Friday, January 18, 2013

Enough with the White People Pretending to Speak Chinese

So today I was watching something on hulu and up pops this ad. Looked nice, but watching it I was left totally scratching my head at the end. I know it's supposed to be Chinese, but what did she say? The way hulu showed it, it ended with the laugh.
As you can see, in this version that I found on Youtube at least Shatner comments on her accent (this despite the fact that she's been living with Chinese monks who strangely have long hair for 20 years). But seriously, it seems every time I turn around there is a westerner speaking atrocious Chinese.

People, Chinese is NOT that hard. (Yes, I know, you've been told it's hard because of the tones, whatever, I speak Chinese, and speaking is pretty easy, it's MEMORIZING characters that takes a pain in the ass long time.) So blondie, here, really has no excuse. Or more accurately, Priceline and the commercial creator/director have no excuse. What the F!!! Just get someone who speaks decent Chinese to repeat it to her a few times, because I promise you it's not that hard. So really they didn't care enough to get someone to teach her to say it right.

And why is it acceptable to speak bad Chinese, bad Korean, bad Japanese, in movies or TV shows? What is wrong with giving people some hope that they, too, can learn these languages? Everything comes out so robotic, no one watching who doesn't speak these languages thinks they're really speaking well. The only show I can think of that doesn't completely mangle foreign languages is Covert Affairs, but I've only seen a couple episodes.

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