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Oldnameforgotten
Traveler

Registered: 10/19/19
Posts: 956
Loc: Pilbara Australia
Last seen: 2 years, 10 days
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Asians use of the sound "Lin"
#26393596 - 12/21/19 07:15 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I was defending a co-workers humanity today and had my bubble bursted.
Ill explain by talking about a different co-worker from years ago.
A guy I knew from palestine... name was Misael. My boss kept calling him Michelle like he was french or some shit. His name was pronounced "Miss Eye El" and that takes extra work to say right? So the boss is a fucker who wont take the effort to say his fucking name. I raged at him everytime he said michelle until eventually he caved and started saying his correct name. I got a lot of praise from this guy who is my friend and he said he just gave up on trying to have his name said.
Anyways.... now I have a co-worker whose name is in mandarin and is fucking long / wild. So I'm not expecting the boss to say his name here.... but I feel bad. We call him a stupid "white person" name and I asked him what his real name was. He said something like Xin-ping-lin. (i asked him 5 times and am still confused lol). Anyways what he ended up telling me was... the sound "lin" has FOUR Different meanings in mandarin. And the tone you use when you say it changes the meaning. And honestly I could not determine the difference after asking him several times to say the 4 different versions so I could learn.
It really changed my views on saying peoples proper names and caving in to local dialect.
I dunno. Im trying to make billboards of all the cringey weird shit that happens in my life to learn from it..... I know this is all super "social justice warrior" type crap and I sound like an asshole.
Was I right defending my friend from palestine?
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Hartford
Lawful Good



Registered: 11/27/19
Posts: 1,106
Loc: Tennessee
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I had the same experience in elementary school with a Chinese girl who was trying to help me pronounce "shut your mouth" in Chinese. She enjoyed seeing me fail to grasp the tonal difference.
After a while of thinking about how to pronounce it, I realized that the pitch of her voice went down on the second syllable, and then up again on the third syllable. "bee-sreh-boh". Pay attention to how the tone goes up or down during his pronunciation and don't focus on the consonants so much
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yeah


Registered: 02/08/09
Posts: 3,729
Last seen: 1 month, 21 days
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Re: Asians use of the sound "Lin" [Re: Hartford]
#26394049 - 12/21/19 01:36 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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You have to practice the tones a lot in mandarin before they become easy it's not like you're just pronouncing each syllable correctly.
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Edited by yeah (12/21/19 01:37 PM)
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Tulipslave
Homo sapiens sapiens, lol

Registered: 07/25/17
Posts: 11,109
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same with Vietnamese from what i could determine working with lots of Vietnamese in my younger days; the length/intonation one uses to carry out the phrase determines its meaning.
were you right defending your friend? well, that's another story. have you asked him if it offends him or bothers him in any way? if not, you defending him might be making a bigger deal out of something he doesn't care about anyways. as they say, right does not make might. just because it's the right thing to do doesn't mean it should always be done.
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