MY RAGE IS RAGING WITH ENDLESS RAGE

[rocknload]

Man, nothing, nothing makes me rage as irrationally as accent prejudice, man. I say irrationally because like, even though accent biases are undoubtably based on racist, classist, and xenophobic bullshit, and therefore good reason to rage, it's still probably not worth the incredible keyboard smashing fury they cause me. FYI if you ever tell me, "Oh, god, I can't stand the way Brazilians sound like when they speak English." all I fucking hear is, "Hey did you know I am a racist fuckhead I think you should RECONSIDER OUR FRIENDSHIP."

And I don't even understand most people's standards here man. I mean, like, this guy speaks bad English? And these guys? Seriously have you ever fucking talked to anybody edit: I initially intended to continue this sentence with "non-native speakers" or something and then I got distracted but I like it how it is. HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO ANYBODY. EVER.

Oh and I love this comment: "I have to say that I have never found a FOB accent as attractive as Arrons. Actually, Arron's accent is the only asian accent I find attractive."

fjkalsfjkdaslfau9fds9

And I don't just encounter this crap over the Internet, it's like part of my daily life, and man. (Note: even though my Mandarin accent is horrendous as fuck, as far as I can tell none of this prejudice is actually directed at me, because I am white and I natively speak American English, which is possibly the most prestigious dialect of the most prestigious language on the planet right now. MY SOUTHEAST ASIAN FRIENDS THOUGH? Ugh.)

HELP ME NUKE THE WORLD


Oh related rant, it sort of bugs me when adult Mandarin learners are all, reading Chinese is so impossible, I have been studying for eight years and I have never read even one book in Chinese, it was too hard. Okay. I know that learning the hanzis is a formidable task but here's the thing, Chinese people are not born reading Chinese. OBVIOUS, I KNOW, BUT! The only reason Chinese people effortlessly read Chinese is because they have STUDIED and LEARNED and PRACTICED and read DAILY FOR ALMOST ALL OF THEIR LIFE. It's fucking stupid to admit you have never even read one book and then denounce the whole fucking character system as impossible. READ THAT BOOK. READ THE NEXT ONE! THAT ONE WILL BE EASIER goddamn. Like reading Chinese in pinyin wouldn't be a goddamn nightmare anyway.

YOU GUYS MIGHT NOT KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT BUT TAKE MY FUCKING WORD FOR IT, THIS SHIT'S OBNOXIOUS

Comments

This is mostly irrelevant to your post

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

I hate country accents, does that make me a horrible person? Even though I have a tendency to slip into one for work, ugh.

I swear 90% of why I hate most country music is the accent.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I totally dialed up the Southwestern drawl whenever I worked with customers, especially as a waitress, we're probably doing it because we're trying to see charming and well, harmless and stuff. :/ it probably has something to do with class prejudices and things like that but idkkk a lot of people dislike accents that they themselves use it is a SOCIOLINGUISTICALLY COMPLICATED THING.

also you probably use the country accent more than you even realize SORRY D:

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

I think it's pretty common to naturally mimic back the accents of people we're talking to, I have tocatch myself from using British or Spanish intonations and shit cuz I dont want people to think I'm mocking them. It probably has to do with connecting with other people and trying to put them at ease? The southern thing works the same way, charm it up just like you would by smiling at them or using small talk. BUT YEAH, not a fan. My accent when I'm not working tends to draw more I think from when I lived in Colorado. Which I'm glad for :|

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

why do people make me want to fucking KILL THEM

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

Like reading Chinese in pinyin wouldn't be a goddamn nightmare anyway.
I think I'd want to kill myself. Reading characters is SO MUCH EASIER. If you don't know one, it's called NCIKU. Whiny people are whiny. WHY DID THESE PEOPLE EVEN DECIDE TO LEARN CHINESE?!?

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

I can't even imagine, man, it'd be goddamn impossible to follow. I mean if you had enough context it'd work, painfully but think like, street signs! Warnings and stuff! SHORT, SUPPOSEDLY MEANINGFUL MESSAGES oh god it would be so fucking horrible.

I have no idea man. A lot of them end up living here for whatever reason and have no choice, which I do sympathize with, but man, it's not like reading in English is easy either. Also I've noticed that the decision to decide to learn the language without learning the characters at all is a serious debate, and man, oh my god. How could you ever learn this language without the characters?

[secret-hotel.livejournal.com]

My main gripe with reading pinyin/Chinese in general are the homonyms...they are the stuff of nightmares. NIGHTMARES!!!! Damn you Mandarin and your love of constant reuse of monosyllabic words!!

....BUT I JUST CAN'T QUIT YOU.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

HAHA FUCKING RIGHT? Though I don't actually notice it so much when I'm listening, weirdly enough. BUT WHEN I AM PARTICIPATING oh my god I get so tripped up. SO TRIPPED UP.

why do i love you chinese all you do is hurt me

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

I am watching The Eye 2 and realized I have no convenient way to ask you about all the different languages in this shit man. I was all I HOPE SHE REPLIES TO THIS PLUR... OH. WELL MAYBE I WILL TEXT HE... OH.

we need a convenient way to like. communicate.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

WHAT LANGUAGES ARE IN THAT

You can still text me at 520 et cetera et cetera, actually! That's an Internet phone number, I only ever checked it on the computer anyway. Unfortunately I'm avoiding a fuckton of people so like, that's not the best way to get me right atm.... Maybe I will go back to Plurk eventually but the RAGE TRAIN is showing NO SIGNS OF STOPPING THUS FAR.

LJ MAYBE I have been updating a lot recently.

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

I HAVE JUST DISCOVERED THE OPENING WAS IN THAILAND I was trying to figure out why they were using English as a buffer language. BUT IT IS APPARENTLY IN CANTONESE, ENGLISH, THAI, AND MANDARIN ID DONT EVEN.

I will attempt texts from time to time but this is good to know. I HOPE THE RANGE TRAIN STOPS SOON MAN.

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

RAGE EVEN MAN TYPING IS HARD

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

also can you tell me how to recognize those three? Japanese is pretty distinct, even if someone has intonations similar to Chinese you can tell what they're speaking by the word structure. But I know fuck-all about Thai, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and about three words of Mandarin.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

UH hmmm, yeah there's no way in hell you're gonna be able to tell the difference between Mandarin and Canto without a decent amount of study. I cannot reliably pick out other dialects of Chinese to be honest, at this point, it just sounds like Mandarin I'm not properly understanding. Mando's most distinguishing feature it the tones, obviously, and the fact that it's hugely mono/bi-syllabic--the words are really short. Here's my favorite video sample of Taiwanese accented Mandarin, though Beijing accented Mando sounds a lot different.

ACTUALLY LOOK I JUST FOUND THE MOST AWESOME THING, here's some sort of Jesus thing in Mandarin Chinese, and then the apparently EXACT SAME THING IN CANTONESE, there's a good comparison. See they don't really sound a lot alike, except for how they're both tonal languages with really short words.

I'm developing a bit of an ear for Thai because my roommate and a lot of people I know speak it and I hear it all the goddamn time, but I'm not sure how to explain it. Here's a video sample, it's also a tonal language with a lot of labial sounds and aspiration and stuff.

Korean sounds like Japanese that you can't understand. This is my method of determining Korean. I don't even get it man, if you break down the phonology Korean is totally fucking different--and a bit of a nightmare TBH it's so goddamn hard for Yanks to learn to pronounce--but in practice, even after years of studying Japanese, all I can use to figure it out is JAPANESE LIKE, EXCEPT I CANNOT UNDERSTAND IT. Here is a music video in Korean.

I know nothing about Vietnamese, I don't even think I've ever heard it spoken.

[shati.livejournal.com]

Ahaha the idea of trying to read anything long in pinyin makes me want to die.

Admittedly so does the idea of reading anything long in actualfax hanzi because I forgot all the Chinese I ever knew...but still. Also: cosigning everything else in this post. HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO ANYBODY indeed.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Haha oh god yeah, it's not like I'm like much of a hanzi expert at all, I can't even get through this kid's picture book I have, but the longer I'm here in Taiwan the more pinyin seems pretty freaking useless to me -- like, it is not writing in Chinese, it is phonetic shorthand, that is not the same thing.

[sunsetsred.livejournal.com]

Dude it is simple logic ALSO I WOULD THINK THE BRAIN RECOGNIZING CHARACTERS AS A WORD WOULD MAKE MORE SENSE THAN READING A WORD LETTER BY LETTER?? Which is why I love Japanese (albeit I dont think I will ever be brave slash masochistic enough for Chinese). I mean fuck, we dont even read English letter by letter, we recognize the shape of the fucking word.

[rocknload.livejournal.com]

Yeah EXACTLY, we have a fuckton of word shapes memorized because sounding out all that stuff would be a fucking bitch. I think kanji help with Japanese because it breaks down Japanese sentences into word shapes you can pick out--you could probably learn to read just kana with practice if that's what they did though, people don't have any issues reading Korean after all, but when you're used to kanji reading just a solid stream of kana is a fucking nightmare, IME.

Chinese is sort of a special case though because it is fucking full of homonyms. Full of them, it is ridiculous. This doesn't matter so much in speech because when you're talking to someone in person you've got a fuckton of context to tell you what you're talking about, but in writing? OMG. It's like how different spellings in English tell us if we're reading there/their/they're, even though they sound exactly the same in speech and we could figure out just by context--IT HELPS US OUT, man. Except in Chinese the problem is like a thousand times worse.