I teach English online to children in China. One of my students has autism and cannot answer many questions. When I ask him what his name is, he always says "My name is Drumpou (or Trumpou)," which is not his name. He is trying to communicate something but I don't know what it is.
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Thank you for your ideas. It does sound like Trump. He is autistic, as I mentioned, but he could be making a political joke.– Judith BurnellMay 2, 2017 at 22:28
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2 Answers
Trump sounds like Trump. Many Chinese speakers whose English is not so hot will say 'ah' or 'oh' after English words, like: goodah, coldah.
This is the character for 啊 a, this is 哦 o. They are often added at the end of sentences for reasons of prosody.
You can say: 对 dui, meaning 'correct', but mostly you will hear 对阿 dui a 'correct'
Maybe he is making a (political) joke:
What's your name?
Trumpoh!
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The official Chinese version of Donald Trump's last name is 特朗普 (te-lang-pu), so it has a "u" sound at the end. He might mean it as a joke, or he may just think of it as an English name that sounds good.– KWeissMay 11, 2017 at 6:59
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Although I believe this is the most correct answer. But I want to clarify that, adding "ah" or "oh" after English words is totally not the same situation with adding 啊 after 对. The reason for the former one is that Chinese speakers tend to have a vowel in every syllable, and only /n/, /ŋ/ can appear after the vowel. Therefore, a syllable like
/trʌmp/is not valid in the eye of Chinese. They would tend to say/'ʨuanpɤ/so that it feels more natural for them. As for 对 vs 对啊, it's not a phonetic thing, but pragmatics. May 13, 2017 at 9:47
Maybe it is his 乳名. Parents call their child using such 'nickname'. Kids aren't really aware that, whether to give their real-name or nickname to other to name him/her, sometimes.
It is just a guess. You may better consult his parent to reveal.
