Listening to Yingelishi

Listening to Yingelishi was a thought-provoking experience.  Not because of the process of deriving poetry through translation, but because of the reference this process makes to the idea of a "second language": specifically, the function of English as a second language.

Listening to the ambiguous sounds that could function as both Chinese and English, (I thought of optical illusions wherein depth is confused--the perspective functions as embedded and embossed), a thought that struck me was how English is learned by those who are not native speakers.

I know that when speakers of Hindi learn English, they relate sentence structures and, more importantly, the sound of words back into English.  One's first language becomes a point of reference to facilitate the learning of a second language.

This phenomenon is what gives rise to the Indian "accent," the Chinese "accent" and so on ...

In Yingelishi, this is referred to very directly, wherein the tones belong to the Chinese language and yet we can hear English.  But I had the privilege of visiting Beijing in 2009 and when people spoke English, the tones belonged to the Chinese language, yet the people spoke English.

Prashast Thapan