Ching chong

[Ayiaearel]

"Ching chong" is the typical racist imitation of what all Asian languages sound like (at least amongst English speakers). How do people imitate other languages in your country?

[Zorba]

In some Irish dialects, /θ/ is realized as /t/ and Irish speakers are often mocked with the expression 'thirty-three and a third' (which would be realized as 'turty-tree and a turd' in Irish)

Failure to pronounce /θ/ and /ð/ correctly is common for imitating any European accent, especially French or German. Normally they are substituted for /z/. Lots of nasal voles used to imitate French as well.

Irish people often mock English people by using an extreme form of received pronunciation and many words with broad /ɑː/ (rather) or typically English expressions like 'Jolly good, ma'am'.

Americans are sometimes mocked by speaking while holding your fingers over your nose.

I am fascinated how my students mocked me speaking Russian when I worked abroad, because I'm sure they mocked me in some generic 'foreigner' accent rather than actually listening to my speech patterns. While my Russian is heavily accented, the kind of errors that I would make were not at all similar to the way they would imitate me.

Mentioning Latvian in front of Russian teenagers typically provoked them talking Russian in a very sing-song accent, while mentioning Estonian prompted a different heavily-accented form of Russian and the usual jokes about Estonian slowness.

[ego]

Chinese like tsin tsin tson.
Europeans usually not able to pronounce the th sounds as Zorba said and also the trilled r.
Arabs and Turks like bahalahabalaba.

[sa wulfs]

Failure to pronounce /θ/ and /ð/ correctly is common for imitating any European accent, especially French or German.

And yet, English speakers living in Madrid invariably fail to distinguish between /θ/ and /s/

[darkina]

For Chinese we'd say something like "chin chun"

In some Irish dialects, /θ/ is realized as /t/ and Irish speakers are often mocked with the expression 'thirty-three and a third' (which would be realized as 'turty-tree and a turd' in Irish)

We do something similar in my city to mock the accent of the Southern part of our province (yes Italian dialect get so mad that I can actually recognise which part of the province one is from, well I'm not too good at it but it can be recognisable), because they tend to substitute C (the ch sound in 'chin') with a very emphatic Z (the TS sound), like the way they say 'zio' sounds like zzio to me, or ttssio if you want to use that kind of 'phonetic' way of writing it (I keep telling myself that I should re-learn IPA). Back to the C, we would mock them saying 'zinquemilazinquezento' for example for 'cinquemilacinquecento' (the number 5500) and you can go on making sentences with words with c and z (5500 grami de zucaro (= grammi di zucchero), 5500 grams of sugar). Or something like that.

[Makrasiroutioun]

A whole lot of old Middle Eastern immigrants around here (who usually know a bit of French but no English) laugh on English (either American or British) as "wah wah wah" or "woa woa woan." I got no idea how they got that... we don't even have a word like "wa"! Except for the heavily glottalised British "wha'?"

Some French (some English speakers too) speakers characterise Chinese or any Asian language such as "ching-chang-choung". Lots of people (Americans, Canadians, lots of Europeans, Middle Easterners, etc.) characterise any German speech by likening it with Hitler's propaganda.

Oh, and for some reason, Swedish is laughed at because for lots of people it sounds exactly like English spoken in reverse. We see an example of that in the movie "Top Secret (1984)" where the two main characters enter a used bookshop and speak with the Swedish owner and his assistant (I think... it's been many years...) and they are speaking English but backwards!

Some Americans mock Arabic as them saying "Allah" or "halla/walla" in every sentence.

Dutch is mocked at due to its velar fricatives and consonant clusters.

The bad guys in the movies always have a heavy Russian or East European accent!

Foreigners mock the Japanese due to the absence of the lateral L phoneme, usually with the word "lice" which sometimes sounds like "rice" or vice-versa.

The Italians are always shown as creating paragogic (prosthetic) vowels inbetween consonants and words. The Italian restaurant owner in the Simpsons reminds us of this.

The #sC phonotactic restraint (the addition of e- in front of a /sk/ cluster) of the Iberian Romance varieties is sometimes mocked.

Modern Greek is sometimes mocked by laughing about the syllable "khi" (fricativisation of the aspirated K and the raising of the vowel to an i).

Click consonants fascinate lots of people, but some mock some of the languages that have them. There is even a Canadian comedian who has a skit about it.

That's all for now folks!

[Narbleh]

My boyfriend and I are weird and make fun of:
* Arabic by going "mahalalamaha"
* Hebrew by making a bunch of loud guttural noises and retching
* Polish by muttering in a tired voice without enunciating and ending every sentence with a sad "po polski"
* Choctaw (his grandmother's language) by speaking through the nose in a low, tired voice like "hmmnagechanthmm"
* Chinese by doing extremely exaggerated, abrupt tone changes and lots of r and ng sounds
* Japanese (my grandmother's language) by speaking in a low, dramatic and rising voice, randomly saying some mock-words really slowly, then others really fast
* Czech by not using any vowels and speaking in consonant clusters
* Mexican Spanish by speaking through the nose in a sleepy voice with lots of i/a and random consonants, like "michinopoberos lasamalas"

There are others, but those are the ones we do most for some reason We also have imitating jive down to a science. If we're imitating foreign speakers speaking English, then we only really do Chinese and Choctaw accents, but that's another thread entirely!

[pastorant]

Halito,Chahta imanumpa ish anumpola hinla ho?
Chahta iskitini anumpuli li.

Narbleh, I didn't know you were 1/4 Choctaw.
You still got family on the rez in Oklahoma?

[Steisi]

* Japanese (my grandmother's language) by speaking in a low, dramatic and rising voice, randomly saying some mock-words really slowly, then others really fast

I often annoy my boyfriend who is a Japan-fan by impersonating it in exactly the same way but peppering it with "Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhhh" "oooooooooooh" "aaaaaaaarrgh" and random gasps of surprise because that seems to be all they do on anime shows

German: ischenackenbockenuckenumgeschlugenscheinchen. etc
French: haw-de-haw-de-haw.
Scottish: Och aye the noo.
Russian: poshlushkayaveskanochskievskaya. etc.
Arabic: also wahaallalaallamaaahahahHHHHaa etc.

I can't figure out how to impersonate English though because it's my own native language. I certainly didn't expect "woan woan woan"

[loqu]

Arabs and Turks like bahalahabalaba.

I'd say I heard these mockeries:

- English like making that r like an English r and pronouncing every consonant with an aspiration. Turning every o into [ou].
- French speaking in a really affected manner like if they articulated every sound in the throat and of course making an uvular r. Also with the mock-words "Oh la la" and "Oui mesié".
- Italians in a kind of singing tone, always with a loud voice or ending every word in -ini (or -inni, every duplicated consonant makes everything sound more Italian )
- Germans speaking like they had no vowels at all and ending everything in -en. If there are several j [x] sounds, even better. There's a very famous joke about that subway in German is said subanempujenestrujenbajen (ES get on, push, squeeze, get off).
- Russians with very exaggerated consonants and trilling every r. Some people do this also for German
- People from Africa with clusters like [mb] or [ng], like saying every time unga bunga tunga or things like that.
- Of course we have that ching chong for Far Asian languages as well. In my area there's also this kind of expression, when you buy something made by an unknown brand it's said es de la marca Chung, it refers to all those Chinese low-cost things sold around here.

[nighean-neonach]

Arabs and Turks like bahalahabalaba.

Here, Turks are often imitated by saying "ülügülü" or something like that.

[nighean-neonach]

German: ischenackenbockenuckenumgeschlugenscheinchen. etc

That's cute, I'd love to hear someone really say that.

[Axiom]

Polish: by imitating all those hushing sounds, like "przprzprz" (pshpshpsh), hardly with any vowels
Chinese: chang chung chong chin
French: by pronouncing all the words with the uvular r, i guess, or just blablabla
Caucasian languages: pronouncing all the words really harsh, with as many glottal sounds as possible: bhhhhhrrrchhhhhrrr...i don't know how to write it down.
Finnish: pikkulaajokkalaamukullaainen, something like that.
Spanish: rrrrrrrrrr

[Aleco]

In Norway:

Chinese: Kjing Kjong Kinamann (Ching Chong China-man) / Lang Tung Ting is said to mean "beam", because it means in Norwegian Long Heavy thing.

Italian: Praparáánò, chimunciáálè (long ´´, then a short `)

Danish: Sjokolade (with a very Danish D)

Swedish: Jag är hemma (in Sw. hemma = at home, but in Norwegian; hemma = retarded )

Finnish: Joulopuhkki or something. (in Fi. joulupuhkki = Santa Claus, but in Norwegian; jålebukken (similar pronouncing) = gayish man )

Icelandic: Norwegian words with an -ur: Heiur, erur du herur i dagur? ~ Hei, er du her i dag?

Russian: Znjebrovitsjij / Znjebruvitchi

[Levo]

Finnish: Kukki-mukki, mikkala-makkala
Swedish: it various from Irgit-Birgit to Jökken-Mökken - if they knew it is totally not alike!
Slavic languages:Zvuzhnyhe
Czech has a special: Consonanats in piles and then a -ka ending to make it cute, creating a paradox sounding to the whole

Spanish,Italian: Pronouncing Z instead of most syllabial sounds (totally false!!!); Lopez de Futaztán
French: Jean-Balzham+gutteral R
Chinese: Ching-Chang, like it was mentioned already
Japanese: A bit like Finnish for most people, (false) Takamotó
Arabic:
In an inn:
-Hamala-kalama Coca Cola!
-An ice-cold WHAT???

[Steisi]

Just remembered that we referred colloquially to the local chinese restaurant as "Hoo Flung Dung" (Who flung dung?)

But we didn't mean it negatively, it was a gorgeous takeaway

[Wildfire]

In Russia:

English.
The only way of imitating this language I experienced is adding -tion to normal Russian nouns and replacing a Russian /r/ with the English one: E.g. skovorodation po golovation (skovoroda = frying pan, golova = head)

German.
1.Gitler kaput.
2.Achten-machten-sichten-drachten.

Chinese.
Hui hui hui hui

Korean.
also Hui hui hui hui
(bikoz ziz lenguages ar ze same!!11oneoneeleven )

Estonian.
Peeeople ooften spooof Estoonian laaanguage by maaaking voowels loooong.

[Makrasiroutioun]

LOL @ Estonian!

Wildfire, that seriously cracked me up!

[an.cat.dubh]

Here, the one for German is:
'Komm nach house kinder machen.'

And Chinese is described as 'Ping-pong'.

[nighean-neonach]

German.
1.Gitler kaput.

Here, the one for German is:
'Komm nach house kinder machen.'

Awwww