Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

In this Beijing Sounds exclusive, we build on the story that Obama campaign computers had been compromised by “Russian or Chinese” hackers back in August.

We need to ask ourselves: might they have been invited in?

Fast forward to late October, one week before election time, when the Obama infomercial carried, according to our sources who have provided the recording, a communication from the Manchurian candidate himself to those who are likely his controllers. Before reading on, listen for yourself and see if you can understand the not-so-subtle message:

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Asked for comment on this shocking statement — a revelation that would have been the ultimate October surprise had the Beijing Sounds production staff not displayed their usual incompetence and misplaced the tape in the cold storage room — Obama’s transition staff made the usual protestations that the president-elect’s statement was “taken out of context.”*

Careful readers of this blog may be clear-thinking enough to offer other explanations. We know that the recorder doesn’t lie. Even the most tone-unconscious and stuttering Zhonglish is a legitimate attempt at communication and I, for one, am horrified at the implications.

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*How far out of context? Well, I’d always wanted to see if you could do this kind of thing. It was actually pretty easy, although a little tedious and I can’t see myself doing it again anytime soon.
1. “wǒ” from “Juanita” [Update: forgot to mention -- I did take also slice off the initial /h/ in Obama's /hwanita/ to get this wǒ. Thanks to that /h/ I was able to re-use the word for huān (see #3 below). It's actually getting harder and harder to find /hw/ in American speech, it seems to me, and even when it's there it's not usually as breathy as the Mandarin /hw/.]
2. “xǐ” from “address the economics” by taking the “th” out of “the” — seems to give you something closer to the “x” sound than just a standard English /sh/ or /s/
3. “huān” is also from “Juanita”, the same utterance in fact
4. “Zhōng” is from “jobs that don‘t work” using the /j/ of “jobs” and the “on” of “don’t”
5. “guó” is the most tortuous, coming out of two sentences “…gets as many on the road as possible. And to reduce our dependence on foreign oil…” by snipping out all the stuff in the middle and that final dark /l/ (which was the trickiest part). There must have been a better way.

Voila: wǒ xǐhuān Zhōngguó (我喜欢中国 = I like China) — straight from the candidate’s lips.