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In college, my professor of Japanese, who was a woman, claimed that there was a slang for American (expat) men along the lines of 'screaming homosexuals,' becau

In college, my professor of Japanese, who was a woman, claimed that there was a slang for American (expat) men along the lines of 'screaming homosexuals,' because they (a) spoke loudly and (b) learned the language from their girlfriends and picked up gender-specific grammar and speech patterns in the process. I did not end up learning Japanese in college as a young man. I've had much better luck twenty years later, indirectly following her advice, by learning Greek through falling in love.

gridlockd 7y ago
It's worth noting that Japanese (like many Asian languages) has a certain degree of "sexual dimorphism" unlike western languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_J... Interestingly, it also has pitch as a part of accent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent
geomark 7y ago
That's pretty funny. Similarly in Thailand, the Thai language has gender-specific pronouns and speech patterns. LGBT people are very out in Thailand and many LGBT foreigners attracted to the country as a result. So when a foreigner who may have learned some Thai language from their Thai girlfriend/boyfriend uses trans-gender pronouns or speech patterns nobody bats an eye and just assumes they are trans, even though they may not be.
koreth1 7y ago
This is true in Mandarin too, to some extent. A bunch of my casual speech patterns come from talking to my wife and I've had Chinese friends say, "You are talking like a girl." I am always happy to hear them say it because (a) if nobody tells me, I'm probably never going to figure it out on my own, and (b) "You are talking like a (Chinese) girl" is a compliment compared to, "You are talking like a foreigner."
- yorwba 7y ago
  You might be mispronouncing the alveolo-palatal consonants (Pinyin j, q, x) as denti-alveolars (Pinyin z, c, s), which is common among foreigners whose native languages lack alveolo-palatals, since it's hard to figure out how to correctly curl your tongue without an explicit description. The reason that would make your speech appear feminine is that some young Beijing women pronounce those consonants similarly, probably in a (potentially unconscious) attempt to sound cute. The closest analog in English I can think of is swapping word-initial l for w ("wuv", "widdle"). The phenomenon in Chinese is known as 女国音; I became aware of it through the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Standard Chinese phonology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_Chinese_phonology#N%C3%BCguoyin_as_non-standard_pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_Chinese_phonolog...

gridlockd 7y ago

It's worth noting that Japanese (like many Asian languages) has a certain degree of "sexual dimorphism" unlike western languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_J... Interestingly, it also has pitch as a part of accent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

geomark 7y ago

That's pretty funny. Similarly in Thailand, the Thai language has gender-specific pronouns and speech patterns. LGBT people are very out in Thailand and many LGBT foreigners attracted to the country as a result. So when a foreigner who may have learned some Thai language from their Thai girlfriend/boyfriend uses trans-gender pronouns or speech patterns nobody bats an eye and just assumes they are trans, even though they may not be.

koreth1 7y ago

This is true in Mandarin too, to some extent. A bunch of my casual speech patterns come from talking to my wife and I've had Chinese friends say, "You are talking like a girl." I am always happy to hear them say it because (a) if nobody tells me, I'm probably never going to figure it out on my own, and (b) "You are talking like a (Chinese) girl" is a compliment compared to, "You are talking like a foreigner."

yorwba 7y ago
You might be mispronouncing the alveolo-palatal consonants (Pinyin j, q, x) as denti-alveolars (Pinyin z, c, s), which is common among foreigners whose native languages lack alveolo-palatals, since it's hard to figure out how to correctly curl your tongue without an explicit description. The reason that would make your speech appear feminine is that some young Beijing women pronounce those consonants similarly, probably in a (potentially unconscious) attempt to sound cute. The closest analog in English I can think of is swapping word-initial l for w ("wuv", "widdle"). The phenomenon in Chinese is known as 女国音; I became aware of it through the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Standard Chinese phonology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_Chinese_phonology#N%C3%BCguoyin_as_non-standard_pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_Chinese_phonolog...