Another minor but interesting detail is that Joy is not fluent in Mandarin and speaks it with a heavy accent. However, Jobu Tupaki's Mandarin (2 lines in total, when she commented on how cute Evelyn and Waymond are) is perfect like a native speaker. They really paid attention to little things like this to show how Jobu Tupaki is encompassing all versions of Joy.
Realistically she shouldn't have a heavy accent, as that is something you pick up when you are still a baby. It's vocabulary and sentence structure that people struggle with when they have grown up around a language but aren't fluent in it
i was so happy as a native canto speaker to see it represented in a western film! so much of chinese in films is mandarin, so to hear cantonese being used, especially in the way it’s blended seamlessly into english to be “chinglish”, was really special to me as that’s exactly how i speak with my family.
Cantonese cinema is a huge, HUGE deal in the history of film. I first pursued a higher education with hopes of working in the world of movies and shit and in almost every class, you spent half the curriculum going over Hong Kong's techniques and skills utilized. It all comes to a head with the last golden age of Chinese film, 90s Jackie Chan movies and Stephen Chow movies, which can be termed "kung fu films" but are always so, so much more to the point they will encapsulate the beginnings of black and white Hollywood while doing something completely new, unique, and revolutionary
Cinema is the only place I hear a lot of foreign languages, Cantonese in particular. It was a blast hearing them code-switch so casually with a language I rarely get to experience
@@johnnycashew9101 + spiralling&poetry EEAAO is not only a love letter to Michelle, but also a homage to Hong Kong Cinema/Cantonese Cinema. Gung Fu/Martial Arts, zany comedies, (many predating Stephen Chow's repertoire, like brilliant Maggie Cheung's 1987 "Sister Cupid") + hot dog fingers (from the 1991 "Dances w Dragon", starring Sharla Cheung + Andy Lau) all came from that prolific city. Daniel Kwan had stated multiple times, that he was reared on Hong Kong Cinema.
@spiralling&poetry Many Hong Kongers speak what I would refer to as "Cantolish" (your chinglish), or they would frequently use the English word, instead of Canto one, in the middle of their sentence/phrase.
God, this is one of the best movies ever made. Took less than 40 days to shoot, only had a 5 person editing team and was made for under 25 million I believe. Extremely impressive and makes me love the movie more which I thought was impossible.
The constant switching between Mandarin and English in the beginning took my breath away when I first watched the movie. It was the first time I ever saw an accurate representation of two bilingual people communicating in their two languages.
That’s how I speak at times haha - I can mix English together with Malay and one of these three Chinese dialects (Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese), all in one sentence! 😂
That's kinda how we speak back home. Not to mention the addition of south asian languages too. Tan Sri (michelle yeoh) would have no trouble pulling it off.
Im singaporean, so is my parents. But they are more chinese dominant as most of my grandparents are mainly from china while I'm more english dominant. And like in the movie, we communicate by switching english and chinese back and forth effortlessly like it's the most natural thing to do.
One thing I found interesting was how each character’s fluency varied depending on which universe they belonged to; most notably Waymond and GongGong’s Alpha counterparts spoke exclusively in English, a decision which I believe was very intentional. I think it was done partly to make the Alpha counterparts more one-dimensional/archetypal/accessible, whereas the “original” versions are meant to be more holistic/grounded/opaque. The Alphas are essentially exaggerated versions of their original versions who speak candidly and urgently about their life philosophies, giving Evelyn insight into the originals’ interiority, and the exclusive use of English facilitates this.
So glad someone else spotted this. I love how the Alphaverse counterparts are essentially characters from a Saturday morning cartoon. Their hyper competence coupled with their uncomplicated worldview are initially appealing, but as the story progresses we begin to see how they cannot really hold up to reality
Another blink and you miss it moment -- Alpha Joy's one line of Chinese dialogue was spoken fluently. Definitely intentional as well, and contrast to the "original" Joy.
When Joy tries to tell Gonggong that Becky is her girlfriend at 5:00, she begins her sentence in Mandarin, which Evelyn finishes in Cantonese. There's code-switching between Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to English, illustrating the increasing marginalization of Cantonese and other non-Mandarin languages in the Sinophone world.
Not just that, fairly interesting details i find is if i remember correctly, Evelyn talks to Waymond in Mandarin exclusively, which means in their household most likely speaks Mandarin, that is the reason why Joy started to talk to his grandpa in Mandarin although Gong gong only speaks Cantonese, Evelyn jump in and switch to Cantonese knowing his father speaks Cantonese... the attention to detail is awesome.
As someone who doesn't speak any Mandarin/Cantonese, I find the use of both in this film fascinating. I have to admit...I wouldn't have picked up on it if I didn't have the subtitles on which labels the dialogue! The use of them is brilliant.
@@LanguageFilm Just be aware that subtitles aren't always accurate. The subtitles for the Scarlet Johansson movie Lucy identify the language spoken by two taxi drivers as Mandarin when they're actually speaking Taiwanese. And if you can read characters, what's really interesting are the differences between the standardized Chinese of subtitles and the words actually being spoken.
I really feel that when I watch movies like Encanto or Coco - my Spanish isn’t great, but the Spanish used in the movie is pretty basic, but our daughter (5) is just starting to comprehend the concept of multiple languages and I struggle to get what she and my wife (who speaks no Spanish) are missing from what I understand. My wife’s a lawyer and when we watch Better Call Saul there’s a similar dynamic - I’m clueless as to the nuances of the ethics rules.
The multilingualism in the movie is perfect. Written Chinese is one language, but Cantonese and Mandarin are two mutually unintelligible spoken languages/tongues. The grandfather only speaks Cantonese. He apparently refuses to speak both Mandarin and English. Raymond speaks Mandarin with a heavy accent that clearly shows that he doesn’t know Cantonese and he learned Mandarin in order to communicate with Evelyn. 🥰 This is probably why he flip flops from Mandarin to English when he’s stressed, because both are foreign languages to him. Evelyn speaks more Mandarin than Cantonese now, probably from all those years with Raymond. Joy speaks Mandarin with an American and uncertain accent. We don’t see any other Chinese families so she likely learned very limited Chinese only from her parents. She’s worrying not just about whether she’s speaking Mandarin correctly because her Mandarin comes passed down mostly from a couple of Mandarin as second-language speakers, but also whether her non-Mandarin-speaking grandfather can comprehend what she’s saying in her dubious Mandarin. Evelyn is the only person who can switch between all three spoken languages, albeit, in a bit of a frazzled way. I totally empathize with Joy, where, without consuming lots of Chinese media, I wouldn’t be able to speak Mandarin confidently because i know I’m learning mandarin from my parents and I know that my parent’s mandarin pronunciation and vocabulary are not ideal, and although everyone should be able to understand mandarin as a common tongue, my grandparents can’t reply in Mandarin, so I’m heavily dependent on my mom to translate. Also ratacooie is absolutely something that would happen. Ratacooie sounds about right. You got it eventually, didn’t you? I have 1000 things more pressing than to take the time to memorize the correct pronunciation of a word I’ll probably only ever use once. The language experience in the movie made the plot truly immersive.
It’s actually not that much different as you think. You can easily pick up the other if you know either one. I’m a cantonese speaker, never taught mandarin but I can speak mandarin too after hearing enough of it being spoken in drama
They are not two languages. Like linguistically, they are two different dialects of the same language, Chinese. I speak Mandarin, but as a southerner, my dialect isn't that different from Cantonese, so after years of watching Hong Kong TV series, I can understand most of it.
Wait, if Waymond speak heavily accented Mandarin(as you say, as a second language), doesn't speak Cantonese, and speaks accented English, can we tell what is his native language?
I'm Malaysian, I'm a fan of Michelle Yeoh and I absolutely love this movie. In Malaysia, it's absolutely normal to be bilingual and multilingual and many everyday conversations contain more than one language. It's also normal for my grandparents' generation to not know English or Malay (our national language) and just speak in dialects. I, like Joy, am the generation that grew up modern and with the internet. I'd say English is my main / dominant language, my Malay is fair and my Mandarin is poor. My Cantonese and Hokkien (Chinese dialects) are non-existent. My parents are somewhere in between. They have a good grasp of both worlds. So when it happened in the movie, I didn't think much of it cuz it just looked like normal life to me. But you're right. The fact that they kept it in gave an authenticity and groundedness to the situation. The fact that I identified with it immediately shows it really did convey the culture and tension and language/culture barriers. I am so so happy Michelle Yeoh and this movie won so many Oscars. One of my favourite films of all time now.
@@Robin-u5n Ya, there are different segments of society. I have a lot of friends who grew up in Chinese Vernacular school so their Mandarin is very strong and they consume a lot of Chinese language media. Due to an accident when I was 7, I was taken out of Chinese Vernacular School and ended up in our National School which is primarily in Malay and English.
I don’t think the pronoun mixup was intended to be read as passive aggressive, I think it’s more so meant to highlight that Evelyn isn’t entirely fluent in English yet. My Chinese friend who’s also not very fluent in English has the same struggle and often mixes up he/she, it’s a very common mistake for Mandarin speakers learning English
I can see that interpretation for sure. I would agree with you if Joy's sexuality didn't later turn out to be a key issue between mother and daughter. There's a reason the exchange is in the script and overtly shown to the audience...now, the lines could be there just to demonstrate that Evelyn has limited English proficiency...but the fact that it just happens to be regarding an issue that we find out later is point of contention between mother and daughter leads me to conclude it's a microaggression. Especially given the later scene where Evelyn's not-full-acceptance is conveyed through her word choice and language ("good friend"). So that brief snippet of dialogue in the kitchen winds up doing two things: highlighting Evelyn's English proficiency AND how she reacts to Becky...which is GREAT screenwriting!
@@LanguageFilm I agree the scene serves two purposes, but I still think that the pronoun mixup was not meant to be read as passive aggressive or as something Evelyn did intentionally. Yes, for sure Evelyn’s choice to call Becky a “good friend” was absolutely intentional, the delivery of the line is slow and deliberate, and earlier she expresses reluctance to tell her father they are girlfriends because he’s from a “different generation”. In contrast, in the kitchen scene I don’t believe there’s anything that would indicate that the pronoun mixup was in any way intentional. Quite the opposite actually, we see Evelyn rushing around in this scene, busy and distracted, her words are jumbled and she makes many grammar mistakes several times. Evelyn complains about the difficulty of English having separate gender specific pronouns, and says how Mandarin is much simpler in that regard. I think Evelyn complaining about this, and the script having this line of explanation (that both “he” and “she” are both just “tā” in spoken Mandarin) exists to show the audience that Evelyn is more comfortable with Mandarin than English, while also informing the audience who may not know that gendered pronouns are a difficult part of the English language for native Mandarin speakers who are learning English to grasp. So yes while after the pronoun mixup further discussion in the kitchen reveals more of Evelyn’s opinion on her daughter’s relationship (but there are more scenes that do a better job showing us that) I don’t think that’s the primary purpose of the scene. Ultimately I think this scene serves the purpose of showing the language barrier between mother & daughter, and how this further keeps them apart. Evelyn would prefer to speak in Mandarin, as her English isn’t fluent. But Joy prefers to speak in English, as her Mandarin isn’t fluent. The two of them having no common ground on a language they can both speak fluently leads to miscommunications and bumps in the road that otherwise wouldn’t happen, which is what this scene demonstrates. It’s a great theme for the film, that whether they speak in English or Chinese, their communication is still broken (both literally and figuratively!)
@@blue1584 I have to agree that it does have microagression undertones(at the very least) because on that scene, Evelyn says something like "the way you two are dressed, I'm not the only one calling him he" and then she corrects herself, but she didn't correct the "Him", she corrected the "He", meaning she totally intended to refer to Becky as a man in the first part of that sentence, and her inability to use the correct pronoun is related to her reluctance to accept Joy's sexuality. And see that she doesn't make that mistake with anyone else in the rest of the movie. I edited my original comment to correct a few things and add a little more on why I do think it was a microagression.
@@maggiemcfly5267 I think the fact that Evelyn keeps correcting herself shows us very clearly that she’s trying to use the correct pronouns, but it’s confusing for her. If she was doing it on purpose she wouldn’t be making the active effort to continuously correct herself. Again, there’s a reason why there’s a line in the film dedicated to Evelyn comparing the difficulty of English vs Chinese pronouns, so if it was on purpose there would be no reason to include this line. What she says next is “And (with) the way you two are dressed, I’m sure I’m not the only one calling him (a) he, I mean her (a) him” Evelyn makes a few grammar mistakes here, but it’s clear that it’s not her intent to call Becky a guy. She was essentially saying that Becky ‘dresses like a guy’ so might get mistaken as one. It’s established in the film that she doesn’t like Becky’s clothes or hairstyle, but she knows Becky is a girl and is trying to get the pronouns right. She doesn’t make any mistakes with Becky’s pronouns for the rest of the film, which is long before she fully accepts Joy & Becky’s relationship (since that doesn’t happen until the very end). This shows that the pronoun mixup is a language issue, which is separate from the acceptance issue which doesn’t get resolved until much later.
Yeah I agree. My parents have lived in Canada for 40 plus years and still can’t get he/she right. Nothing to do with attitudes toward queerness for them, just a struggle to use gendered pronouns when their first language doesn’t have them.
As someone who grew up very much like Joy, bilingual English dominant with a bilingual Mandarin dominant mother, I wouldn't call how Waymond and Evelyn speak to each other as code-switching since they are not switching between the languages to suit each others preferences. They are just talking the way that most Chinese speaking immigrants I know do: using whichever words come to mind first. For example, my mom who immigrated during the 80s uses English for a lot of technology words since they came to be after she moved to the states. I know there's not universal agreement that code-switching has to have those motivations but to me there's a distinct difference between how they switch languages with each other versus how they code-switch to and about Dierdre. I do agree however that her speaking in a mix of languages as og Evelyn does represent her lack of clarity in who she is at the beginning of the movie. To me the most interesting example of Evelyn's varied language usage is that she says "laundromat" in English as og Evelyn but says it in Chinese as movie star Evelyn. Again though, I think this example just shows a very well-executed depiction of how immigrants speak than a huge reveal about the character. From my point of view, Evelyn's usage of "he" for Becky is ambiguous. It doesn't feel explicitly passive aggressive. My mom has used "he" for me countless times as an honest mistake so I would imagine that from Joy's perspective it is also ambiguous, and that ambiguity adds to the frustration cause she doesn't know how angry she has a right to be. Evelyn calling Becky a "good friend" to Gong Gong is definitely explicitly to hide their sexual orientation though. A small aside: it is very unlikely that Joy would not know the Chinese word for "girlfriend". For me it felt quite forced in order to give the opening for Evelyn to interrupt with the explicitly aggressive "good friend" Another interesting thing is that Joy as Jobu Tupaki speaks better Chinese than og Joy which I feel is meant to demonstrate her power
Yep. Same here, born and raised American, but I am very obviously Cantonese. When I speak the limited Cantonese I do with my family, even the native speakers will just jump between English and Cantonese as they see fit haha
I thought it was weird Joy was speaking to Gong Gong in Mandarin when he only seems to speak Cantonese. Unless he understands Mandarin but only speaks Cantonese.
@@jonathanmong4927 No, she was speaking Mandarin when she started the sentence ("She is my...") that Evelyn finished in Cantonese ("...good friend."). It's quite believable that Gung Gung understands Mandarin; it is common for native Cantonese speakers to have also learned Mandarin, or grown up with lots of exposure to Mandarin even if they don't speak it. It is much less common for people who grew up speaking Mandarin to also know Cantonese. Yet it is completely realistic that, even though Joy couldn't speak to her grandfather in Cantonese, she could still tell her mother was using the wrong word ("good friend" instead of "girlfriend"), because Joy would have been exposed to Cantonese around the house, and "good" and "girl" and "friend" are basic words that sound similar in Mandarin and Cantonese.
This is excellent. It goes to show how universal the theme of fragmentation is when the film manages to approach it from so many real angles: ADHD, unfulfilled dreams, multiculturalism and immigration, generational divides, and of course, multilingualism. It's incredible that it can all come together to fulfil a narrative yet it's also just a regular experience for so many people
Jumbled up code switching is quite normal for countries where speaking 2 or more languages/dialects is normal, eg Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia and India, Michelle was just channelling her Malaysian roots.
What's really amazing to me - a person from Hong Kong who grew up speaking Cantonese and English as first languages and Mandarin as a second language - is how the opening scene so fluently switches between all three, in a way that's very organic and realistic.
One of the directors not only came from a multilingual home (Raised in Massachusetts by a father from Hong Kong and a mother from Taiwan), but also is diagnosed with ADHD, so that opening scene is reflective of both those things, with the switching of languages reflecting the juggling act of trying to focus on everything, everywhere, all at once. The switching between languages foreshadows the switching between universes, which itself is a metaphor for the experience of ADHD. These themes all mesh together beautifully.
As an immigrant from Peru who moved when I was very young, I loved how the film depicted the code switching and Joy's loss of grasp on her native language. I also started learning Turkish and they also have no distinction between "he/his" and "her/hers"
i'm so glad there's a video on this! I grew up in a household that used both mandarin and cantonese, and this is the first time I've seen this depicted realistically and SO WELL in an Asian American film (that I know of at least)!! the code switching was excellent and seamless, not at all forced, and something I could totally see my family doing. You can tell in so many movies that try to use mandarin and cantonese that the translations are not done by a true native speaker. Ke's wife Echo, the translator, did such an incredible job on this film and I think it's the use of the languages in such a natural way that truly hit me hard-- my favorite movie yet.
I’m not Chinese, but I’m a second gen immigrant and didn’t know I needed to see code switching in media. I would always think I’m terrible at my second language, but this is actually a common experience.
Cantonese is used SO SO rare nowadays in Hollywood films. I’m so glad they incorporated both Mandarin and Cantonese together so beautifully! The last time I recalled it in a big film was Rush Hour 2 when they were in HK. I could be wrong but that was the last major movie I can recall rn lol
You must be quite young. Rush Hour 2 was one of the *first* times Cantonese was used in Hollywood. If you want to hear Cantonese on the screen, watch HK cinema.
@@Duiker36 Yeah if you read my comment I mentioned for hollywood films it was rare. 90s HK movies had Chow Sing Sing and Chow Yun Fat dominate screens be it action or comedy.
My favorite moment in *Everything Everywhere All at Once* was Waymond in the universe where they never married saying to Evelyn that "in another life, I would be happy just doing laundry and taxes with you." It means so much because Evelyn WAS in that universe with that Waymond who just wanted to make her smile, laugh and love, but she didn't appreciate him. Instead, she wanted to be in the universe where she was rich and successful, and where Waymond was, too, even though they would have no *JOY* (their daughter).
It was really nice for once to see actual codeswitching for once in a film but I think its important to also remember that its not just a narrative device sometimes. I get how there are parallels between some of the themes in the movie and the use of codeswitching may exemplify that but in reality, that is just how we speak. It is not chaotic, messy, or absurd. It is just what it is. Normal.
not only that, but also the fact that it's how chinese people who immigrated would actually speak - mixing both languages together in the same sentence. it's very real, almost too real for a movie.
Growing in Vancouver in the 80's and 90's, it is common to speak Cantonese, Mandarin and English with your friends (not necessarily with family members). I think the use of Mandarin is to appeal to more audience and to pay tribute to Daniel Kwan's HK father and Taiwanese mother. Daniel grew up learning and listening to all three languages. Both Michelle and Ke have rather strong Canto-accent when they speak Mandarin. The grandfather speaks decent Cantonese in the film--and also his early life in HK. I appreciate their effort in the film.
Amazing analysis! Thank you for pointing out these details. I'm not fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese, so it's nice to know how much effort was put into this movie.
This is an incredible observation and analysis. I never thought that the frantic code switching (great term) in the intro was setting up the rest of the film. Also knowing Gong Gong is the only one speaking Cantonese adds so much context. This is truly my favorite film.
The first time I watched this movie my jaw was on the floor because I never expected in a billion years to hear such flawless Chinglish in a Hollywood production. I say "flawless" as in accurate to my own real-life experience, as a first-generation Chinese-American. The delivery in this movie is so natural that I almost don't even notice whenever they switch
It's incredible how even watching just short clips while listening to your analysis entirely overwhelms me with emotion. This is such an incredible film. Thank you for helping me appreciate it even more!
I watch a lot of Korean dramas. English is sprinkled through the dialog like salt, despite the shows being for a domestic audience. I recall one show in particular where a present day Korean time-travels to the Joseon period and their 'modern Korean' is almost unintelligible to the ancestors. At the opposite end, English speakers are often portrayed as gauche and posturing egotists ignorant of basic social norms.
@@blue1584 People in the Philippines end up being a jumbled mess due to all the different cultures and languages the 7000+ islands the country has. In addition to the myriad of local languages that dont always have overlapping understanding, English is a considered a national language, and we have a lot of immigrants and "fans" of other cultures thanks to our proximity to other countries around Asia; China, Japanese, and Korean pop culture more often than not. Sometimes its a joke where, if you get someone from the North, someone from the Capital, and someone from the south, theres no overlap in the Filipino language they'll use, and end up just speaking english to communicate.
@@blue1584 Not really. I am not sure if you know, but the Joseon period the show is portraying is probably 500 years ago. A language significantly changes throughout 500 years. English loanwords is one way, but words and the language itself in general changes significantly as well
@@03e-210a There’s over 42,000 loanwords in Korean, with new ones being added all the time. I’m not saying loanwords were the only change to the Korean language because of course it wasn’t, but it’s a pretty significant addition imo
Btw - you called it codeswitching, but it might be more accurate to call this translanguaging (aka trawsieithu) - utilising the whole linguistic repertoire from multiple languages in a single situation rather than code switching which happens between different situations/contexts. It could also be called diglossia, but thats also something else a little.
I'm not bilingual at all (I speak a tiny bit of Spanish) but even I will occasionally just throw a Spanish word in when I can't easily think of the English one for whatever reason. It's SO much more common than the way most people portray bilingualism. I LOVED that the second I saw it, the way they just switched back and forth. AND the way they used English to hide discussions from Gong Gong. Awesome. I love everything about this movie but as a linguistics geek I'm excited to appreciate this even more!
I laughed so hard at the rock scene. Can't remember being so impressed with film making in quite a while. It's amazing that they were able to tell good jokes with no help of inflection and such limited access to timing. On a side note I've never had the pleasure to read mutually unintelligible before. Simultaneously a mouthful while sort of rolling off the tongue. Real tasty use of language! Thanks!
Thanks for an interesting video that adds a lot of "extras" to an already jam-packed film, *and* inspired so many detailed comments, that broaden both the discussion and the film. Altho I am an english speaker (only), I am reminded of my father's comments about the differences between Italian and Sicilian. (He was born in NYC in the mid-1920's but did not speak English until age 5.)
I haven’t even watch the movie but I love when language barrier’s exist and make sense even with different accents, as a polyglot my biggest pet peeve is how in most movies they all speak fluent English just with a different accent no matter if they come from the most undeveloped country, another planet or even another universe (yes marvel I’m looking at you)
thank you for clarifying that evelyn is speaking both mandarin and cantonese. sometimes for western audiences it's hard to tell both languages apart and tend to generalise it while watching this movie. and yes, evelyn is constantly switching between three languages, english, mandarin and catonese, and as a trilingual person speaking all three languages i've never related to a character more.
My favourite bit is the language code-switching just before Evelyn tells Gong Gong that Becky is Joy's girlfriend. In the leadup to that when Evelyn speaks, it is in the preferred language of the listener: "You may see in her all of your greatest fears squeezed into one person" to Gong Gong in Cantonese. "But she turned out to be stubborn, aimless, a mess. Just like me." to Joy in English. "The universe gave her someone kind, patient, forgiving to make up for all she lacks." while looking at Waymond, speaking in Mandarin.
As someone who grew up in an environment with all 3 languages, it's refreshing to see a film represent multilingualism in such a natural, non-pandering manner. Just feels like I was back at another big family gathering, with all the code-switching going on.
The one thing I think you missed is how, when Evelyn finds the divorce papers and talks to Waymond about it she starts in Mandarin (or Cantonese, I'll be honest I didn't realise they were speaking 2 different languages) and then pauses, the screen moves to include her father and she switches to broken English. Just the frustration and heartbreak in her voice when she's forced to have an incredibly difficult conversation in English is amazing.
I heard in an interview with Ke Huy Quan that his wife, Echo, was a big help in sorting out and correcting the use of Mandarin and Cantonese in the script and while filming. She's apparently the most trilingual. Michelle Yeoh (from Malaysia) says she wishes she spoke Cantonese more fluently, but she had to learn her lines almost phonetically when she was in Hong Kong films. James Hong is a native Mandarin speaker although he was supposed to be a Cantonese speaker as the grandfather in the movie, and they sometimes had to point out that he was speaking Mandarin instead of Cantonese while filming. It must have been very confusing for the directors, especially Daniel Scheinert, who are not Chinese speakers. I imagine Daniel Kwan is something like Joy.
I’m a Chinese American who’s family was raised here, so my immediate family doesn’t speak a lick of Chinese, but my grandparents are fluent in it and it’s always fascinating how my grandma and grandpa switch between the two on the dime
Thank you for focusing on language in EEAAO. I noticed the same as you. There is so much stuffed into this great work that, as yet, has not come to light in public discourse, but I'm sure it will over time. Of the many wonderful things in this masterwork, I was deeply moved by the, for want of a better non-existent word, humanity, my personal situation is rather monkish, isolated, alone, secluded, solitary in a city of 8-10 million sheeple: Londongrad (London). The love of my life suddenly and with blitzkrieg rejected and dumped me but, as the song goes, she never told me, she never said why. My altruism and unconditional love for her is permanent forever even after my death. It's part of my legacy now. It's so beautiful to have finally found the literal love of my life. The 2 years we had together was the closest I ever got to paradise. She was my angel. The moment I returned from the cinema after seeing EEAAO I immediately ordered the dvd sent to her. I can only hope that she realises the film in relationship to me and her. The rest of the film relates to her own mither/daughter relationship as well as her parents and to the Asian input. It may not bring us back together but I wanted to say in a different universe I just wanted to do laundry and taxes with her. We have the kind. As a life-long beta male with prime occasionally thrown in and rare tongue-in-cheek sarcastic alpha nonsense thrown in, I am Waymond and Ke Huy Quan. EEAAO will keep on growing as long as there's moving pictures and a REAL person fighting against disaster capitalism, evil, bullying, celebrity, fame, money, and stupid idiots like a Trump, Putin, commercialism, neoliberalism, Fascism and tyranny, etc. Life is confusing and hard enough without all the fucking bullshit. Sapiens doesn't give a 💩 about our destruction of life, planet Earth and our impending extinction. EEAAO hit someone's nerve. Language is primitive, unsatisfactory and a failure when it tries to translate brain thought into words, phrases, sentences, libraries. It doesn't even have words or terms for all the emotions. Only serious high art music has that ability and content. The most complicated thing in the universe/multiverse/cosmos is the brain and we don't even know what consciousness is as we barely scratch the surface of the brain. 20 new discoveries are made about it every day! Free will is a myth like the Easter Bunny - biology that hasn't been discovered yet. Why work when nothing matters everything matters?
One of most interesting parts of the film is that when Gong Gong becomes Alpha Gong Gong, his English is perfect and sounds like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs!
The code switching goes even deeper, as different variations of Evelyn have more or less competency in English depending on how her life in a given timeline evolved. One of the ways we know that Evelyn Prime changed universes at the end of the movie is that, almost suddenly, her English is better than it was in the beginning: she chose a universe where the language issues had been overcome and there was greater understanding.
I did think it was strange that English was so often used to signify the more "competent" Alphaverse versions of characters taking over? Like, when alpha Gong Gong shows up, the biggest thing everyone notices is that he's suddenly fluent in English. I'm sure this was partly meant as a way to make more of the movie take place in English - I imagine an American-made movie spoken mostly in Mandarin would be a hard sell, even to A24 - but I feel like it comes with the unintended side effect of English seeming more "competent" or "intelligent". I dunno, I'm a monolingual USAmerican, so this is really an outsider's perspective that I'd love to hear some more experienced thoughts on :)
Another good one for you to analyze in the future is multilingualism in the Netflix series Into The Night. It is really fascinating to me especially this scene where these characters switch to French, pretending that it's because they're more comfortable with it, but in actuality it's to conceal information from the English speakers. A lot of other languages show up in that move for different reasons as well. I highly recommend you check it out and do a video on it.
ughh i really love how they speak in this film !! the switch between mandarin to cantonese to english is so personal to me .. esp bc michelle yeoh is malaysian and its so representative of how it is here !!!
Evelyn or Michelle Yeoh, is from multi-lingual country Malaysia. We speaks English, Chinese, Malay, Cantonese and given Michelle living in Paris, she could have know French, 5 languages! Thanks to Malaysia multicultural environment gives Michelle all these special abilities
While Evelyn and her father are Chinese dominant, most likely the reason why Joy can't speak well to her grandfather is because he speaks mainly in Cantonese, not Mandarin. There are 3 languages at play here. The code switching in this movie is impeccable and wholly authentic. Also, while Mandarin has no pronunciation difference between he/she/they, they do differentiate gender/thing with 他/她/它/祂. I think the scene where she says chinese is easier is a script thing. She would've processed Joy's girlfriend as 她 (she) in her mind, but perhaps the denial from an older generation compels her to use 他 (he) instead because Evelyn recognizes Becky as Joy's partner? [edit] On another note, when Evelyn introduces Becky as Joy's friend and not girlfriend, I think it comes from a place of love and protection. As an asian mother who understands the changing of times and the acceptance of ideals, the older generation is much more conservative and she wants to protect the relationship between Joy and her grandfather. We see her saying things like Joy is fat, and it is in that tone that we understand that she's expressing her love and concern for her daughter, but in a way that disregards Joy's feelings and emotions. This changes to full acceptance on Evelyn's part throughout the movie, and when she finally introduces Becky as Joy's girlfriend, it is the acceptance of her daughter's feelings and the rebellion against traditional notions of relationship and (I guess) oppression from her father's control throughout her life.
Yeah, I thought the same thing re: "good friend" vs. "girlfriend". In the Japanese American community, especially with the older generation, the significant other, even if engaged, would be referred to as a "good friend". When I saw that in the film, I figured it was the same for Chinese culture, and interpreted Joy as trying to appease her traditional father and then later when saying "girlfriend" fully embrace a different, more progressive way of life she found in the States. It's showing acceptance but in an extremely subtle and culturally specific way that isn't necessarily as offensive or direct as it seems in the English translation.
Differentiating gender in written Chinese third-person pronouns is a 20th century development in the language. Mixing third-person pronouns in spoken English is extremely common among Chinese immigrants.
@@wichegirl Actually, when Evelyn introduces Becky to her father for the first time, she uses two terms for "good friend." First, she says 好朋友, which can be interpreted as significant other in a similar context to what you described. However, she quickly clarifies with a second term, 老友, which has a meaning closer to "old pal" and does not have the same interpretation, so she is definitely trying to avoid any connotation of a significant other there.
It is trilingual not bilingual. The code switching is between English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The switching between Cantonese and Mandarin is more interesting than just the Chinese/English switching.
You may be technically correct. I chose the term bilingualism b/c 1) the difference between a language and a dialect is a somewhat arbitrary distinction (a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, the saying goes) and 2) “multilingualism” is a little clunkier to use in a title. But I agree it’s technically trilingualism IF you consider mandarin and cantonese to be separate languages, which many people do not. It’s a complex topic!
@@LanguageFilm whether or not one considers them to be different languages or dialects doesn’t change the fact that they are different enough to be mutually unintelligible.
@@junethanoschurchill6750 Agreed! It all depends on your definition of language vs dialect. There’s no definite line that separates one from the other. There are rural Irish dialects I cannot understand being raised in the Southern US, yet we are considered to be speaking the same language, English. Political boundaries and historical accidents often determine what we consider separate languages vs. dialects just as much as mutual (un)intelligibility.
@@LanguageFilm Mandarin and Yue should be considered as separate _spoken_ languages. They are non-mutually intelligible with each other. Cantonese and Toisanese/Taishanese are dialects or varieties of the Yue spoken language. They are mutually intelligible, but to an extent. The name *Cantonese* is often used for the whole group of Yue dialects, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese.
@@LanguageFilm Sorry, you may want to listen to CANTONESE people when we say that we speak a different LANGUAGE. THAT is linguistic reality. Just because our CCP overlords from Beijing like to label all other Chinese languages that is non-standard Mandarin as "dialects." Don't give us this politically correct crap if your channel is called LanguageFilm. You're literally contributing to the destruction of our mother tongue & cultural identity. Thanks.
As a multilingual south East Asian (singaporean), this is how we generally speak to each other. We pepper our dialogue with 3-4 languages into a sentence.
This is highly observable in modern populations of countries that got colonized, especially the Philippines. A regular Filipino speaks about 3 languages, depends on region or generation they're from. We usually codes witch very smoothly that we weren't usually aware of it, not until that divorce topic street interview by Asian Boss channel was watched by the world.
What I liked about the bilingualism was the way that the captions flowed right into the English portions. I think the first and last words in English is also written in the captions so you can read and hear it at the same time. Maybe I was reading at the perfect pace, but it just felt so smooth.
Great introduction to code-switching and agree it's used very well in the film. The first thing that struck me about the multilingualism was how absolutely resonant and authentic it was with immigrant experiences. With that in mind, I'd say the opening argument has it the wrong way around. This movie is not about the fragmentation of reality into multiverses with the film using multilingualism to serve this theme. Rather it is about the intersection of different cultures, generations, and identities as well as the overwhelming toll it can have on mental health (i.e. EEAAO); the multilingualism is a deeply relatable example of this intersection and the film uses the fragmentation of reality into a multiverse as a metaphor that serves this intersectional theme.
Daniels listed Stephen Chow as one of their influences. Aside from his obvious cartoon and slapstick references, Chow often has a character use English words in a context where no other characters are speaking English, often to lend purposeful confusion to the scene. Also, is it just me or did Evelyn’s English improve as the movie progressed. She also changed accents, moving to a more cosmopolitan pronunciation.
This is one of those channels where the concept is so good, that I hit the subscribe button before watching any videos. And you didn't disappoint! (I'd love to see you do a Jim Jarmusch video!)
The depiction of how they use different languages is so accurate, I was amazed even just in the opening scene. It was almost like watching my own family on screen. I'm more like Joy, mostly English fluent with spotty Mandarin, while my parents, who immigrated from Taiwan, speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese.
I appreciate your video about the use of bilingualism and code switching in movies! Makes this movie more enjoyable to watch when you relate to the subject matter.
I wonder if this is intentional or interestingly coincidental. When I heard Evelyn code switch, it sounded very natural to me as that's how me and my family talk, we are second and third generational Chinese Australians
That's neat. Yes, it's a very natural phenomenon. In a screenplay, though, everything is intentional (if it's a good screenplay, that is). The choice to make the main character a "code-switcher" in a movie about "code-switching multiverses" is why I don't think it's just coincidence. But that's just my take on it, of course.
One linguistic thing I noticed The main universe, the one we are starting at, the main characters display the full range of their linguistic abilities All alpha persons speak in English exclusively And movie star universe waymond speaks in Chinese (I say chinese because I don’t know the difference between mandarin and Cantonese I’m so sorry) It’s a feature that distinguishes which version of each character we’re talking to
I´m brazilian and both my brother and I are fluent in portuguese and english, and many times while talking to each other, we´ll mix up both languages, and when I saw that in the movie (but with mandarin, cantonese and english) i was like oh my god finally! a piece of media that knows how multilingual people talk with eachother!
As Malaysians, we do code switching in our daily conversations between different dialects (Hokkien, Cantonese…) and different languages (Malay, Chinese and English) in one sentence😅. We are used to it when it comes to informal conversations. That’s why we call them “Bahasa Rojak”! (Go google up what’s a “rojak” in case you are wondering what it is)
Code switching is our common way of life, especially in Malaysia and Singapore. My Caucasian friends are fascinated that they couldn’t understand us when we were talking among ourselves but able to switch back to proper English when speaking to them. Generally we speak in English but added Chinese+dialects and Malay, whichever language makes the sentence more efficient. 😂😂😂 No proper grammar required. 😅
Very interesting points! Agreed that it could be their ways of adding complexity to already a multilayered concept. I also wanted to add that for many duolingo or trilingual person, we mix up languages a lots. I fluent in Cantonese but still add in Engligh words in between (local Hongkongers do that too), and even more so when speaking Mandarin cos it’s less fluent for me. So I just use words that are more familiar.
Bro as a daughter of an Argentine immigrant having been raised in the US I don't know any Chinese but I can still relate to speaking essentially two languages at once because either you remember or prefer the word for something in one language or the other except for me those two languages are English and Spanish
This film hit every single point to my experience. Trying to manage 3 languages at once is very complex and difficult. Trying to manage 3 cultures is difficult. This made sense to a lot of Asian immigrant families all around the world. This film actually translates to all immigrants around the world if you think about it. I don't know how these boys did it, but they did.
"joy is gay, or bisexual" 👈 I appreciated this unassuming detail in your video 👍👍 My favorite part of the movie was exactly their usage of language. Including but not limited to, unspoken language, such as body language in a fascinating combination with artistic expression.
I grew up expecting to be able to speak Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese WHILE being raised in Australia. I naturally just picked up English and can only speak Canto. I was never really taught the other two so when I was faced with the question 'why can't you speak Vietnamese/Mandarin?' I never learnt, it wasn't the primary language I was taught. Neither was Cantonese really because I live in a English speaking country with school systems that teach English, in English. I haven't seen this film, or heard of it, but hearing that they use the switch of English and Mandarin in a household, the awkward parent translating, and all the experiences, makes it all hit pretty hard.
Lol him saying that the code-switching in the start sets up the theme of split worlds is very true, but to me as a Chinese-American, there’s no chaos at all; it’s natural and smooth. That’s exactly how we speak at home.
I haven't interpreted code switching as this for many many years. Interesting. To me, code switching is now adjusting how you speak a commonly spoken language to accommodate the listener. E.g. switching from dialect to standardised English. It was funny to understand some of the Mandarin parts because some of the jokes sounded funnier understanding it than the written translation, even though they were both both. I found it interesting they actively chose to translate foreigner to white person which is a localisation rather than just translation.
I get what you mean. I've heard it applied to both language and dialects, since the difference between language and dialect is often not clear. Mandarin and Cantonese are a great example of this...some would say they're dialects of the same language, some would say they're separate languages...it all depends on your definition, and there's lots of gray area. Do you use a special term when talking about switching between languages specifically, or not?
@@LanguageFilm Well, that's code switching as you said. Your video reminded me that language code switching exists too! When I was younger I spoke another language when I moved to the UK, I would code switch all the time. As I moved into other parts of London and there was the different way of speaking, gradually my code switching only related to the different forms of English. Thanks for your video.
@@LanguageFilm The conventionally accepted set of seven spoken language groups are: Guan (Mandarin, including Beijing and Nanjing variants) Wu (including the Shanghainese and Suzhounese variants) Yue (including the Cantonese and Taishanese/Toisanese variants) Min (including the Hokkien and Fuzhounese variants) Hakka (Kejia) Xiang (Hunanese) Gan (Jiangxinese)
Thanks for sharing this interesting analysis: enjoyed this tremendously, and makes me appreciate even more - the tons of non-obvious amazing details put in by the script writers, directors, and actors in sooo many aspects of this hard-to-describe 'feel good film' 🙂🙏🏼 Just to mention: Gong Gong 公公 refers to maternal grandpa (has a similar pronunciation in Mandarin + many other Chinese dialects). There's another term for parental grandpa - Yeh Yeh 爺爺 😉 Yes, maternal/ paternal grandma has 2 different terms too... the immense richness of the Chinese language. And for those who's learning Chinese as a 2nd or 3rd language: him/ her/ it has a specific character we can use in writing in different context... 他，她，祂，牠，它 ✌🏼
Just wanna point out, as someone who grew up in a mandarin/dialect/English speaking family Gonggong likely speaks Cantonese, and understands mandarin, but doesn't speak mandarin that well. Joy, on the other hand, can probably understand mandarin, and some amount of Cantonese, but can barely speak mandarin, much less Cantonese. This is a common thing in multi-generational families where somewhere down the line, the utility of learning mandarin and English, often results in the newest generation losing their dialect (in this case, Cantonese) speaking ability.
I agree with some of the comments here saying that Evelyn introduced Becky as Joy's good friend out of protectiveness. Later in the film we see that she felt abandoned by her father because of who she loved and I interpret the 'good friend' interaction in the way that she sees Becky as Joy's partner but doesn't want to put Joy in the line of possibly getting hurt by the grandfather. Which Joy then interprets as trying to deny her identity, which is not entirely wrong either.
What's really amazing for me (among many amazing things) is that Michelle's native languages are English and Malay. She learned Cantonese and Mandarin later in her movie career.
Another minor but interesting detail is that Joy is not fluent in Mandarin and speaks it with a heavy accent. However, Jobu Tupaki's Mandarin (2 lines in total, when she commented on how cute Evelyn and Waymond are) is perfect like a native speaker. They really paid attention to little things like this to show how Jobu Tupaki is encompassing all versions of Joy.
Wait like the part right after alpha Waymond dies?
@@samxiang4669 Yes, around that part.
joy's mandarin sounds like mine. one of the most relatable parts of the film and rlly funny lmao
Ooh that's awesome!
Realistically she shouldn't have a heavy accent, as that is something you pick up when you are still a baby. It's vocabulary and sentence structure that people struggle with when they have grown up around a language but aren't fluent in it
i was so happy as a native canto speaker to see it represented in a western film! so much of chinese in films is mandarin, so to hear cantonese being used, especially in the way it’s blended seamlessly into english to be “chinglish”, was really special to me as that’s exactly how i speak with my family.
Cantonese cinema is a huge, HUGE deal in the history of film. I first pursued a higher education with hopes of working in the world of movies and shit and in almost every class, you spent half the curriculum going over Hong Kong's techniques and skills utilized.
It all comes to a head with the last golden age of Chinese film, 90s Jackie Chan movies and Stephen Chow movies, which can be termed "kung fu films" but are always so, so much more to the point they will encapsulate the beginnings of black and white Hollywood while doing something completely new, unique, and revolutionary
Cinema is the only place I hear a lot of foreign languages, Cantonese in particular. It was a blast hearing them code-switch so casually with a language I rarely get to experience
@@johnnycashew9101 + spiralling&poetry
EEAAO is not only a love letter to Michelle, but also a homage to Hong Kong Cinema/Cantonese Cinema.
Gung Fu/Martial Arts, zany comedies, (many predating Stephen Chow's repertoire, like brilliant Maggie
Cheung's 1987 "Sister Cupid") + hot dog fingers (from the 1991 "Dances w Dragon", starring Sharla Cheung
+ Andy Lau) all came from that prolific city. Daniel Kwan had stated multiple times, that he was reared on
Hong Kong Cinema.
@spiralling&poetry
Many Hong Kongers speak what I would refer to as "Cantolish" (your chinglish), or they would frequently use the English word, instead of Canto one, in the middle of their sentence/phrase.
@@maggiechan33 "Pak 架車" for "park the car".
God, this is one of the best movies ever made. Took less than 40 days to shoot, only had a 5 person editing team and was made for under 25 million I believe. Extremely impressive and makes me love the movie more which I thought was impossible.
Thanks! I agree with you…this movie is super-impressive and an inspiration for independent filmmakers in this day and age.
Oh wow, under 25M for this caliber. That is well made, budgetted ans developed! A24 ripping the profits for sure!
@Westend Greens Extortion LMFAO THEN TRY WATCHING MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS
@Westend Greens Extortion But Yeoh isn't there
@Westend Greens Extortion another thing is a critic that I have watched for some time actually finds *Cuties* a better movie than EEAAO. What??
The constant switching between Mandarin and English in the beginning took my breath away when I first watched the movie. It was the first time I ever saw an accurate representation of two bilingual people communicating in their two languages.
Evelyn is tri-lingual: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.
That’s how I speak at times haha - I can mix English together with Malay and one of these three Chinese dialects (Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese), all in one sentence! 😂
That's kinda how we speak back home. Not to mention the addition of south asian languages too. Tan Sri (michelle yeoh) would have no trouble pulling it off.
Im singaporean, so is my parents. But they are more chinese dominant as most of my grandparents are mainly from china while I'm more english dominant. And like in the movie, we communicate by switching english and chinese back and forth effortlessly like it's the most natural thing to do.
It's actually three languages - English, Mandarin, and Cantonese
One thing I found interesting was how each character’s fluency varied depending on which universe they belonged to; most notably Waymond and GongGong’s Alpha counterparts spoke exclusively in English, a decision which I believe was very intentional. I think it was done partly to make the Alpha counterparts more one-dimensional/archetypal/accessible, whereas the “original” versions are meant to be more holistic/grounded/opaque. The Alphas are essentially exaggerated versions of their original versions who speak candidly and urgently about their life philosophies, giving Evelyn insight into the originals’ interiority, and the exclusive use of English facilitates this.
Thanks very interesting! I totally missed that. Great observation.
So glad someone else spotted this. I love how the Alphaverse counterparts are essentially characters from a Saturday morning cartoon. Their hyper competence coupled with their uncomplicated worldview are initially appealing, but as the story progresses we begin to see how they cannot really hold up to reality
Another blink and you miss it moment -- Alpha Joy's one line of Chinese dialogue was spoken fluently. Definitely intentional as well, and contrast to the "original" Joy.
wow!!!
When Joy tries to tell Gonggong that Becky is her girlfriend at 5:00, she begins her sentence in Mandarin, which Evelyn finishes in Cantonese. There's code-switching between Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to English, illustrating the increasing marginalization of Cantonese and other non-Mandarin languages in the Sinophone world.
Thank you for calling them non-Mandarin LANGUAGES and not “dIaLeCtS”!!
Does it drive you crazy when a movie is set in 19th century Gwongdung but all the characters are speaking Mandarin?
Not just that, fairly interesting details i find is if i remember correctly, Evelyn talks to Waymond in Mandarin exclusively, which means in their household most likely speaks Mandarin, that is the reason why Joy started to talk to his grandpa in Mandarin although Gong gong only speaks Cantonese, Evelyn jump in and switch to Cantonese knowing his father speaks Cantonese... the attention to detail is awesome.
As someone who doesn't speak any Mandarin/Cantonese, I find the use of both in this film fascinating. I have to admit...I wouldn't have picked up on it if I didn't have the subtitles on which labels the dialogue! The use of them is brilliant.
@@LanguageFilm Just be aware that subtitles aren't always accurate. The subtitles for the Scarlet Johansson movie Lucy identify the language spoken by two taxi drivers as Mandarin when they're actually speaking Taiwanese.
And if you can read characters, what's really interesting are the differences between the standardized Chinese of subtitles and the words actually being spoken.
It’s a blessing to be able to speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese and watch this film.
I really feel that when I watch movies like Encanto or Coco - my Spanish isn’t great, but the Spanish used in the movie is pretty basic, but our daughter (5) is just starting to comprehend the concept of multiple languages and I struggle to get what she and my wife (who speaks no Spanish) are missing from what I understand. My wife’s a lawyer and when we watch Better Call Saul there’s a similar dynamic - I’m clueless as to the nuances of the ethics rules.
Feels like home haha.
The multilingualism in the movie is perfect. Written Chinese is one language, but Cantonese and Mandarin are two mutually unintelligible spoken languages/tongues. The grandfather only speaks Cantonese. He apparently refuses to speak both Mandarin and English. Raymond speaks Mandarin with a heavy accent that clearly shows that he doesn’t know Cantonese and he learned Mandarin in order to communicate with Evelyn. 🥰 This is probably why he flip flops from Mandarin to English when he’s stressed, because both are foreign languages to him. Evelyn speaks more Mandarin than Cantonese now, probably from all those years with Raymond. Joy speaks Mandarin with an American and uncertain accent. We don’t see any other Chinese families so she likely learned very limited Chinese only from her parents. She’s worrying not just about whether she’s speaking Mandarin correctly because her Mandarin comes passed down mostly from a couple of Mandarin as second-language speakers, but also whether her non-Mandarin-speaking grandfather can comprehend what she’s saying in her dubious Mandarin. Evelyn is the only person who can switch between all three spoken languages, albeit, in a bit of a frazzled way. I totally empathize with Joy, where, without consuming lots of Chinese media, I wouldn’t be able to speak Mandarin confidently because i know I’m learning mandarin from my parents and I know that my parent’s mandarin pronunciation and vocabulary are not ideal, and although everyone should be able to understand mandarin as a common tongue, my grandparents can’t reply in Mandarin, so I’m heavily dependent on my mom to translate. Also ratacooie is absolutely something that would happen. Ratacooie sounds about right. You got it eventually, didn’t you? I have 1000 things more pressing than to take the time to memorize the correct pronunciation of a word I’ll probably only ever use once. The language experience in the movie made the plot truly immersive.
The father's name is _Waymond_ , not "Raymond".
It’s actually not that much different as you think. You can easily pick up the other if you know either one. I’m a cantonese speaker, never taught mandarin but I can speak mandarin too after hearing enough of it being spoken in drama
They are not two languages. Like linguistically, they are two different dialects of the same language, Chinese. I speak Mandarin, but as a southerner, my dialect isn't that different from Cantonese, so after years of watching Hong Kong TV series, I can understand most of it.
doesn't speak Cantonese ? th-cam.com/video/KGdBT8N5CkQ/w-d-xo.html
Wait, if Waymond speak heavily accented Mandarin(as you say, as a second language), doesn't speak Cantonese, and speaks accented English, can we tell what is his native language?
I'm Malaysian, I'm a fan of Michelle Yeoh and I absolutely love this movie. In Malaysia, it's absolutely normal to be bilingual and multilingual and many everyday conversations contain more than one language.
It's also normal for my grandparents' generation to not know English or Malay (our national language) and just speak in dialects. I, like Joy, am the generation that grew up modern and with the internet. I'd say English is my main / dominant language, my Malay is fair and my Mandarin is poor. My Cantonese and Hokkien (Chinese dialects) are non-existent. My parents are somewhere in between. They have a good grasp of both worlds.
So when it happened in the movie, I didn't think much of it cuz it just looked like normal life to me. But you're right. The fact that they kept it in gave an authenticity and groundedness to the situation. The fact that I identified with it immediately shows it really did convey the culture and tension and language/culture barriers.
I am so so happy Michelle Yeoh and this movie won so many Oscars. One of my favourite films of all time now.
😮The Malaysian Chinese people i met online all speak fluent Chinese(Mandarin) and they are young people.
@@Robin-u5n Ya, there are different segments of society. I have a lot of friends who grew up in Chinese Vernacular school so their Mandarin is very strong and they consume a lot of Chinese language media. Due to an accident when I was 7, I was taken out of Chinese Vernacular School and ended up in our National School which is primarily in Malay and English.
I don’t think the pronoun mixup was intended to be read as passive aggressive, I think it’s more so meant to highlight that Evelyn isn’t entirely fluent in English yet. My Chinese friend who’s also not very fluent in English has the same struggle and often mixes up he/she, it’s a very common mistake for Mandarin speakers learning English
I can see that interpretation for sure. I would agree with you if Joy's sexuality didn't later turn out to be a key issue between mother and daughter. There's a reason the exchange is in the script and overtly shown to the audience...now, the lines could be there just to demonstrate that Evelyn has limited English proficiency...but the fact that it just happens to be regarding an issue that we find out later is point of contention between mother and daughter leads me to conclude it's a microaggression. Especially given the later scene where Evelyn's not-full-acceptance is conveyed through her word choice and language ("good friend"). So that brief snippet of dialogue in the kitchen winds up doing two things: highlighting Evelyn's English proficiency AND how she reacts to Becky...which is GREAT screenwriting!
@@LanguageFilm I agree the scene serves two purposes, but I still think that the pronoun mixup was not meant to be read as passive aggressive or as something Evelyn did intentionally. Yes, for sure Evelyn’s choice to call Becky a “good friend” was absolutely intentional, the delivery of the line is slow and deliberate, and earlier she expresses reluctance to tell her father they are girlfriends because he’s from a “different generation”. In contrast, in the kitchen scene I don’t believe there’s anything that would indicate that the pronoun mixup was in any way intentional. Quite the opposite actually, we see Evelyn rushing around in this scene, busy and distracted, her words are jumbled and she makes many grammar mistakes several times. Evelyn complains about the difficulty of English having separate gender specific pronouns, and says how Mandarin is much simpler in that regard.
I think Evelyn complaining about this, and the script having this line of explanation (that both “he” and “she” are both just “tā” in spoken Mandarin) exists to show the audience that Evelyn is more comfortable with Mandarin than English, while also informing the audience who may not know that gendered pronouns are a difficult part of the English language for native Mandarin speakers who are learning English to grasp.
So yes while after the pronoun mixup further discussion in the kitchen reveals more of Evelyn’s opinion on her daughter’s relationship (but there are more scenes that do a better job showing us that) I don’t think that’s the primary purpose of the scene. Ultimately I think this scene serves the purpose of showing the language barrier between mother & daughter, and how this further keeps them apart. Evelyn would prefer to speak in Mandarin, as her English isn’t fluent. But Joy prefers to speak in English, as her Mandarin isn’t fluent. The two of them having no common ground on a language they can both speak fluently leads to miscommunications and bumps in the road that otherwise wouldn’t happen, which is what this scene demonstrates. It’s a great theme for the film, that whether they speak in English or Chinese, their communication is still broken (both literally and figuratively!)
@@blue1584 I have to agree that it does have microagression undertones(at the very least) because on that scene, Evelyn says something like "the way you two are dressed, I'm not the only one calling him he" and then she corrects herself, but she didn't correct the "Him", she corrected the "He", meaning she totally intended to refer to Becky as a man in the first part of that sentence, and her inability to use the correct pronoun is related to her reluctance to accept Joy's sexuality. And see that she doesn't make that mistake with anyone else in the rest of the movie.
I edited my original comment to correct a few things and add a little more on why I do think it was a microagression.
@@maggiemcfly5267 I think the fact that Evelyn keeps correcting herself shows us very clearly that she’s trying to use the correct pronouns, but it’s confusing for her. If she was doing it on purpose she wouldn’t be making the active effort to continuously correct herself. Again, there’s a reason why there’s a line in the film dedicated to Evelyn comparing the difficulty of English vs Chinese pronouns, so if it was on purpose there would be no reason to include this line.
What she says next is “And (with) the way you two are dressed, I’m sure I’m not the only one calling him (a) he, I mean her (a) him” Evelyn makes a few grammar mistakes here, but it’s clear that it’s not her intent to call Becky a guy. She was essentially saying that Becky ‘dresses like a guy’ so might get mistaken as one. It’s established in the film that she doesn’t like Becky’s clothes or hairstyle, but she knows Becky is a girl and is trying to get the pronouns right. She doesn’t make any mistakes with Becky’s pronouns for the rest of the film, which is long before she fully accepts Joy & Becky’s relationship (since that doesn’t happen until the very end). This shows that the pronoun mixup is a language issue, which is separate from the acceptance issue which doesn’t get resolved until much later.
Yeah I agree. My parents have lived in Canada for 40 plus years and still can’t get he/she right. Nothing to do with attitudes toward queerness for them, just a struggle to use gendered pronouns when their first language doesn’t have them.
As someone who grew up very much like Joy, bilingual English dominant with a bilingual Mandarin dominant mother, I wouldn't call how Waymond and Evelyn speak to each other as code-switching since they are not switching between the languages to suit each others preferences. They are just talking the way that most Chinese speaking immigrants I know do: using whichever words come to mind first. For example, my mom who immigrated during the 80s uses English for a lot of technology words since they came to be after she moved to the states. I know there's not universal agreement that code-switching has to have those motivations but to me there's a distinct difference between how they switch languages with each other versus how they code-switch to and about Dierdre. I do agree however that her speaking in a mix of languages as og Evelyn does represent her lack of clarity in who she is at the beginning of the movie. To me the most interesting example of Evelyn's varied language usage is that she says "laundromat" in English as og Evelyn but says it in Chinese as movie star Evelyn. Again though, I think this example just shows a very well-executed depiction of how immigrants speak than a huge reveal about the character.
From my point of view, Evelyn's usage of "he" for Becky is ambiguous. It doesn't feel explicitly passive aggressive. My mom has used "he" for me countless times as an honest mistake so I would imagine that from Joy's perspective it is also ambiguous, and that ambiguity adds to the frustration cause she doesn't know how angry she has a right to be. Evelyn calling Becky a "good friend" to Gong Gong is definitely explicitly to hide their sexual orientation though. A small aside: it is very unlikely that Joy would not know the Chinese word for "girlfriend". For me it felt quite forced in order to give the opening for Evelyn to interrupt with the explicitly aggressive "good friend"
Another interesting thing is that Joy as Jobu Tupaki speaks better Chinese than og Joy which I feel is meant to demonstrate her power
Yep. Same here, born and raised American, but I am very obviously Cantonese. When I speak the limited Cantonese I do with my family, even the native speakers will just jump between English and Cantonese as they see fit haha
Same here; the word for that is translanguaging (or trawsieithu)!
I thought it was weird Joy was speaking to Gong Gong in Mandarin when he only seems to speak Cantonese. Unless he understands Mandarin but only speaks Cantonese.
@@RiamsWorld She was speaking Cantonese to Gung Gung
@@jonathanmong4927 No, she was speaking Mandarin when she started the sentence ("She is my...") that Evelyn finished in Cantonese ("...good friend."). It's quite believable that Gung Gung understands Mandarin; it is common for native Cantonese speakers to have also learned Mandarin, or grown up with lots of exposure to Mandarin even if they don't speak it.
It is much less common for people who grew up speaking Mandarin to also know Cantonese. Yet it is completely realistic that, even though Joy couldn't speak to her grandfather in Cantonese, she could still tell her mother was using the wrong word ("good friend" instead of "girlfriend"), because Joy would have been exposed to Cantonese around the house, and "good" and "girl" and "friend" are basic words that sound similar in Mandarin and Cantonese.
This is excellent. It goes to show how universal the theme of fragmentation is when the film manages to approach it from so many real angles: ADHD, unfulfilled dreams, multiculturalism and immigration, generational divides, and of course, multilingualism. It's incredible that it can all come together to fulfil a narrative yet it's also just a regular experience for so many people
Jumbled up code switching is quite normal for countries where speaking 2 or more languages/dialects is normal, eg Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia and India, Michelle was just channelling her Malaysian roots.
What's really amazing to me - a person from Hong Kong who grew up speaking Cantonese and English as first languages and Mandarin as a second language - is how the opening scene so fluently switches between all three, in a way that's very organic and realistic.
One of the directors not only came from a multilingual home (Raised in Massachusetts by a father from Hong Kong and a mother from Taiwan), but also is diagnosed with ADHD, so that opening scene is reflective of both those things, with the switching of languages reflecting the juggling act of trying to focus on everything, everywhere, all at once. The switching between languages foreshadows the switching between universes, which itself is a metaphor for the experience of ADHD. These themes all mesh together beautifully.
As an immigrant from Peru who moved when I was very young, I loved how the film depicted the code switching and Joy's loss of grasp on her native language.
I also started learning Turkish and they also have no distinction between "he/his" and "her/hers"
i'm so glad there's a video on this! I grew up in a household that used both mandarin and cantonese, and this is the first time I've seen this depicted realistically and SO WELL in an Asian American film (that I know of at least)!! the code switching was excellent and seamless, not at all forced, and something I could totally see my family doing. You can tell in so many movies that try to use mandarin and cantonese that the translations are not done by a true native speaker. Ke's wife Echo, the translator, did such an incredible job on this film and I think it's the use of the languages in such a natural way that truly hit me hard-- my favorite movie yet.
I’m not Chinese, but I’m a second gen immigrant and didn’t know I needed to see code switching in media. I would always think I’m terrible at my second language, but this is actually a common experience.
Cantonese is used SO SO rare nowadays in Hollywood films. I’m so glad they incorporated both Mandarin and Cantonese together so beautifully!
The last time I recalled it in a big film was Rush Hour 2 when they were in HK. I could be wrong but that was the last major movie I can recall rn lol
You must be quite young. Rush Hour 2 was one of the *first* times Cantonese was used in Hollywood. If you want to hear Cantonese on the screen, watch HK cinema.
@@Duiker36 Yeah if you read my comment I mentioned for hollywood films it was rare. 90s HK movies had Chow Sing Sing and Chow Yun Fat dominate screens be it action or comedy.
My favorite moment in *Everything Everywhere All at Once* was Waymond in the universe where they never married saying to Evelyn that "in another life, I would be happy just doing laundry and taxes with you." It means so much because Evelyn WAS in that universe with that Waymond who just wanted to make her smile, laugh and love, but she didn't appreciate him. Instead, she wanted to be in the universe where she was rich and successful, and where Waymond was, too, even though they would have no *JOY* (their daughter).
It was really nice for once to see actual codeswitching for once in a film but I think its important to also remember that its not just a narrative device sometimes. I get how there are parallels between some of the themes in the movie and the use of codeswitching may exemplify that but in reality, that is just how we speak. It is not chaotic, messy, or absurd. It is just what it is. Normal.
My favorite thing about the film was the use of multiple languages. It was so wonderful to hear.
not only that, but also the fact that it's how chinese people who immigrated would actually speak - mixing both languages together in the same sentence. it's very real, almost too real for a movie.
Growing in Vancouver in the 80's and 90's, it is common to speak Cantonese, Mandarin and English with your friends (not necessarily with family members). I think the use of Mandarin is to appeal to more audience and to pay tribute to Daniel Kwan's HK father and Taiwanese mother. Daniel grew up learning and listening to all three languages.
Both Michelle and Ke have rather strong Canto-accent when they speak Mandarin. The grandfather speaks decent Cantonese in the film--and also his early life in HK. I appreciate their effort in the film.
One of the best things about living in this part of BC is hearing languages from everywhere, all the time, all at once.
Amazing analysis! Thank you for pointing out these details. I'm not fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese, so it's nice to know how much effort was put into this movie.
This is an incredible observation and analysis. I never thought that the frantic code switching (great term) in the intro was setting up the rest of the film. Also knowing Gong Gong is the only one speaking Cantonese adds so much context. This is truly my favorite film.
The first time I watched this movie my jaw was on the floor because I never expected in a billion years to hear such flawless Chinglish in a Hollywood production. I say "flawless" as in accurate to my own real-life experience, as a first-generation Chinese-American. The delivery in this movie is so natural that I almost don't even notice whenever they switch
For English speaking people: Gong-Gong means grandpa in Cantonese, but only referring to mother's dad. We use another term for father's dad.
It's incredible how even watching just short clips while listening to your analysis entirely overwhelms me with emotion. This is such an incredible film. Thank you for helping me appreciate it even more!
This is one of the most original films I've seen in decades.
For about 20 minutes straight, my eyeballs were not comprehending what I was seeing.
I watch a lot of Korean dramas. English is sprinkled through the dialog like salt, despite the shows being for a domestic audience. I recall one show in particular where a present day Korean time-travels to the Joseon period and their 'modern Korean' is almost unintelligible to the ancestors. At the opposite end, English speakers are often portrayed as gauche and posturing egotists ignorant of basic social norms.
Yep, the Korean language uses A LOT of English loanwords
@@blue1584 People in the Philippines end up being a jumbled mess due to all the different cultures and languages the 7000+ islands the country has. In addition to the myriad of local languages that dont always have overlapping understanding, English is a considered a national language, and we have a lot of immigrants and "fans" of other cultures thanks to our proximity to other countries around Asia; China, Japanese, and Korean pop culture more often than not.
Sometimes its a joke where, if you get someone from the North, someone from the Capital, and someone from the south, theres no overlap in the Filipino language they'll use, and end up just speaking english to communicate.
@@blue1584 Not really. I am not sure if you know, but the Joseon period the show is portraying is probably 500 years ago. A language significantly changes throughout 500 years. English loanwords is one way, but words and the language itself in general changes significantly as well
@@03e-210a There’s over 42,000 loanwords in Korean, with new ones being added all the time. I’m not saying loanwords were the only change to the Korean language because of course it wasn’t, but it’s a pretty significant addition imo
Btw - you called it codeswitching, but it might be more accurate to call this translanguaging (aka trawsieithu) - utilising the whole linguistic repertoire from multiple languages in a single situation rather than code switching which happens between different situations/contexts.
It could also be called diglossia, but thats also something else a little.
I'm not bilingual at all (I speak a tiny bit of Spanish) but even I will occasionally just throw a Spanish word in when I can't easily think of the English one for whatever reason. It's SO much more common than the way most people portray bilingualism. I LOVED that the second I saw it, the way they just switched back and forth. AND the way they used English to hide discussions from Gong Gong. Awesome. I love everything about this movie but as a linguistics geek I'm excited to appreciate this even more!
I laughed so hard at the rock scene. Can't remember being so impressed with film making in quite a while. It's amazing that they were able to tell good jokes with no help of inflection and such limited access to timing. On a side note I've never had the pleasure to read mutually unintelligible before. Simultaneously a mouthful while sort of rolling off the tongue. Real tasty use of language! Thanks!
Thanks for an interesting video that adds a lot of "extras" to an already jam-packed film, *and* inspired so many detailed comments, that broaden both the discussion and the film.
Altho I am an english speaker (only), I am reminded of my father's comments about the differences between Italian and Sicilian. (He was born in NYC in the mid-1920's but did not speak English until age 5.)
I haven’t even watch the movie but I love when language barrier’s exist and make sense even with different accents, as a polyglot my biggest pet peeve is how in most movies they all speak fluent English just with a different accent no matter if they come from the most undeveloped country, another planet or even another universe (yes marvel I’m looking at you)
thank you for clarifying that evelyn is speaking both mandarin and cantonese. sometimes for western audiences it's hard to tell both languages apart and tend to generalise it while watching this movie. and yes, evelyn is constantly switching between three languages, english, mandarin and catonese, and as a trilingual person speaking all three languages i've never related to a character more.
My favourite bit is the language code-switching just before Evelyn tells Gong Gong that Becky is Joy's girlfriend. In the leadup to that when Evelyn speaks, it is in the preferred language of the listener:
"You may see in her all of your greatest fears squeezed into one person" to Gong Gong in Cantonese.
"But she turned out to be stubborn, aimless, a mess. Just like me." to Joy in English.
"The universe gave her someone kind, patient, forgiving to make up for all she lacks." while looking at Waymond, speaking in Mandarin.
I did not notice the switch to Mandarin when she refers to Waymond. Thanks for pointing that out. It does enhance the scene.
As someone who grew up in an environment with all 3 languages, it's refreshing to see a film represent multilingualism in such a natural, non-pandering manner. Just feels like I was back at another big family gathering, with all the code-switching going on.
The one thing I think you missed is how, when Evelyn finds the divorce papers and talks to Waymond about it she starts in Mandarin (or Cantonese, I'll be honest I didn't realise they were speaking 2 different languages) and then pauses, the screen moves to include her father and she switches to broken English.
Just the frustration and heartbreak in her voice when she's forced to have an incredibly difficult conversation in English is amazing.
I heard in an interview with Ke Huy Quan that his wife, Echo, was a big help in sorting out and correcting the use of Mandarin and Cantonese in the script and while filming. She's apparently the most trilingual. Michelle Yeoh (from Malaysia) says she wishes she spoke Cantonese more fluently, but she had to learn her lines almost phonetically when she was in Hong Kong films. James Hong is a native Mandarin speaker although he was supposed to be a Cantonese speaker as the grandfather in the movie, and they sometimes had to point out that he was speaking Mandarin instead of Cantonese while filming. It must have been very confusing for the directors, especially Daniel Scheinert, who are not Chinese speakers. I imagine Daniel Kwan is something like Joy.
I’m a Chinese American who’s family was raised here, so my immediate family doesn’t speak a lick of Chinese, but my grandparents are fluent in it and it’s always fascinating how my grandma and grandpa switch between the two on the dime
Awesome channel, looking forward to seeing your future content!
Just started to watch the video but I must say I'm so-so-soooo glad I stumbled upon your channel! Keep up the great work!
Hey, thanks for the positive feedback. I will!
Thank you for focusing on language in EEAAO. I noticed the same as you. There is so much stuffed into this great work that, as yet, has not come to light in public discourse, but I'm sure it will over time. Of the many wonderful things in this masterwork, I was deeply moved by the, for want of a better non-existent word, humanity, my personal situation is rather monkish, isolated, alone, secluded, solitary in a city of 8-10 million sheeple: Londongrad (London). The love of my life suddenly and with blitzkrieg rejected and dumped me but, as the song goes, she never told me, she never said why. My altruism and unconditional love for her is permanent forever even after my death. It's part of my legacy now. It's so beautiful to have finally found the literal love of my life. The 2 years we had together was the closest I ever got to paradise. She was my angel. The moment I returned from the cinema after seeing EEAAO I immediately ordered the dvd sent to her. I can only hope that she realises the film in relationship to me and her. The rest of the film relates to her own mither/daughter relationship as well as her parents and to the Asian input. It may not bring us back together but I wanted to say in a different universe I just wanted to do laundry and taxes with her. We have the kind. As a life-long beta male with prime occasionally thrown in and rare tongue-in-cheek sarcastic alpha nonsense thrown in, I am Waymond and Ke Huy Quan. EEAAO will keep on growing as long as there's moving pictures and a REAL person fighting against disaster capitalism, evil, bullying, celebrity, fame, money, and stupid idiots like a Trump, Putin, commercialism, neoliberalism, Fascism and tyranny, etc. Life is confusing and hard enough without all the fucking bullshit. Sapiens doesn't give a 💩 about our destruction of life, planet Earth and our impending extinction. EEAAO hit someone's nerve. Language is primitive, unsatisfactory and a failure when it tries to translate brain thought into words, phrases, sentences, libraries. It doesn't even have words or terms for all the emotions. Only serious high art music has that ability and content. The most complicated thing in the universe/multiverse/cosmos is the brain and we don't even know what consciousness is as we barely scratch the surface of the brain. 20 new discoveries are made about it every day! Free will is a myth like the Easter Bunny - biology that hasn't been discovered yet. Why work when nothing matters everything matters?
One of most interesting parts of the film is that when Gong Gong becomes Alpha Gong Gong, his English is perfect and sounds like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs!
The code switching goes even deeper, as different variations of Evelyn have more or less competency in English depending on how her life in a given timeline evolved. One of the ways we know that Evelyn Prime changed universes at the end of the movie is that, almost suddenly, her English is better than it was in the beginning: she chose a universe where the language issues had been overcome and there was greater understanding.
I did think it was strange that English was so often used to signify the more "competent" Alphaverse versions of characters taking over? Like, when alpha Gong Gong shows up, the biggest thing everyone notices is that he's suddenly fluent in English.
I'm sure this was partly meant as a way to make more of the movie take place in English - I imagine an American-made movie spoken mostly in Mandarin would be a hard sell, even to A24 - but I feel like it comes with the unintended side effect of English seeming more "competent" or "intelligent". I dunno, I'm a monolingual USAmerican, so this is really an outsider's perspective that I'd love to hear some more experienced thoughts on :)
Another good one for you to analyze in the future is multilingualism in the Netflix series Into The Night. It is really fascinating to me especially this scene where these characters switch to French, pretending that it's because they're more comfortable with it, but in actuality it's to conceal information from the English speakers. A lot of other languages show up in that move for different reasons as well. I highly recommend you check it out and do a video on it.
Awesome, thanks for the recommendation! I haven't heard of it, so I'll definitely check it out and see what I might be able to do with it.
ughh i really love how they speak in this film !! the switch between mandarin to cantonese to english is so personal to me .. esp bc michelle yeoh is malaysian and its so representative of how it is here !!!
Evelyn or Michelle Yeoh, is from multi-lingual country Malaysia. We speaks English, Chinese, Malay, Cantonese and given Michelle living in Paris, she could have know French, 5 languages!
Thanks to Malaysia multicultural environment gives Michelle all these special abilities
While Evelyn and her father are Chinese dominant, most likely the reason why Joy can't speak well to her grandfather is because he speaks mainly in Cantonese, not Mandarin. There are 3 languages at play here. The code switching in this movie is impeccable and wholly authentic.
Also, while Mandarin has no pronunciation difference between he/she/they, they do differentiate gender/thing with 他/她/它/祂. I think the scene where she says chinese is easier is a script thing. She would've processed Joy's girlfriend as 她 (she) in her mind, but perhaps the denial from an older generation compels her to use 他 (he) instead because Evelyn recognizes Becky as Joy's partner?
[edit] On another note, when Evelyn introduces Becky as Joy's friend and not girlfriend, I think it comes from a place of love and protection. As an asian mother who understands the changing of times and the acceptance of ideals, the older generation is much more conservative and she wants to protect the relationship between Joy and her grandfather. We see her saying things like Joy is fat, and it is in that tone that we understand that she's expressing her love and concern for her daughter, but in a way that disregards Joy's feelings and emotions. This changes to full acceptance on Evelyn's part throughout the movie, and when she finally introduces Becky as Joy's girlfriend, it is the acceptance of her daughter's feelings and the rebellion against traditional notions of relationship and (I guess) oppression from her father's control throughout her life.
Yeah, I thought the same thing re: "good friend" vs. "girlfriend". In the Japanese American community, especially with the older generation, the significant other, even if engaged, would be referred to as a "good friend". When I saw that in the film, I figured it was the same for Chinese culture, and interpreted Joy as trying to appease her traditional father and then later when saying "girlfriend" fully embrace a different, more progressive way of life she found in the States. It's showing acceptance but in an extremely subtle and culturally specific way that isn't necessarily as offensive or direct as it seems in the English translation.
Differentiating gender in written Chinese third-person pronouns is a 20th century development in the language. Mixing third-person pronouns in spoken English is extremely common among Chinese immigrants.
@@Default78334 That's interesting! The more you know, eh.
@@wichegirl Actually, when Evelyn introduces Becky to her father for the first time, she uses two terms for "good friend." First, she says 好朋友, which can be interpreted as significant other in a similar context to what you described. However, she quickly clarifies with a second term, 老友, which has a meaning closer to "old pal" and does not have the same interpretation, so she is definitely trying to avoid any connotation of a significant other there.
Thank you for your video! 😀 I saw EEAAO in theaters opening weekend and am SO GLAD that it's been receiving the attention it deserves! 😀
It is trilingual not bilingual. The code switching is between English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The switching between Cantonese and Mandarin is more interesting than just the Chinese/English switching.
You may be technically correct. I chose the term bilingualism b/c 1) the difference between a language and a dialect is a somewhat arbitrary distinction (a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, the saying goes) and 2) “multilingualism” is a little clunkier to use in a title. But I agree it’s technically trilingualism IF you consider mandarin and cantonese to be separate languages, which many people do not. It’s a complex topic!
@@LanguageFilm whether or not one considers them to be different languages or dialects doesn’t change the fact that they are different enough to be mutually unintelligible.
@@junethanoschurchill6750 Agreed! It all depends on your definition of language vs dialect. There’s no definite line that separates one from the other. There are rural Irish dialects I cannot understand being raised in the Southern US, yet we are considered to be speaking the same language, English. Political boundaries and historical accidents often determine what we consider separate languages vs. dialects just as much as mutual (un)intelligibility.
@@LanguageFilm Mandarin and Yue should be considered as separate _spoken_ languages. They are non-mutually intelligible with each other. Cantonese and Toisanese/Taishanese are dialects or varieties of the Yue spoken language. They are mutually intelligible, but to an extent. The name *Cantonese* is often used for the whole group of Yue dialects, but linguists prefer to reserve that name for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese.
@@LanguageFilm Sorry, you may want to listen to CANTONESE people when we say that we speak a different LANGUAGE. THAT is linguistic reality. Just because our CCP overlords from Beijing like to label all other Chinese languages that is non-standard Mandarin as "dialects." Don't give us this politically correct crap if your channel is called LanguageFilm.
You're literally contributing to the destruction of our mother tongue & cultural identity. Thanks.
I had no idea how much i've lost watching it dubbed into 1L altogether :(( now have to find and rewatch this riveting film! thx for a guiding light
Thank you for elucidating this aspect of the movie. I grew up in a mixed culture community and it immediately made me laugh with familiarity!
As a multilingual south East Asian (singaporean), this is how we generally speak to each other. We pepper our dialogue with 3-4 languages into a sentence.
Great video! Really interesting analysis.
This is highly observable in modern populations of countries that got colonized, especially the Philippines. A regular Filipino speaks about 3 languages, depends on region or generation they're from. We usually codes witch very smoothly that we weren't usually aware of it, not until that divorce topic street interview by Asian Boss channel was watched by the world.
That's very common in India as well. My family speaks a mix of Gujarati, English and Portuguese...exactly as they have portrayed in this movie.
What I liked about the bilingualism was the way that the captions flowed right into the English portions. I think the first and last words in English is also written in the captions so you can read and hear it at the same time. Maybe I was reading at the perfect pace, but it just felt so smooth.
Great introduction to code-switching and agree it's used very well in the film. The first thing that struck me about the multilingualism was how absolutely resonant and authentic it was with immigrant experiences. With that in mind, I'd say the opening argument has it the wrong way around. This movie is not about the fragmentation of reality into multiverses with the film using multilingualism to serve this theme. Rather it is about the intersection of different cultures, generations, and identities as well as the overwhelming toll it can have on mental health (i.e. EEAAO); the multilingualism is a deeply relatable example of this intersection and the film uses the fragmentation of reality into a multiverse as a metaphor that serves this intersectional theme.
Well put!
Awesome work on the fair use act disclaimer, professional and informative at the same time!!
Daniels listed Stephen Chow as one of their influences. Aside from his obvious cartoon and slapstick references, Chow often has a character use English words in a context where no other characters are speaking English, often to lend purposeful confusion to the scene.
Also, is it just me or did Evelyn’s English improve as the movie progressed. She also changed accents, moving to a more cosmopolitan pronunciation.
This is one of those channels where the concept is so good, that I hit the subscribe button before watching any videos. And you didn't disappoint! (I'd love to see you do a Jim Jarmusch video!)
The depiction of how they use different languages is so accurate, I was amazed even just in the opening scene. It was almost like watching my own family on screen. I'm more like Joy, mostly English fluent with spotty Mandarin, while my parents, who immigrated from Taiwan, speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese.
I appreciate your video about the use of bilingualism and code switching in movies! Makes this movie more enjoyable to watch when you relate to the subject matter.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's a fascinating subject that and I love to see it used effectively in movies/shows.
0:47 how can we not notice
Lmao ik mountain into a molehill
I wonder if this is intentional or interestingly coincidental. When I heard Evelyn code switch, it sounded very natural to me as that's how me and my family talk, we are second and third generational Chinese Australians
That's neat. Yes, it's a very natural phenomenon. In a screenplay, though, everything is intentional (if it's a good screenplay, that is). The choice to make the main character a "code-switcher" in a movie about "code-switching multiverses" is why I don't think it's just coincidence. But that's just my take on it, of course.
This is basically my life and my children’s. English, Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time
The Clever *Trilingualism of Everything Everywhere All At Once
"What is gross necklaces?"
lol This is a great line which I almost included in the video! It highlights Evelyn's confusion while also being funny.
One linguistic thing I noticed
The main universe, the one we are starting at, the main characters display the full range of their linguistic abilities
All alpha persons speak in English exclusively
And movie star universe waymond speaks in Chinese (I say chinese because I don’t know the difference between mandarin and Cantonese I’m so sorry)
It’s a feature that distinguishes which version of each character we’re talking to
I´m brazilian and both my brother and I are fluent in portuguese and english, and many times while talking to each other, we´ll mix up both languages, and when I saw that in the movie (but with mandarin, cantonese and english) i was like oh my god finally! a piece of media that knows how multilingual people talk with eachother!
You definitely need to do a video on Inglourious Basterds
As Malaysians, we do code switching in our daily conversations between different dialects (Hokkien, Cantonese…) and different languages (Malay, Chinese and English) in one sentence😅. We are used to it when it comes to informal conversations. That’s why we call them “Bahasa Rojak”! (Go google up what’s a “rojak” in case you are wondering what it is)
Rojak = mixture
Code switching is our common way of life, especially in Malaysia and Singapore.
My Caucasian friends are fascinated that they couldn’t understand us when we were talking among ourselves but able to switch back to proper English when speaking to them. Generally we speak in English but added Chinese+dialects and Malay, whichever language makes the sentence more efficient. 😂😂😂 No proper grammar required. 😅
I am so glad to be one of the few who can speak and understand all the three languages perfectly. It is really one of a kind cinematic experience🤓
My favourite scene is when Evelyn meets Jobu Tupaki. Such a phenomenal performance from Stephanie Hsu!
Bumping for exposure. Best of luck to you and hope you'll be at 100k subs within a year
Very interesting points! Agreed that it could be their ways of adding complexity to already a multilayered concept.
I also wanted to add that for many duolingo or trilingual person, we mix up languages a lots. I fluent in Cantonese but still add in Engligh words in between (local Hongkongers do that too), and even more so when speaking Mandarin cos it’s less fluent for me. So I just use words that are more familiar.
1:24 literal ADHD. All that organized clutter, trying to do everything at once
There are instances where Evelyn exclaimed dialogue in Malaysian English I noticed.
This is one of the only times I've seen a copyright disclaimer on a youtube video where it actually applies.
This is quite common in families who’ve migrated to multiple countries… and now in America, yes add English to the mox
I believe I have now watched more minutes of this film in reviews than the actual length of the film.
homage to Brando...who thought Jor-El would be best represented as a bagel in Superman
Mixed code is a code in itself.
Bro as a daughter of an Argentine immigrant having been raised in the US I don't know any Chinese but I can still relate to speaking essentially two languages at once because either you remember or prefer the word for something in one language or the other except for me those two languages are English and Spanish
This movie is so many things. I love it even more.
This film hit every single point to my experience. Trying to manage 3 languages at once is very complex and difficult. Trying to manage 3 cultures is difficult.
This made sense to a lot of Asian immigrant families all around the world.
This film actually translates to all immigrants around the world if you think about it.
I don't know how these boys did it, but they did.
"joy is gay, or bisexual" 👈 I appreciated this unassuming detail in your video 👍👍
My favorite part of the movie was exactly their usage of language. Including but not limited to, unspoken language, such as body language in a fascinating combination with artistic expression.
I grew up expecting to be able to speak Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese WHILE being raised in Australia. I naturally just picked up English and can only speak Canto. I was never really taught the other two so when I was faced with the question 'why can't you speak Vietnamese/Mandarin?' I never learnt, it wasn't the primary language I was taught. Neither was Cantonese really because I live in a English speaking country with school systems that teach English, in English. I haven't seen this film, or heard of it, but hearing that they use the switch of English and Mandarin in a household, the awkward parent translating, and all the experiences, makes it all hit pretty hard.
Lol him saying that the code-switching in the start sets up the theme of split worlds is very true, but to me as a Chinese-American, there’s no chaos at all; it’s natural and smooth. That’s exactly how we speak at home.
Great review, you've got yourself a new subscriber.
Thanks! Welcome and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I haven't interpreted code switching as this for many many years. Interesting.
To me, code switching is now adjusting how you speak a commonly spoken language to accommodate the listener.
E.g. switching from dialect to standardised English.
It was funny to understand some of the Mandarin parts because some of the jokes sounded funnier understanding it than the written translation, even though they were both both.
I found it interesting they actively chose to translate foreigner to white person which is a localisation rather than just translation.
I get what you mean. I've heard it applied to both language and dialects, since the difference between language and dialect is often not clear. Mandarin and Cantonese are a great example of this...some would say they're dialects of the same language, some would say they're separate languages...it all depends on your definition, and there's lots of gray area. Do you use a special term when talking about switching between languages specifically, or not?
@@LanguageFilm Well, that's code switching as you said. Your video reminded me that language code switching exists too! When I was younger I spoke another language when I moved to the UK, I would code switch all the time. As I moved into other parts of London and there was the different way of speaking, gradually my code switching only related to the different forms of English.
Thanks for your video.
@@LanguageFilm The conventionally accepted set of seven spoken language groups are:
Guan (Mandarin, including Beijing and Nanjing variants)
Wu (including the Shanghainese and Suzhounese variants)
Yue (including the Cantonese and Taishanese/Toisanese variants)
Min (including the Hokkien and Fuzhounese variants)
Hakka (Kejia)
Xiang (Hunanese)
Gan (Jiangxinese)
Thanks for sharing this interesting analysis: enjoyed this tremendously, and makes me appreciate even more - the tons of non-obvious amazing details put in by the script writers, directors, and actors in sooo many aspects of this hard-to-describe 'feel good film' 🙂🙏🏼
Just to mention: Gong Gong 公公 refers to maternal grandpa (has a similar pronunciation in Mandarin + many other Chinese dialects). There's another term for parental grandpa - Yeh Yeh 爺爺 😉 Yes, maternal/ paternal grandma has 2 different terms too... the immense richness of the Chinese language.
And for those who's learning Chinese as a 2nd or 3rd language: him/ her/ it has a specific character we can use in writing in different context... 他，她，祂，牠，它 ✌🏼
Just wanna point out, as someone who grew up in a mandarin/dialect/English speaking family
Gonggong likely speaks Cantonese, and understands mandarin, but doesn't speak mandarin that well.
Joy, on the other hand, can probably understand mandarin, and some amount of Cantonese, but can barely speak mandarin, much less Cantonese.
This is a common thing in multi-generational families where somewhere down the line, the utility of learning mandarin and English, often results in the newest generation losing their dialect (in this case, Cantonese) speaking ability.
I agree with some of the comments here saying that Evelyn introduced Becky as Joy's good friend out of protectiveness. Later in the film we see that she felt abandoned by her father because of who she loved and I interpret the 'good friend' interaction in the way that she sees Becky as Joy's partner but doesn't want to put Joy in the line of possibly getting hurt by the grandfather. Which Joy then interprets as trying to deny her identity, which is not entirely wrong either.
What's really amazing for me (among many amazing things) is that Michelle's native languages are English and Malay. She learned Cantonese and Mandarin later in her movie career.
I have no choice but to stan!
As soon as I heard to code switching in the movie I was like "oh this is gonna be good representation"