this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
26 points (96.4% liked)

Casual Conversation

1773 readers
93 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.

RULES

  1. Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling.
  2. Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible.
  3. Avoid controversial topics (e.g. politics or societal debates).
  4. Stay calm: Don’t post angry or to vent or complain. We are a place where everyone can forget about their everyday or not so everyday worries for a moment. Venting, complaining, or posting from a place of anger or resentment doesn't fit the atmosphere we try to foster at all. Feel free to post those on !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
  5. Keep it clean and SFW
  6. No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
BoozeOrWater@piefed.social
BoozeOrWater@lemm.ee
Nougat@fedia.io
FireWire400@lemmy.world
m_f@discuss.online
neidu3@sh.itjust.works
m_f@piefed.social
26
Some of the words in my native language I thought I knew were actually corrupted... like I thought it was pronounced one way, but its actually not... (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This probably make zero sense to English speakers here, but:

One of the one I realize is: 唔好 (don't/no)

Jyutping (romanization): (m⁴ hou²) and the way I heard/pronunced it morphed into one character like 母 (mou²)

即刻 (Now/Immediately) (zik¹ hak¹) Somehow became like (zik¹ kak¹)

There no character with pronounciation kak¹ not even ones with a different tone.

Also I think I also have some random Taishanese sounds/vocabulary mixed in...

Doesn't help the only people I speak this language to 99% of the time is with family, so if there is an error, I would never know about it.

Probably how pronounciations become different as a population disperses to different regions.

I wonder if I ever go to Hong Kong... if I could pretend to be a local and see if anyone would expose me xD.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FoxyFerengi@startrek.website 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I knew someone who was born in the states but lived with Korean family and extended family. They consider Korean to be their mother tongue, but when they visited Korea everyone said they had an American accent.

I studied Mandarin for a few years, and while I can't speak it (no one to practice with, lol) I can sometimes pick out accents. I mean, I can tell when Australian is speaking Mandarin. So I'm sure it's the same with an American accent. There's nothing wrong with it, even in the states people can tell when you were raised in a different part of the country because of pronunciation or other language quirks.

Edit: this is a meme but it is one of my favorite examples of pronunciation differences

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

(no one to practice with, lol)

Wanna voice call? I speak Mandarin... well... sort of... Went to school in China up to the 2nd grade level... and I listened to Chinese tv drama for like a few years after being in the US, so I have a basic grasp on the language.

Actually who am I kidding... I have too much anxiety and voice shy to talk to strangers... flashback to phone calls to trying to find treatment for depression

I actually wanna use those language exchange apps and maybe like talk to random Chinese Diaspora around the world, but too scared, too socially awkward, xD

[–] FoxyFerengi@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago

I love the enthusiasm! I am also not a fan of phone calls, and by now it has been too many years since I practiced. I should get back into it though. My local university has a Chinese club, I've been tempted to drop in a few times lol