I will cum all over you???? HELLS YA!!!!!

 

Is the problem one of vocabulary, grammar, or diction?

 

Living and working in Asia I would say it is usually one of grammar and diction.

Because the grammar is not what you are expecting to hear, then poor diction makes it much harder to understand what the person is trying to say.

This tends to be brought about, I assume, from that fact that the structure of the Chinese language is very different from English, so if you have learnt Chinese first it is hard for some to master the grammatical structure of English.

 

I dont know if Chinese is similar to Japanese, but for comparison's sake, consider that the Japanese language doesnt even have any letter/sound of "eL". Now imagine having lived 30+ years never having to make that sound and now being forced to learn it.

 

i'm going to politely disagree since my first language is mandarin but the most fluent one is english. mandarin spoken at home from the parents (my sister and i converse in english almost exclusively unless we don't want some gwailo to know what we're sayin'). i also speak japanese, which is fairly different grammatically from chinese or english, though the written part was a no brainer and i can say a person's brain need to be wired differently when speaking different languages - maybe that's the reason i did so poorly on the LSAT...

my personal opinion after working with asians from all over in the past 10 years: it's a matter of getting used to listening and focus on key words and not the whole sentence. unfortunately a lot of humor gets lost in translation and i tend to go with very simple words and short phrases when conversing with these people - to some of my coworkers i seemed to be patronizing them with baby talk but i knew what their fluency levels were and wanted to get the point across.

scot: it'll just take some time to get used to it. talk to her more, if you slow down your voice speed, she'll most likely slow down hers. she won't get offended (i don't think) and i hope you'll take the time to understand her.

now the question goes: why is it that asian accents (chinese, korean, japanese, indian, etc.) get made fun of in american society and european accents are usually adored?

 

I think you'll find that it is the English accent that they really find cute, and that's because they wish they could still speak as well as us

 

Or, as well as we.

 

Mingster - you'll notice from my post that I said that is why some find it hard to master the grammatical structure.

I think that in itself has a number of causes, being when you started using English, how your brain is wired, and how comfortable you are using different languages.

You have obviously mastered English very well, some people, with just as much practice will never get to your level ... people who do well in maths don't tend to do so well with languages ... down to the way the mind works.

I can't speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but have been told that neither uses gender in the sense of saying he or she in a sentence. This leads to many people that I deal with dailing using the wrong gender in a sentence. In fact exactly the same way that English people get genders mixed up in French because every object in French has a gender ... be it a table, car, plane, TV, whatever.

When someone whose diction is not very good uses the wrong gender, or the wrong tense or something like that, because you are expecting to hear something different it makes it difficult to understand them.

An example is when I get in a taxi in Tokyo and speak to the driver in Japanese. Because he is expecting English, he will rarely understand the first thing I say. However, as soon as he realises I am speaking Japanese, everything comes clear

 

Either will do in this day and age

 

let's see what's on the menu today