different chineses...

it was interesting (and somewhat painful) to listen to 3 asians, of chinese descent to be specific, speak to one another using a mix of english and chinese, and all with different accents... 

you see, earlier this week, i took public transport to the hospital to visit my mum... and while walking towards the mrt (public mass rapid transit), i had an interesting case of 3 chinese persons engaged in a conversation using a mix of english and chinese. they were walking in front of me and they talked so loud, it was difficult not to listen to their conversation. it was some mundane conversation about what they had for lunch. and from their accents, i deduced that one of them was an abc (american-born chinese), another one a china-born chinese, and the last, a singaporean chinese. oh my, it was terrible. if i had not listen a little closely, i could have thought they were using different languages... 

first, the abc. he spoke largely american english, which was easily understood as american english is quite commonly heard here. but when it came to terms relating to food, he would use the singapore terms (which is commonly a mix of english and chinese terms), and it came out weird. for the english terms, he tried to "asianise" it and for the chinese terms, it came out heavily accented with his american accent. and he sounded real weird. for example, when he spoke about  "chicken pao" or "chicken pow" (steamed chicken buns - a common local chinese snack), the words that came out was "chick-kerrrrn bow" (as in "take a bow"). it took me a split second before i knew what he was talking about. as for the chinese chinese, well, english, being a foreign language to him, every word he uttered sounded off. totally off... i mean, if he had the cantonese/ hong kong accent, i would still be able to catch a few words here and there. but this guy seemed to come from some other parts of china other than hong kong and i could not recognize his accent, and the english altogether. but of cos, it was not unexpected. english was not his native language after all.

as for the singaporean, oh my gawd. instead of speaking just like any other singaporean (which typically speaks english with a mix mash of local terms and that has a local accent), she actually tried to imitate the american accent. gosh... i totally could not take it. i slowed down my pace, crossed the road and walked as far away as possible from them...

yikes!