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Ching chong


Ching chong and ching chang chong are pejorative terms sometimes employed by speakers of English to mock or play on the Chinese language, people of Chinese ancestry, or other East Asians perceived to be Chinese. Several public commentators have characterized the term as derogatory while noting that assaults or physical intimidation of East Asians are often accompanied by racial slurs or imitation Chinese.

The term "ching chong" is based on how Chinese supposedly sounds to English speakers who do not speak it. The "ch" reflects the relative abundance of voiceless coronal affricates in Chinese (six in Mandarin Chinese: [ts], [], [], [tsʰ], [tʂʰ], [tɕʰ], respectively in Pinyin ⟨z⟩, ⟨zh⟩, ⟨j⟩, ⟨c⟩, ⟨ch⟩, and ⟨q⟩), whereas English only has two: /tʃ/ (written ⟨ch⟩) and /ts/ (⟨ts⟩ or ⟨z⟩), of which only /tʃ/ regularly occurs initially. The "ng" reflects the greater commonness of nasals in syllable codas in many varieties of Chinese; for example, Mandarin only allows [n] or [ŋ] (written ⟨ng⟩ in both English and in romanization of Chinese) in syllable codas.


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