Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The BS-Wrestling Pit => Topic started by: English Gent on December 13, 2013, 06:19:56 AM
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ive come to learn 'foreign' teachers round my way are claiming to be citizens of 'better' countries than they are actually from.
tell tale signs are dodgy accents that the chinese dont notice, and poor spelling.
some 'decent' teachers corrections to a students work, ive just had to correct myself! stuff a 5 year old native might not mistake!
im losing all respect for my peers, get there on the hour, leave on the dot, and blank me just because im british white and the parents prefer me to a black yank. not my fault!
and they never help anyone who isnt paying them.... am i the last gentleman in china?
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It's wonderful that you can tell the citizenship of a person from their accent.
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Your post was nigh indecipherable. For a Brit, you sure like to take liberties with your punctuation and grammar. You are an English teacher, right? bibibibibi
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I would argue that one should not be so eager to cast aspersions upon the grammar of other teachers when same person is, consistently, incapable of using capitals for the first person singular pronoun and seems oblivious to the usage of apostrophes when using contractions. Furthermore, what was the point of this post? Perhaps one should refrain from using phrases like "black yank". I, too, am bowled over by your ability to detect the nationality of other educators by their accent. How very Henry Higgins-like of you. agagagagag agagagagag
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oh, sorry for a few things i didnt make clear...
this is a forum, where informal speech and grammar rules apply, we are basically 'talking' so i 'aint bovvered' about writing a masterpiece.
but correcting a students work is important so i thought a little more care should be used there.
im not guessing regarding nationality, 'higher ups' mentioned it.
well, my attempt at a half humourous rant failed magnificently, ill get me coat. (slang round my way, 'me' for 'my' is ok in speech!
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An accent can provide a clue, but in today's more mobile world, it's not nearly as strong of evidence as it used to be. Even so, I do have a sneaking suspicion that a certain very muscular former governor of California just might have been born outside the confines of the USA. ahahahahah
Grammar rules do tend to vary a bit between World Standard EnglishTM, PatPend and the lesser forms of English spoken in the UK it its other former colonies. ahahahahah This can lead to 2 people vehemently disagreeing on a grammar point, while each is perfectly correct by the grammar rules of the originating country.
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ive come to learn 'foreign' teachers round my way are claiming to be citizens of 'better' countries than they are actually from.
tell tale signs are dodgy accents that the chinese dont notice, and poor spelling.
some 'decent' teachers corrections to a students work, ive just had to correct myself! stuff a 5 year old native might not mistake!
im losing all respect for my peers, get there on the hour, leave on the dot, and blank me just because im british white and the parents prefer me to a black yank. not my fault!
and they never help anyone who isnt paying them.... am i the last gentleman in china?
Good for them! America is a country of immigrants anyway. What's in a name?
In either case, there are some folks who give a damn. Let's use the bad examples as a warning to keep rein on ourselves.
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Sorry English Gent I am from the UK,my accent seems to have changed as my husband can't understand it so I adjusted it a bit for him and I have been away for 30 years.I couldn't make head nor tail of your original posting and,even though not using capitilization etc is okay on a forum I really think ill for I'll is a bit much!
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i understood OP'ses firstest post on the first read through. must be sumpthin wrong with me.
ababababab
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And a forum full of English teachers are perfectly aware of the usage of "me" for "my", I learned that amongst other things as a post-graduate English student in Manchester.
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ive come to learn 'foreign' teachers round my way are claiming to be citizens of 'better' countries than they are actually from.
tell tale signs are dodgy accents that the chinese dont notice, and poor spelling.
some 'decent' teachers corrections to a students work, ive just had to correct myself! stuff a 5 year old native might not mistake!
im losing all respect for my peers, get there on the hour, leave on the dot, and blank me just because im british white and the parents prefer me to a black yank. not my fault!
and they never help anyone who isnt paying them.... am i the last gentleman in china?
I used to do voice overs for children's books. There was usually two of us, the other had to be female. The guy running it had trouble finding a good English speaking girl to suplement the duo. My friend who did this was almost native speaker level. One time he said he found a girl who said she was from the states. He asked me if I could tell or not. After she said hello I had trouble to determine whether she was from Russia or the Ukraine as her accent was so heavy. I'd bet the farm she had never set foot in America even once.
I asked her where was she from in the USA, first she said America bibibibibi
Then which provence. She said the province of Minnesota kkkkkkkkkk
Which city? She said Minneapolis. So I asked her if she had ever been to the Twin Cities - she said never ahahahahah
Last question, I like to fish, so I asked her if Minnesota has any lakes. She said she didn't know as she stayed in the city (Minnesota is the land of 10,000 Lakes) llllllllll
I assured my friend that this girl is not American.
That is NOT the only time I had spoken to someone about this sort of thing
:lickass:
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I had this exact same experience about 4 years ago. I AM from Minnesota, and was introduced to a new part-time foreign teacher staff member at the time. "Oh she's from MN too." The Chinese staff informed me. Obviously not. It didn't take long for her to admit that she was from the EU, I forget where now - perhaps Netherlands. She told me she picked "Minnesota" as her claimed region, because she (rightly) figured no one had ever heard of it or would challenge her on it. I guess a passport was unnecessary to et the PT job. Anyway her English was fair enough and she seemed to do fine with the primary school children.
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Hey BrandeX, did you like my test for her?
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Yes, I think the questions are simple enough to have been answered by anyone living there for even a short time.
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When I'm asked where I come from, like most Americans, I always give my state (Texas), but in China, when I do that I get tis confused look with a follow-up question of "where's that?" "(sigh) America"
I then have to explain that because each state is different, we identify with our home state more than we do with the country of our nationality.
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One of my best friends when I moved here was from Kenya, the school made her tell people that she was American at first but people kept asking her about America where she's never been so in the end she just said Kenya.
A lot of the commonwealth use English as their national language because their nations aren't anything to do with what was going on their before colonization. I think it's turning into an advantage for a lot of places as racism becomes less acceptable, half of the Africans I've met speak 3 or 4 languages as a matter of course, that must make you smarter in some way... Your normal middle class chinese probably speaks mandarin, local language and a little English....
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When I'm asked where I come from, like most Americans, I always give my state (Texas), but in China, when I do that I get tis confused look with a follow-up question of "where's that?" "(sigh) America"
I then have to explain that because each state is different, we identify with our home state more than we do with the country of our nationality.
I do that also. I consider mentioning "USA" an equivalent answer to someone saying "Europe" when asked the same question as to where they are from.
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Right because everybody in the world is expected to know exactly where and what an Oregon is.
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Oregon - normally found in clusters, but occasionally as single particles of "this smells like pizza!", many many oregons go into the production of every jar of oregano, their rarity in particularly creating a spice shortage in China.
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Oregon - normally found in clusters, but occasionally as single particles of "this smells like pizza!", many many oregons go into the production of every jar of oregano, their rarity in particularly creating a spice shortage in China.
But quite plentiful in Italy and Greece
oh wait, kids here have either never heard of Greece or can't find it on a map of Southern Europe
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas,_Queensland
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Oregon - normally found in clusters, but occasionally as single particles of "this smells like pizza!", many many oregons go into the production of every jar of oregano, their rarity in particularly creating a spice shortage in China.
But quite plentiful in Italy and Greece
oh wait, kids here have either never heard of Greece or can't find it on a map of Southern Europe
I think that's because it sounds really different in Chinese
Not many Chinese young uns seem to have heard of Belgium, but I see that as a wholly. Positive thing :D
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I tell 'em I come from Antarctica, graduated from the University of Queen Maud Land
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I tell 'em I come from Antarctica, graduated from the University of Queen Maud Land
Liar, you never graduated uuuuuuuuuu
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Right because everybody in the world is expected to know exactly where and what an Oregon is.
Eh, no one knows where any country in Europe is either unless it's one of a half dozen "famous names" on the West end.
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I would say all the above assumptions are just plain wrong.
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The Chinese men are very familiar with a sports team from my home state, so I can use them as an instant ice-breaker.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas,_Queensland
Noodles, I grew up in a small town in New South Wales, just over the border from Texas in QLD (Queensland) Went fishing there many times as a child. Thanks for the memories! bfbfbfbfbf
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I'm 100% american, sound american, look american (northeast/slightly boston accent).
Today was my first day with new students. I asked the first class if I was British (after talking for a good 5-10 minutes.) Most answered yes. Then, the second class I said "where am I from?" and a few shyly answered "Australia?" I laughed and said no, then almost in unison they cried out "ENGLAND!"
These are college sophomores! But apparently tricking them would not be too hard.
And it's true that american identify ourselves by our state, but I have given that up in china long ago because of the confusion it brings. The only people I see stick to their state long-term in China are New Yorkers. They can't have people think they're from somewhere less than there. hahaha
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"Sugelan" is not "Yingguo".
This confuses everyone, and then they ask about Taiwan.
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"Sugelan" is not "Yingguo".
This confuses everyone, and then they ask about Taiwan.
My ex was welsh and she used to have to tell students that she was English because no one had heard of Wales.
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The Chinese men are very familiar with a sports team from my home state, so I can use them as an instant ice-breaker.
Please emphasize the "a" part. For Texas, they know the Rockets and maybe the Spurs and Mavs. They don't have a clue about the Stars, Rangers, Astros or Texans. Same for California. LakersLakersLakersLakersLakersLakersLakersLakers. and there might be another sports team in the state, not sure. I'd faint if a student ever told me he cheers for the Los Angeles Kings instead of the Sacramento Kings. I'd pay for a kid to dress up in Raiders gear
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That's likely because the only televised American sport in China, afaik is NBA.
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Funny, among themselves, Chinese seem very dedicated to their home provinces. I've got a friend who's with some sort of Hunan-ren businessmen's association in Guangdong.
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Funny, among themselves, Chinese seem very dedicated to their home provinces.
Of course and I'm quite dedicated to my province too. However the Chinese don't expect everybody else to know their provinces. They don't travel to other countries and introduce themselves as being from Anhui etc.
It's not about how closely you relate to your area, it's how much sense it will make to the person you are talking to.