Having seen this commercial quite a few times since CNBC plays it all the time, I realized one day actually paying attention to it that it makes one of the fatal mistakes that Hollywood and American television have been committing for years and have only recently started to do more corrections.
The whole mix of dialects. The African Amercian gentleman is speaking Mandarin. The chinese customer is speaking Cantonese. There are nine tones in Cantonese, and only four in Mandarin not to mention knowing one or the other doesn’t necessarily mean you understand it. The former is also a more guttural dialect that is prominent in Southern China in the Canton province. Mandarin on the other hand is the national language.
This little mistake isn’t such a huge deal, but it is something that they’ve done in many American Hong Kong films where they mix Taiwanese with Mandarin. While actors and actresses will probably speak what they are most comfortable with, it actually doesn’t make too much sense just as if you had someone speaking German Spanish talk to someone speaking French, even though they’re both Romanic languages.
Simple mistake, but it’s also interesting that people don’t make that distinction.
UPDATE: Updated to reflect some changes. In actuality, there are Taiwanese as secondary lines in American films, but currently the things that pop into my head are movies like Born to be King which is HK (thx Joz for joggling my head for me). Also, thx to Grace for pointing out Romanic languages. My bad. Made the correction.
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Xxxtine wrote:
I think them speaking two different dialects actually makes the commercial more meaningful. The whole thing was about how you pronounce the client’s name not knowing that perhaps saying his name in a whole other dialect - would insult him.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
darkmoon wrote:
Hmm.. while that logic seems pretty sound, for the life of me, I can’t think of one single example that it would ever fit.
Just speaking my name in both Mandarin and Cantonese, people know that it’s a name based on surname practices. What’s more interesting is that being in Hong Kong, the practice is automatically to switch to Cantonese since that’s the dialect.
Also, from a naming practice, in all reality, his name could be Mr. stinky fishface. I’ve heard some names from the countryside that would baffle the mind why people name their kids such, but it does happen.
On top of it all, I just don’t see someone that have a vendor that’s an American that’s trying to speak any sort of Chinese to actually just walk off like that. I’m not sure if in Japan, the workplace is inundated with the old school honor code and offense is taken at face level, but in HK, which had been under British rule for 99 years? Ehh.
Obviously, I’m reading too much into the commercial itself. lol. But, the point is that when you mix the dialects, the assumptions are made that all the dialects can interact with one another, but that’s not necessarily the case. I couldn’t tell you what someone that spoke Taiwanese is saying, even though I’m fluent in Mandarin.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 12:37 pm | Permalink
jozjozjoz wrote:
You said:
“This little mistake isn’t such a huge deal, but it is something that they’ve done in many American films where they mix Taiwanese with Mandarin.”
I rarely hear Taiwanese in American films… give an example of when they do this?!?!?
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
Grace Chu wrote:
Quick note - I don’t think German is a Romance language. It doesn’t have its roots in Latin.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 1:33 pm | Permalink
Jason wrote:
German is usually considered a Germanic language, not a Romantic language. Examples of Romantic languages include French, Italian and Spanish.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 1:40 pm | Permalink
darkmoon wrote:
Made some updates to reflect Joz and Grace’s comments. :p Although, Joz… if I run across those Taiwanese lines, I’ll jot them down on which movies they are again. I re-watch my old action flicks every so often.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 1:41 pm | Permalink
Jeff C. wrote:
Mixing Cantonese and Mandarin is pretty commonplace in Hong Kong films. Prime example are Stephen Chow movies, where the primary language is Canto, and then all of a sudden he busts out the Mandarin for the girl-of-the-movie (as in the case of both Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle)
From my experiences, most Cantonese speakers at least understand Mandarin since it was taught to them in school. (The opposite isn’t necessarily true though).
I think it’s generally assumed that the Cantonese audience can understand the few Mandarin bits, and if not they can read the Chinese subtitles that are always at the bottom of the screen in theatres anyway.
However, please point out ANY movie that’s used Taiwanese o_0 especially if it were produced in HK!
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 2:10 pm | Permalink
darkmoon wrote:
Yeah. I just checked. Born to be King which is Young and Dangerous 6 with Ekin Cheng and Jordan Chan and a whole bunch of other pretty famous actors. There’s a mix of Taiwanese in that one, but it’s due to gang wars (Taiwanese gang, vs. HK gang vs. Japanese gang). I know there’s a few other ones I have in my library. Maybe it’s Gen X or Gen Y cops have it. I don’t remember offhand.
Posted on 04-Jun-08 at 7:06 pm | Permalink