Random Thoughts 42 - Accent

42. Mandarin with a Strong Accent

One day, I was driving home after work, when I heard someone speaking Mandarin with a strong accent on the radio. It was one of the stations I would tune into from time to time and the topic that day was personal finance and investing. The speaker's points could be understood very well even with her accent, and, after listening for several minutes, I began to feel pretty happy about it. You see, millions of Chinese spend hundreds of hours each year learning English; finally, more and more westerners are realizing the need to learn Mandarin. Of course, we should be kind and tolerate their accents, strong or not, just as they have tolerated ours when speaking English. That's something we can do, happily.

2012.12.25