If everyone has access to the same sort of entertainment in a global lingua franca (like English), it's much easier to bring more linguistic cohesion to the world. However, this would have to be strong enough to become not just the preferred channel of communication among foreigners, but also the speech of choice amongst people from the same country (only in Hollywood do Russian spies speak in English among themselves);
  
  
• Even if all that happened: All right, suppose Canto-English became so popular we all ditched our native languages and decided to communicate only in this new dialectal hotness. It's hard to keep 7 billion people (or more) "synchronised" - at one point or another, people would start to sound different in different corners of the world either because they're less integrated or because they value their "local speech" more than what they hear on the media and, before you knew it, a new language would rise. That's why you can't understand my mother language: English and Portuguese came from a common ancestor spoken a long long time ago and lost contact ever since.
  
  So, even if we all spoke the same language for a while, this linguistic equilibrium would be all too fragile.

on the note of chinese i heard a really good piece on chinese language while driving around tonight...

Some interview with a lady who wrote about saying i love you in chinese or something... was pretty neat.

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