Students’ version of Chinese: 04 (Softening tone of voice) (London)

Example 4: A beginner student doing one-to-one lessons with me back in the late 80s was taught in Lesson 1 that one way of softening the tone of voice in Chinese is to reduplicate the utterance, e.g.,

谢谢 xièxie (“thank thank” / thank you) would often be 谢谢，谢谢 (thank you, thank you);

请坐 qǐng zuò (“request sit” / please sit) would become 请坐，请坐 (sit down, sit down).

Monosyllabic utterances would normally be said three times, e.g.,

来 lái (“come” / come on) would become 来来来 (come, come, come) when, say, urging the guest to eat more food or have another drink.

The following lesson, I taught him another way of softening the tone of voice, which is to add the suggestion particle 吧 ba to a statement so that it doesn’t sound like a command, e.g.,

再来一杯 zài lái yī bēi (“further come a cup-of/glass-of” / have another one) would become 再来一杯吧 (do have another one). 

A week on, I was trying to revise material already learned, so I went over the polite exchanges used in socialising situations, one of which was to urge the other party to have another glass of alcohol, a typical hospitality scenario at Chinese parties.

The student said, “再来一杯 zài lái yī bēi”, which was correct.

I then said, “How about softening the tone of voice?” expecting him to just add the suggestion particle 吧 to the end of it.  What I got was,

再再再来来来一一一杯杯杯 

zài zài zài lái lái lái yī yī yī bēi bēi bēi