标题: Jesse Appell 艾杰西 [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 9-29-2015 17:25 标题: Jesse Appell 艾杰西 Jessica Myers, An Ambassador of Laughs; Newton mn hones craft, bridges cultures in China. Boston Globe, Sept 26, 2015 (front page). https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts ... DMj7Vx6L/story.html
Note:
(a) "Jesse Appell launches his Chinese comedy routines with a nod to — what else — Boston accents. 'As a kid I wondered where all the "r"s go,' he tells camera-snapping audiences in fluent Mandarin. 'Then I moved to Beijing, and I discovered they were here the whole time.' Get it? Probably not. But in a city whose residents are known for the “r” sounds in their speech, he earns an appreciative laugh.' "
(i) Boston accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_accent
(section 1.1 non-rhoticity)
Loss of "r" in English (spelling and pronunciation) first "appear in the early 15th century" -- before English set up colonies in North America. So Boston accent is the same as those in British and Australian English. Most of (the rest of ) US and Canada speak rhotic English.
-- yet "ˈhär-vərd" in the rest of US. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harvard
(iii) Where in US nowadays do people speak non-rhotic English? See rhoticity in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
(section 3.2 United States: map (including Savannah, Georgia and Norfolk, Virginia)
(iv) Beijing dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_dialect
(section 3 Phonology: érhuà 儿化)
(v) Back in Taiwan, I had only a face-to-face contact with a Beijinger who was a history teacher when I was in the middle school. (I could only tell her Beijing pronunciation sounded musical.) So I am clueless about 儿化.
(b) "Then he discovered something that brought him back to his days at Newton North High School — a bilingual improv troupe."
Its corresponding noun an verb are improvisation and improvise.
(c) "Appell’s notoriety began with a video. He and a few friends shot a takeoff on 'Gangnam Style' called 'Laowai Style,' a Chinese slang word used to describe foreigners."
(d) "On a damp Saturday morning, Appell walked past a giant Mao Zedong statue and into the Beijing University of Chemical Technology 北京化工大学. For the past three years, he has come here for weekly lessons in xiangsheng, a Chinese performance art from the Qing Dynasty also known as 'crosstalk.' The discipline resembles Abbott and Costello, with elaborate word plays, puns, songs, and literary references."
(i) Abbott and Costello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_and_Costello
(ii) Costello is an Irish surname.
(e) "Appell’s voice grew deeper and his eyebrows flared as he embellished a routine. Ding Guangquan, the instructor"
(i) flare (vi):
"2b (1) : to become suddenly excited or angry —usually used with up
* * *
3: to open or spread outward <the pants flare at the bottom>" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flare
(ii) 丁广泉和他的洋徒弟们 Crosstalk Artist Ding Guangquan and His Foreign Apprentices. China Radio International (CRI), Dec 7, 2011. http://english.cri.cn/7106/2011/12/07/102s670520.htm
(f) "Appell is a rarity who interacts in both worlds * * * Half of his income last year came from Chinese-language performances at colleges in the United States."
(g) "An awkward silence fell over the crowd when Appell tried a joke about his two gay fathers. He kept going. His US 'gaydar' malfunctions here, he said, because he’s used to looking for pink shirts, fancy hair, and flirtatious speech. That “doesn’t work in China because all the Taiwanese are like that.' The room erupted in his largest laugh of the night."
(h) “A joke about the Ferguson, Mo riots and race relations bombed. Another riff on interracial dating met silence.”
(i) bomb (vi): "to fall flat : FAIL"
(ii) riff (n; probably by shortening & alteration from refrain; First Known Use: 1935): "a distinct variation : TAKE <a disturbing…riff on the Cinderella story — Daria Donnelly>" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/riff