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I've been pronouncing 'Qingdao' wrong for months and my Chinese coworker finally corrected me
I was talking about my trip to Shandong province at lunch yesterday and said 'king-dow' instead of 'ching-dow'. My coworker from Beijing gently pointed it out after I'd said it three times. I realized I'd been reading the pinyin 'q' like an English 'k' this whole time. Has anyone else had a specific Chinese word they totally butchered before learning the right way?
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king.kevin1d ago
Honestly people get way too hung up on perfect pronunciation. The whole point of language is to be understood, and if you say "king-dow" in an English conversation, everyone knows what city you mean. It's not like you're ordering in a restaurant there. This constant nitpicking just makes people scared to even try. My buddy calls it "Peking" like the old style and guess what, his trips to China go just fine.
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