The Importance of Good Diction

One of the running jokes that Zheng and I have is how we are "heard" or understood. 

I really love making Mandarin speakers laugh when I make feeble attempts at what is perhaps the most difficult language in the world. I've already mixed up the words for "pig," "God," and "wine," though making puns in Mandarin about "God being a pig if he drinks too much wine" are still underappreciated by my Mandarin-speaking friends. I've also thoroughly embarrassed myself in Mandarin many times - quite a feat when you know less than 200 words.

(Perhaps because it's only funny to me - or they haven't gotten my sense of humor yet.)

And for the record, the sounds and tonal patterns for the aforementioned words are far too close for comfort. 

Zheng has an equally hard time (sometimes) being understood by Americans. When we moved across the country last year, at first, we hit some cosmopolitan areas. Rochester (for as much as I hated the weather) was quite international for a city of its size. I suppose the amount of university students and trained professionals in that city don't hurt this. Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati were also no problem.

However, once we left Pennsylvania Ohio and headed into states which boast fundamentalism, fried food, and moonshine, my beloved husband had to work very hard to be understood. 

I think he scared a KFC employee half to death when he asked which flavor was "local." They didn't know how to answer. So I had to laugh to myself about the confluence of a) employees of a national chain and b) the fact that some of these people have probably never ever seen an Asian. 

The climax of the confluence of foreign accents and "local flavor" happened somewhere between Kentucky and Oklahoma. My husband was ordering his favorite "starter" drink, which is "ice water with lime." After a panicked look passed the waitress's face, she turned to me and asked,

"What?"

Which really in dialect, sounded like "WhaAAAAAUUUUUUUHHHHHHT"?

The *next* question continues to be one of our favorite running jokes. As if my husband would have "really" ordered what the waitress thought he had ... 

 

 

PHOTO: This exemplifies an experience which still makes us laugh, and something that raises the eyebrows of many guests in our home. 

Whatever. It's our house. 

It's also a very fun reminder to my students about how much diction (and diphthongs, consonants, and the dismount of one vowel to the other) actually do matter in life.