SheldonJul 12, 2023

I finally watched Everything Everywhere All at Once and there was one scene at the beginning that perfectly captures a snippet of life in a Chinese-American immigrant household.

It's the pronoun scene. The main character keeps referring to her daughter's girlfriend as "he" and gets visibly frustrated when the daughter corrects her that Becky is a "she."

First, the bilingual dialogue is spot on! It happens so fast that it's hard to keep up with the subtitles, but if you understand Mandarin, you probably laughed at the exchange.

You might notice that Chinese immigrants are terrible at #pronouns. This is because in spoken Chinese, there is only one generic pronoun, "ta" which translates to "that person"

Any child of Chinese immigrants knows the embarrassment of correcting their parents in front of their friends when they keep calling male friends she and female ones he. It only recently occurred to me why this is.

I love this scene for bringing this to the fore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr4kJuZGQPI

Everything Everywhere All At Once, pronoun scene

YouTube
Show threadWesJul 12, 2023
@sysop408 I loved the bilingual use in this film so much. Growing up in Texas many of my friends were Mexican-American and used both languages at the same time, slipping between them so smoothly, only going into one language when speaking with parents or school staff
Show threadSheldonJul 12, 2023

@Justwes I'm constantly amused at how some bilingual people develop verbal tics where they swap words in unpredictable ways that have nothing to do with their vocabulary.

I know this one guy who grew up speaking Spanish and can speak perfect English, but any time he wants to say "but" he instead says "pero".

He'll say things like, "Oh, that hat looks good on you, pero I don't know about the shirt."

My dad and his siblings make interesting word substitutions too when they're talking to each other. If I use English when I'm attempting to speak in Chinese it's because I don't know a word. When they do it, it's because for whatever reason the English word just came out of their mouth first.

Show threadWesJul 12, 2023

@sysop408 I’ve picked up bits of Spanish growing up and working in the food industry when I was younger ,and during those years some words just felt more natural using Spanish vs English though I was never what I would consider bilingual.

Living in Scotland now and seeing how my daughter’s language (born Scottish) develops interesting. Learning English, speaking in Scots, and sounding more American vs her peers, she’s going to have a unique way of addressing the world around her

Show threadtvaughan
@Justwes @sysop408 We need to normalize the use of “ustedes” in English
Jul 12, 2023 at 12:50pmMastodon for iOS