language contact: 2003 Archives

this morning i went to the 水煎包 place for breakfast. it’s hot—very hot—the calm before the storm, Typhoon Kujira which is taking its time to get here. the lady next to me comments on the weather. “今天很 lè,” she says. the 老闆娘 (the woman who runs the place) replies. “not ‘lè,’” she says, correcting her. “it’s ‘rè’!” we laugh.

i don't understand mandarin english. see, cantonese english makes sense. lexical stress--primary, secondary, etc.--all map nicely onto the tone system of cantonese. like, primary stress maps to high tone. but mandarin doesn't seem to do anything of the sort. So the other day, i'm sitting in math class, and the teacher's talking about X E and X R. I'm like, what-the-F is X E? Don't you mean, E(X), the expectation of X? Then suddenly, it hits me: she's saying, X一跟X二, not XE 跟 XR. Further observation suggested that the phenomenon involves tones: when she wanted to say "r" or "l", she would use ér (sounds like 兒) and él, with mandarin second tone. i wonder if this is a common phenomenon, or if only people in math circles do this.

today, i was checking out books at the library, and as she gave me the books, i said out of reflex, "thanks." she replied, "不會", without missing a beat. i walked away, feeling very strange.

later i wonder, is "thanks" a common thing to say here? i guess i wouldn't know unless i was the one working at the checkout counter.