Was talking to my nephew on Messenger about accents.
I said the Beijing accent with its “er” ending on words all over the place is like speaking with marbles in the mouth — cf. what Professor Higgins made Eliza Doolittle do in My Fair Lady.
My nephew said it has been described by Chinese people as “speaking with fishballs in the mouth”. (Fishballs are like meatballs but made with fish that’s not good enough for eating whole — steamed, deep-fried, or cooked in a sauce.)
I commented that it’s always a food-related approach with the Chinese. He said, “Yes, always!”
This reminds me of something I’d heard about an Indian girl who’d gone out to China and spent a Year Abroad there, then returned to India. When a Chinese delegation went over to India, she was asked to interpret and look after them on their rest day.
One of the places she took them to was the aquarium. Instead of admiring the beautiful exotic fishes, as most people would be doing, the Chinese were instead appreciating them from a different perspective:
“Now, THAT one would be best steamed with ginger.”
“And THIS one would go well with a bean sauce.”
And so on throughout the whole visit.
The tropical fish in the tanks must’ve been going nervously “GULP”.
PS: For those who might need help with the significance of “GULP”:
Gulp: to swallow hard
From googling: The hard swallow is a high stress or embarrassment indicator due to low saliva production as the fear response of a person is activated. ... In the right context, the hard swallow sometimes indicates that a lie is being told, but it is more reliably, a general signal of high stress.
(India, mid-1980s)
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