Agree Bear, it’s for the most part a non-issue. But changing or improvings one’s accent is not that difficult unless one has a complete tin ear. My father and all his brothers and sisters came from Ireland as adults but not a single one of them has an Irish accent anymore. Theyve all taken on the regional accent of the area in North America they settled. My dad can still put on the old speech, including the different grammar used at the time.
People from the US south work on their accents all the time if they want to make it in the north. It’s pretty standard around the world to adapt to the standard. Unless you come from a long line of educated and middle or upper class people, you probably speak much better than your parents and certainly your grandparents. Somewhere along the line you’ve rejected the regionalisms in your speech for the educated standard. Or are you still using, “I seen…”
Hobart, relax. Your wife is safe. It’s 2004. Besides, don’t tell me you’ve never felt superior to Bush for the way he butchers the English language.
AC, I bet your family took advantage of affirmative action programs to get into good schools and now you look down on people who don’t have as nice a car as mommy and daddy bought you.
MM…agree; when i came here i had a godawful kiwi accent…now i speak in a completely neutral accent with english affectations since i’ve lived with poms for 15 yrs and my parents are poms too. of course when i go home i slip back into kiwi-speak. the point with CSB being of course that he’s not ashamed of his accent so it’s a nonissue…
[quote=“Mucha (Muzha) Man”]Hobart, relax. Your wife is safe. It’s 2004. Besides, don’t tell me you’ve never felt superior to Bush for the way he butchers the English language.[/quote]I would relax, but AC’s post was just too annoying and condescending. We know he hates President Chen already anyway.
By the way, what’s my wife got to do with this?
Regarding Bush, he has been my hero (and should be yours) ever since he said he would do whatever it took to defend Taiwan. Al Gore never said much of anything about Taiwan during the previous campaign and now Kerry has said too much in previous years and revealed himself as no friend of Taiwan, but more of a PRC butt kisser like Clinton. If it weren’t for this most important issue to all of us long timers here in Taiwan, I would most likely vote for the Democrat.
Finally, I know what you guys are talking about with President Chen’s accent, I don’t like it either, but WE must rise above those thoughts as mentioned in my previous post, it just isn’t fair of us to think like this. Think about it. Criticising his accent is not right, it would be like criticising your own pathetic accent if you made a mistake. You are not native speaker you say? Neither is President Chen!
I remember it was another gaff where he said he would do whatever it took to defend Taiwan. Yes, I am grateful for his foreign policy regarding this island state but still doesn’t mean I want to hear him talk.
I meant nothing disparaging about your wife. I simply was suggesting that we all tend to look at Taiwanese politics and history through the perspective of our loved ones here. It’s why people like Vorksigan and Mr He piss me off so much. My wife is WSR. This late in history she doesn’t deserve to be told to go home or to feel she has helped lead the oppression against the BSR (of which she is half anyway on her mothers side). I thought the idea of the children paying for the sins of the father went out of fashion a century ago?
Mucha Man, some of my best friends are New Taiwanese and I even love a lot of the China born WSR and love traveling in the PRC! One of the old WSR I love is my old landlord. The cutest old guy from Shanghai. Reminds me of my own Grandpa. However, we never talk politics.
I am not anti-China nor anti-WSR as long as they do not preach their hypocritical unificationist crap within my earshot! Again I have nothing against these people as long as they respect the land and the people of Taiwan and not preach unification with some communist country without they themselves taking the passport of that country first!
Absolutely. I totally agree. I’ve got no time for the unification crowd either, but nor do I have time for the Taiwan independence crowd (and their foreign flunkies) who think my wife and friends have committed some evil (or their parents did) because they have a standard accent.
Hobart, I thought you knew that cmdjing is a PRC citizen. Of course that doesn’t make him any better or worse but it will be funny if he starts telling people in Taiwan how they should speak.
Ironic that he would call me hypocritical for advocating reunification and (mistakenly) claiming that I do not have a PRC passport. Can I ask the same of you? Are you an RoC citizen? As far as I know, Poagao is the only westerner here who has become one.
[quote=“cmdjing”]Ironic that he would call me hypocritical for advocating reunification and (mistakenly) claiming that I do not have a PRC passport. Can I ask the same of you? Are you an RoC citizen? As far as I know, Poagao is the only westerner here who has become one.[/quote]No I do not have an ROC passport, but my wife only has an ROC passport and my son is an ROC citizen. I also own a house here, a car and have more than one business here and have lived here since Nov. 1996.
Is it true you are in Taiwan now? Also, what other passport do you have besides your PRC one. When I said you were a hypocrite UNLESS you had a PRC passport, I meant ONLY a PRC passport and no other one.
I remember hearing him speak Mandarin when he was a legislator, and it was a lot more ‘standard’ than it is now. It’s an image thing, it doesn’t do any harm, and it works, so I don’t begrudge it.
I don’t know if it exists anymore, but there used to be some government body for maintaining and encouraging ‘standard’ Mandarin, they were responsible for deciding who could be (for example) a news anchor or official public speaker. They also ran competitions all over the country and gave prizes to the most ‘standard’ speakers.
Noone thinks they are evil at all for speaking Mandarin or rolling their r’s (even though it makes many people’s skin crawl), but they should be prepared for a rougher ride in the future if they cannot also speak Taiwanese.
And as for why I assumed he was a westerner Steve, it is fairly simple. The fact is that forumosa is geared toward foreigners, there is no splicing this. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and types like a duck, and swims in a duck pond, it most likely is a duck.
And Hobart. My PRC passport is the only passport I carry. Unlike some countries, the PRC to my knowledge does not allow dual citizenship.
What if you speak your native language worse than your parents, and your parents worse than the grandparents, how would you feel? Would you think there’s something wrong?
[quote=“cmdjing”]
Unlike some countries, the PRC to my knowledge does not allow dual citizenship.[/quote]
You are technically incorrect. It is illegal for mainlanders to acquire a second nationality or use a travel document other than their PRC passport. However, many HK and Macau PRC citizens have dual nationality. Before the handovers, Beijing knew that this could be a problem because this would conflict with the PRC’s nationality law. However, they knew that if they declared that it would be illegal for HK and Macau citizens to hold foreign passports, many of these people would have gotten antsy, swear under oath that they are not PRC citizens and perhaps even left HK/Macau. Remember that before 1997, any HK person who was born in HK was eligible for a real (not BNO) British passport. None of these people had documentation showing that they were PRC citizens. They were not born on the mainland; their HK birth certificates were stamped with a British seal and they were her Majesty’s subjects, not PRC citizens. If they had been told by Beijing that they had to choose either China or the UK, quite a lot would have chosen the UK, thus calling into question Beijing’s assertion all along that all HK people considered themselves “Chinese” and that only Beijing could speak for them.
The solution was pragmatic. The PRC said that it did not “recognize” any HK people as having foreign nationality as they considered them to be Chinese citizens in occupied territory. After 1997, if a Chinese HKer held a foreign passport and did not want to be considered Chinese, he would have to formally renounce his Chinese citizenship. Some stupid HKers think this amounts to being “allowed” to have dual nationality. I guess in a strict sense, it does. However, Beijing does not recognize that foreign nationality. If a born in HK ethnic Chinese resident with a British passport crosses at Luohu using his British passport, then in Beijing’s eyes, he is a foreign permanent resident of HK. If he applies for and uses a huixiangzheng to cross the border, his British passport is forever worthless in the eyes of Beijing and he will not be allowed to seek consular advice or mediation if he gets in trouble.
Strictly speaking, Beijing “allows” HK and Macau Chinese to be citizens of other countries, but they don’t recognize that citizenship.
