On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 5:15 AM, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> hey ... two interesting pieces here about "Crazy English" in China:
> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/28/080428fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all
> http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/li-yang-and-crazy-english-crazy-like-a-fox/
> I'm interested in the China/India dynamic in community building, and I
> wonder how that changes in the coming years as China embraces more English.
> I find the communications issues in China improving but still challenging,
> whereas in India, of course, English is already pervasive.
>
There was this strange case of a chinese indian couple in nairobi. The
guy was from Andhra
ran a car service centre, spoke english with a strong telugu accent
("oxyzen", "hydrozen"...the
chemical zen accent), the woman was from mainland China, working in a
chinese shop in
nairobi (it sounded like bonded labour), and her english accent was a
whole lot of hoiking and
clearing of saliva. They met in a pentecostal church, fell in love and
got married. As far as i
knew both of them communicated using kitchen english, but got along just fine.
[The story has a tragic ending, they lived in a house next to the car
service centre, which was
next to the church where they met. Adjacent to the service centre is a
big traffic roundabout,
and sort of rises out of the ground like a small hill. One friday
night a drunk driver took the
roundabout doing a 150, the car flew off the road launched by the
roundabout, cleared the
boundary wall and leveled a part of the house killing the Andhra
guy... (I have a picture
somewhere of the car sticking out of the roof of the house ) .... the
service centre is still there
but owned by a different chinese now]
