When I was working in Taipei (1975–1976), America was Taiwan’s major ally against the communist Chinese on mainland China. The Taiwanese adopted American English, particularly the pronunciation (e.g., the retroflex r in words).
Similar to the Italians, Mandarin Chinese speakers cannot do a lone consonant at the end of a word (e.g., k, d) — they will always insert a vowel after it, so that “bank” comes out as “banker”, “deed” comes out as “deeder”. As there’s no such thing as a “deeder”, the mistake is recognisable, but when you hear them say, “I will ask the banker”, it can be either the establishment or the person.
A Taiwanese colleague used to say, “I will send you a banker checker,” when she meant “bank cheque/check”.
The other Americanisation the Taiwanese had adopted was the pronunciation of the vowel, so “answer” — which is pronounced /‘ɑ:nsə/ (“ahn-ser”) in British English — would be rendered the American way: /ˈæntsɚ/ (“æn-ser”).
On the day I was flying back to Singapore after my two-year contract in Taipei, a Taiwanese man was chatting to two Indonesians who were unable to speak Chinese. I heard the Taiwanese man saying, “I have an ankle in Hong Kong.” He was obviously applying the rule: change any sound that’s like “ahn” to “æn” and it’ll make it American. So, “uncle” became “ankle”.
That was in November 1976.
Today, 6 February 2021, I heard a US-based mainland Chinese woman say very clearly “ænderdog”.
(Taiwan, 1975–1976; USA, 2021)
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