What language is being spoken here?

June 20, 2024 8:43 AM

What Chinese language is being spoken in this audio clip?

Here is a clip recorded in a takeaway in New York. What language is being spoken here? Mandarin? Cantonese?

Would the clip pass for a UK restaurant or is there something particular that makes it sound like the US (apart from the American customers)?

posted by run"monty to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

The sound quality is pretty bad, but it's Mandarin. Could be any takeaway in London!
posted by idlethink at 9:19 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

I heard more Cantonese than Mandarin, especially toward the end.
posted by monologish at 9:39 AM on June 20

The woman most clearly heard throughout the clip is definitely speaking Mandarin. No Cantonese anywhere. Nothing that makes it stand out as particularly American, IMO, though I have not spent much time in UK Chinese restaurants.
posted by btfreek at 9:55 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

yes, clear Mandarin by the two women at 0:33-38, the woman at 1:18-22, and the man at 1:46-48
posted by idlethink at 10:11 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Concur on 100% Mandarin, no Cantonese. It's accented (i.e. not CCTV standard), but Mandarin nonetheless. No way to tell where this is apart from the English.
posted by kschang at 10:16 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Here's another vote for Mandarin. But also, if what you're worried about is passing this off as the UK rather than the US, I'd probably be more concerned with what sounds like a phone ringing at 1:00.
posted by mhum at 11:06 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

The way one woman says "Right?" around the 45 second mark sounded American. That plus the NA phone ring makes it seem like it was recorded somewhere west of the Atlantic Ocean.
posted by fiercekitten at 12:27 PM on June 20

I've never been to the UK, so I don't know what their Chinese restaurants sound like, but the spoken parts are fairly indistinct. I hear snippets of Mandarin and of Toisan (related to Cantonese) but I could only tell when I put my headphones on and closed my eyes.
posted by advicepig at 1:17 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]

Hearing Toisan (also called Taishanese and Hoisan-wah) could be a useful clue. That dialect is spoken in a lot of Chinese diaspora communities.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 3:35 PM on June 20

Interesting, I can't distinguish any Toisan but it's not a topolect I'm familiar with. (I do understand Cantonese, and I don't hear that). But if it is Toisan/Taishanese that would tend to suggest a specifically US context and not a UK one; see Hsu 2001.
posted by idlethink at 3:39 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]

It doesn’t sound British to me. It’s not that we don’t have places that sound like this, but there is something about the dishes clinking away, the phone, the cooking noises, the spatial echo, that all comes together to say American diner in my mind. Further, the archetypical Chinese takeaways in the UK are generally a small counter, often with a wall behind, shielding customers from the kitchen. (For instance.) If you are trying to capture that kind of thing, I don’t think this audio does it.
posted by spibeldrokkit at 5:08 AM on June 21

The audio is clearly muddled and may be made up of several sourced layered upon each other, but growing up speaking Toisanese and having studied Mandarin in college, I hear a bit of both, but when it's muddy, I really can't tell what's going on. I can clearly hear a short clip about something being dirty in Toisanese around 0:34. Mandarin doesn't have any phonemes like "lat tat". But again, this Chinese American wouldn't know it wasn't correct for UK takeaway.
posted by advicepig at 6:35 AM on June 21

I'm Canadian, I don't speak Chinese at all. On a first listen it just sounded like a Chinese restaurant with no major identifying regional details.

On a close listen, I think I heard a native English speaking woman say "Thank you" with a North American accent near the beginning. Her accent could be Canadian or American, not British.

And then at around 39 seconds I can hear a man say something like "How's the spicy crispy chicken". He is definitely North American, not British. He does not sound Canadian (too drawly), although you could probably get away with pretending it's in Canada if needed. But he sounds American for sure.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:02 AM on June 21

In general, most Chinese takeaways in the UK would historically be filled with Cantonese speakers, not Mandarin, due to the close ties with HK during the colonial rule and also recent influx.

There is a growing population of Mandarin speakers from China, concentrated in some areas especially around major universities, or Canary Wharf or Aldgate in East London. But on the whole, they tend to be young, affluent, and would usually not be working or running an ordinary 'Chinese' takeaway. The restaurants serving this population are generally hip noodle shops and modern eateries.

But to be fair, the audio is not very good, so I personally couldn't tell either Mandarin or Cantonese being spoken, and I speak a very basic kindergarden level of both languages. Obviously I am not an expert by any means, but if you said this was from a UK takeaway, I wouldn't question you too much.
posted by moiraine at 8:28 AM on June 21 [1 favorite]

Okay, after having heard this clip for the second time, and having closed my eyes, I can definitely hear Mandarin spoken at the end. But I needed a lot of focus to hear it, as there was a lot of other noise and distractions.
posted by moiraine at 8:33 AM on June 21 [1 favorite]

Did not hear any Toisan-wah. Toisanese is "similar" to Cantonese, in that you may recognize 25-50% if you speak Cantonese. I didn't hear ANY Cantonese, just Mandarin.
posted by kschang at 1:19 PM on June 22 [1 favorite]