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There is typical confusion between the sounds of ‘i’ as in tin and ‘i:’ in teen. Teachers at school tell students that one is ‘short’ and the other is ‘long’, or at least that’s what students pick up. This results in mispronunciation of many words and some confusion for example between ‘bitch’ and ‘beach’, when in English no one would confuse those words.

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The consequence of adding extra sounds to make up for the garbled pronunciation results in even more errors of pronunciation that can make the sentence difficult to understand. Add on a verbal salad of Chinglish usage and you have a whole new ‘patois’!

“The ruler is in my bag” becomes something “Havu derurein I bag.” There is also ambiguity of l/r sounds since in Taiwanese often mistake these even in Chinese. Native speakers would probably hear or say something like: “Thuhrooler’s inmuhbag.”