Beebeeleen t1_j0l9qaf wrote on December 17, 2022 at 2:53 PM

Reply to comment by RandomChurn in Restaurants Open on Christmas Day? by LowBarometer

You just reminded me of the scene from A Christmas Story where the owner of Chop Suey Palace tries to correct his employees' singing, "...not ra ra ra ra ra, la la la la la sing like this..."

80s nostalgia at its finest.

lawngoon t1_j0lxro0 wrote on December 17, 2022 at 5:48 PM

Yes it is incredibly racist in retrospect. But still funny

Beebeeleen t1_j0lyvpq wrote on December 17, 2022 at 5:56 PM

Have you ever heard adult Mandarin speakers with recent exposure to English? I ask because many will pronounce the "L" sound as "R"

It is a linguistic phenomenon having to do with phonemes (mental sound patterns) and phonetics (sound production).

In daily speech, we refer to that phenomenon as an "accent."

I reject the claim that the depiction was racist.

lawngoon t1_j0m34wt wrote on December 17, 2022 at 6:25 PM

I have spoken two Chinese persons who have a different opinion. We do agree it’s funny though

reddit_beats_chive t1_j0ngwsc wrote on December 18, 2022 at 12:23 AM

Well that confirms it, must be racist!

Beebeeleen t1_j0mffle wrote on December 17, 2022 at 7:50 PM

Yea, it was a funny scene.

A sample size of two people would be insufficient to discuss speech patterns occurring across millions of speakers. My claim about accents is well-documented among linguists who study languages. The L for R occurs with frequency among Native speakers of languages in China who later in life learn to speak English (please note my initial claim was concerning Mandarin but the link below discusses pronunciation difficulties for Cantonese speakers).

https://www.accent-american.com/2018/11/27/the-top-five-difficulties-chinese-speakers-have-when-pronouncing-american-english/

This link below concerns Mandarin speakers learning English (who might pronounce the English L sound as N)

http://www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol08/11/12.pdf