Where Chao went wrong in matters of language

Extract

Martin Joos once said: “In matters of language, Chao never goes wrong,” or words to that effect. I certainly appreciate this great compliment, but in many ways which Martin has not noticed, I did go wrong quite a number of times in matters of language.

It goes without saying that in my pre-adult speech, which was of course way back in the pre-Martin Joos days, there were a number of things in which I deviated from the speech of my environment. In the form of Mandarin spoken around me retroflex initials were distinct from dental sibilants; I used dental sibilants for both. There was also final n after front vowels, but I dropped all the final n’s. Thus, when I noticed that a cat had lapped up my bowl of noodles, I exclaimed: Mhau tsy woode mieh! for Mhau chy woode miann! ‘The cat is eating my noodles!’