The Taipei Accent

Really? What does it mean in Taiwan?

It’s a direct translation of air-conditioning in the general sense, i.e. central air conditioning, i.e. HVAC.

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All of those varieties of English are fully mutually intelligible in most circumstances.

In contrast there are plenty of places in southern China where the home language will have limited mutual intelligibility just 50 or 100 kilometers away. Closer to the language map of continental Europe from a couple of hundred years ago before most of the local dialects got ironed out.

In my experience most all HKs have passable Mandarin, but there are some peeps who speak Mandarin as a second language that they struggle with, and some who don’t speak Mandarin at all. I’ve had conversations with people where they spoke Cantonese and I spoke Mandarin and we made it through, bit like your friend with the half a tongue.

C’mon… we were expecting a much more titillating “other meaning”

“How nice to relax on the dick of a sheep, looking out at the wives and just soaking up the sin”
I overlooked this but just had to come back to it

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freaking new sealanders…

You dirty, dirty boy…

Yup, I’m a Kiwi who converted to Islam

Allah save your soul.

still pretty intelligible tbh

All too intelligible :slight_smile: If someone told me they’d spent the whole day sitting on the dick of a sheep, my natural response would be to ask 1) was it a merino? 2) can I join in next time?

Clearly if you’ve even been to every one of those places you don’t stray far from the big city, tourist traps or Mickey d’s/[insert your native country equivalent].

Watching TV shows or movies don’t count; filmmakers and actors want authenticity but also make the effort to be as easily understood as possible.

It wasn’t intended to be patronizing, but it was 3am and that hour you just want to get straight to the point, so I see how one of the lines may be read in a wrong or abrasive manner — sorry if you felt that way.

But also meant that not only do you have to account for accents and pronunciation, once you throw in regional slang and styles of grammatical structure, what supposedly are the same language could come off as alien to others. It is not unique to a singular language or place. Like you’d be able to pick up certain words, sure, but that’s it.

Scottish. Had a chance to enjoy the beautiful Scottish highland, had no idea what half the things they said were about.

Yep.

Or honestly, even just within America.

https://youtu.be/tuN0CzNVPi8

Cartoonish, yes, but really not that far fetch.

I actually come from four of those places (Ireland-Scotland-Boston-Appalachia) And I do admit that yes there are times when intelligibility meets its limits. Exibit A:

Overall though It is on a different scale level of language diversity to what you get in Southern China.

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I’ve been itching to drop this into the conversation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avp9aUkM5g0

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Meanwhile in an land down under:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45JP45Z4lyQ

This one gets a couple of accents in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZthGdjGX0E

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:thinking: What does “come from” mean in this case

Mmmh yeah English gets crazier with its colonial history. Esp if you try going to places with multiple sources of influence. So, Jamaican Patois for example. English based, but sprinkled with West African influence etc.

You’re gonna catch words you recognize but that’s pretty much it.