[Labyrinthos]

Tiger Moms: when you enter a bookstore, try not to scream at your kids, the booksellers and people in your way. This is not China and your big mouths and undecipherable accents are unappreciated.

Voice inflection and emphasis is part of the linguistic structure of the Chinese dialects and other Asian languages. What sounds like anger and rudeness to the western ear is SOP in the Chinese community where the same sound has a different meaning depending upon how it is pronounced.

[OldCountryBoy]

“Voice inflection and emphasis is part of the linguistic structure of the Chinese dialects and other Asian languages. What sounds like anger and rudeness to the western ear is SOP in the Chinese community where the same sound has a different meaning depending upon how it is pronounced.”

I have also noticed that the Chinese seem to converse by talking all at once, as apposed to one at a time. This conversation style is also applied to their English-speaking conversations, and completely befuddles the English (first-language) speakers. Q: Have Chinese developed a parallel-communication conversational language, or are they simply not listening to each other?

[cloudmountain]

Inflections go up and down, according to the kind of Chinese one speaks but there is NO mistaking SCREAMING. There is no "screaming" inflection in any of the Han Chinese dialects.
There IS emphadsis WITHOUT screaming.

I took some basic Chinese years ago. The instructor had been in my Aerobics class and invited me to learn some Chinese. So, I did.
She was a WEALTH of information. She NEVER raised her voice in ALL her teaching and pronunciations in Mandarin or Cantonese. Screaming was NOT part of Chinese.