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Looking for revenge for Chinese tones? Try onomatopoeia

By Ben Johnson (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-10 11:22

"She sells sea shells by the seashore," parroted 40 Chinese youngsters with perfect diction in a steaming summer-holiday classroom.

Your scribe was taken aback by this linguistic display after inadvertently finding himself in front of a chalkboard for the first time following a move to Hainan to study Mandarin - full-time!

Although the sharp group of 12-year-olds easily twisted their little tongues around the sentence above, they found more mirth than success in, "How much wood would a wood chop chop if a wood chop could chop wood?" (spoken at a hundred miles an hour).

Out of sympathy for my charges, I then took a shot at one of the most infamous Chinese tongue twisters.

"Si shi si (4 is 4), shi shi shi (10 is 10), shi si shi shi si (14 is 14)," I stuttered with a modicum of success. When my attempt at 40 is 40 (si shi shi si shi) and 44 is 44 (si shi si shi si shi si) degenerated into "shi shi shi si si si", we were in the same boat.

By now, still sweating profusely from nerves and the absence of air-conditioning in a tropical classroom, I had run out of quirky lines and the interest in my lesson began to wane.

But just as I resorted to a text book, thankfully an illustration of a chicken led me to a teacher's aide infinitely more helpful than a tongue twister: onomatopoeia.

Now, with good authority, I can say that "b'gerk" should be the first thing taught to young Chinese learning English.

The students laughed wildly each time I bellowed it out, although the accompanying dance and flying sweat beads may have also had something to do with it.

More accustomed to "gu, gu, gu" when imitating a chicken, the sound of the above even caught the attention of those daydreamers thinking of any place cooler than that sweat box.

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