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I do not mean to cause offence with this question; I ask only to potentially become better acquainted with Chinese vernacular, and, I must admit, a little out of curiosity.

A politically incorrect and borderline racist way for an English speaker to stereotype the sound of spoken Chinese is "ching chong ching chong" or variant thereof.

Do the Chinese have an equivalent standard gibberish for impersonating English speakers or other westerners?

Mike Chamberlain
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  • Interesting question, but I can't recall any -- maybe there're some for Japanese speakers. – Stan Mar 23 '14 at 14:16
  • I am aware of some gibberish that do other Asian languages, as well as those do Chinglish or Hinglish, but not any for standard UK or US English. – NS.X. Mar 23 '14 at 19:46
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    叽哩哇啦 maybe? Usually means speaking loudly, but can also refer to someone talking in an incomprehensible language (to an outsider, they are simply shouting out nonsense). But this is not specific to any language and is not particularly offensive. – deutschZuid Mar 24 '14 at 05:52
  • I can't think of any. Maybe it's because most syllables in Chinese begins and ends with vowel, which makes it hard to imitate English with Chinese. But we do imitate how foreigners speak Chinese, and sometimes in an offensive way. – arax Mar 24 '14 at 10:35
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    Care to describe how that would sound @AlexSu? – Mike Chamberlain Mar 24 '14 at 14:05
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    @MikeChamberlain just read every word in the first tone. – Archeosudoerus Mar 26 '14 at 13:17
  • The only thing I can recall (which is rude) is 鸟语or说鸟语(may refer to all Western languages).. – Bolu Mar 26 '14 at 15:30
  • 鸟语or说鸟语 is used to mean that someone speaks foreign languages or some Chinese dialects that are totally not understandable, but it is not for imitating. For imitating foreign speakers, we just intentionally put the wrong tones on the characters in a sentence. But this is only for fun, not offending at all. – 孤影萍踪 Mar 26 '14 at 19:48
  • The closest I have heard (as Alex Su says) is friends imitating Americans speaking Chinese -- and the imitation is entirely flat of tone. – Colin McLarty Dec 05 '14 at 21:19
  • @deutschZuid I looked up 叽哩哇啦 on my Pleco which has a number of decent dictionaries bundled in it and none of them had it. I couldn't find anything with the pinyin jiliwala (minus the tones). Could it be you're thinking of 滴里嘟噜 (di1li5du1lu1)? – goPlayerJuggler Jun 13 '18 at 13:01
  • @goPlayerJuggler No, I meant 叽哩哇啦. 滴里嘟噜 is to talk in a quiet and secretive manner, opposite to what 叽哩哇啦 means. Just google it really. First result: http://www.zdic.net/c/d/72/115829.htm – deutschZuid Jun 28 '18 at 21:25

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Maybe it is difficult for English speakers to learn the four tones of Mandarin. When you read Chinese characters in a sentence all with a high level tone or falling tone, it sounds like a foreigner who has not mastered oral Mandarin. This phenomenon of imitating foreigners' accents always occurs in Chinese films and TV series.

Qingrong
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English as far as I know is represented by just making some crazy "lul-lul-lul" noises (I'm sorry I really don't know how to describe it -- it's the sound that sounds like "lul-lul-lul" while your tongue is being pushed out of your mouth and then brought back in again, kind of like the sounds babies make)....

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I've heard Sichuan people say "剥了壳壳吃米米" to make fun of the way Japanese people speak (the phrase itself does have meaning too though - it's just unrelated to the topic)...

Mou某
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It's rare nowadays since most educated Chinese people can speak English more or less. In China, English class starts from junior high school. And it is mandatory for a person to get junior high school education at least. Some parents even teach their kids English in kindergarten.

Even when people with less English education try to impersonate English speaker, they are actually speaking simple but legit English phrase like "Yes sir. No sir. Madam. Thank you. I love you." I can only recall some expression used in the generation of my grandparents (now 80/90 years old) referring English writing as "豆芽脚脚" (the tail section of beam sprouts).

No offense, but English is not that hard comparing to Chinese.

However, some people do imitate how foreigners speak Chinese.

AKFish
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