Let’s talk about speaking Chinese. These days about 70% of my life is lived totally in Chinese with people that can’t speak English. (Take my classes out of the equation and you get closer to 90%.) I am not a natural language learner. In fact, I would say I was
Untangling the Complex Chinese Term "Laowai"
One of the first terms that every foreigner learns after landing in china is 老外 laowai, which means, essentially, foreigner. Even if a foreigner eschews every single other chinese word, they cannot avoid this one. That’s because it is hurled around so much whenever a foreigner is around, you cannot help
What Does American English Sound Like?
When American’s want to parody what Chinese sounds like we (offensively) say “Ching chong wing wong.” When we want to parody Swedish we say “Smorgish, borgish, upsadasee.” (a la Swedish Chef.) When we want to parody Italian we say “Now dat’s a spicy-a meatball.” (Sorry Italian people, you can blame