"The most important word in the lingerie dialect is arusa, or “bride.” The Chinese pronounce it alusa, and they use it constantly; in many Cairo neighborhoods, there are Chinese who go door-to-door with sacks of dresses and underwear, calling out “Alusa! Alusa!” In Chinese shops, owners use it as a form of address for any potential customer. To locals, it sounds flattering and a little funny: “Beautiful blide! Look at this, blide! What do you want, blide?”"
really? Is this stereotype actually true, or is this embellished? This just seems over the top.
Standardized mandarin differentiates, but a lot of people don't speak very standard mandarin, and R and L become confused. The R is also not exactly the same as an English R - it's somewhere in the middle of R, L and a bit of a Zzz.
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"The most important word in the lingerie dialect is arusa, or “bride.” The Chinese pronounce it alusa, and they use it constantly; in many Cairo neighborhoods, there are Chinese who go door-to-door with sacks of dresses and underwear, calling out “Alusa! Alusa!” In Chinese shops, owners use it as a form of address for any potential customer. To locals, it sounds flattering and a little funny: “Beautiful blide! Look at this, blide! What do you want, blide?”"
really? Is this stereotype actually true, or is this embellished? This just seems over the top.
Especially considering that Mandarin Chinese differentiates between R and L sounds; Japanese is the one that doesn't[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_...
The immigrants in the story are from Zhejiang, so they likely natively speak a Wu dialect that does indeed not have an /r/ sound:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_dialect#Phonology
And even the sound we write "r" when romanizing Mandarin is pretty distant from an Arabic /r/ (ر).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese#Initials
Thank you for the correction. I stand corrected.
Standardized mandarin differentiates, but a lot of people don't speak very standard mandarin, and R and L become confused. The R is also not exactly the same as an English R - it's somewhere in the middle of R, L and a bit of a Zzz.