Speech pattern and typographical variations across Canada

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

Another interesting tidbit I picked up in recent news is how Huawei and Huang is pronounced by white news casters as Wah-Way and Wang respectively. As if they can't pronounce the H-w sound. For Asian language speakers it's always been Hwa-Way and H-wang

But lots of English speakers (though it often sounds old-fashioned to some, or sometimes folksy like Hank from King of the Hill) make a H-w sound when they say things like "What" or "Why" so it sounds like "Hwwwhat" and Hwwhy".

Originally Posted by rousseau

Correction: Chinese speakers pronounce it the right way, not "Asian-language" speakers per se, who can't be expected to pronounce languages foreign to them properly without any training. Save for Japanese, which is easy.

After being back in Canada for so long I've stopped trying to maintain Chinese pronunciations for some things. I no longer wince at "tofu" with a hard T (should actually be a D sound), and even say it like that myself now. I've started saying "Zess-shwan" for "Szechuan" instead of the Chinese "Si-chwan" because people tend to know the former better. I'll even say "taichee" for "tai chi" instead of the Chinese "taijee."

But "Beijing" will always have a hard J sound, as the French J sounds alien to me. I think it's invariably changing in the media as well, what with it being the capital city of our new overlords.

At the same time, in English "Taipei" has a P sound, and in Chinese it is pronounced with a B, and never the twain shall meet. People who've lived in Taiwan and use the B when speaking English ("Taibei") are pretentious twats.

People still use Peking instead of Beijing for phrases like Peking duck or Pekingnese (the breed of dog).

What about Chinese-origin words like bok choy (the Chinese cabbage) or chow mein (the noodles), dim sum, feng shui, kung fu etc. I think they're pretty much pronounced in the Anglicized way now after being in the English vocabulary for generations, and few expect people to say it the way a Mandarin or Cantonese speaker does.