http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2
Listen to what the Chinese scout in this video says at :43. My first impression was that it sounds like he is speaking Cantonese, not Mandarin.
He seems to be speaking some kind of non-standard Cantonese, maybe Toishan, and is saying something like this:
"I don't know why I hit an old man when I went back (to school?) today, I have no idea why the old man is like this, I don't know why he hit me when I went back (to school?), then I hit him, then I…."
Of course, that doesn't make much sense, but the language is fast and compressed, and it's hard to make out every syllable, not to mention that my Cantonese is not very good, much less my non-standard Cantonese.
I asked about thirty Cantonese speakers, and none of them could understand all of it, though they could roughly make out that it had something to do with hitting and an old man.
I then showed the cartoon to Bob Bauer, and here are the bits and pieces he could pick out after watching and listening to it carefully several times:
打咗個老人
daa2 zo2 go3 lou5 jan4
hit the old man
個老人 唔知點
go3 lou5 jan4 m4 zi1 dim2
the old man I don't know why/how
打噉樣
daa2 gam2 joeng6/2
hit like that
佢打我 我打佢
keoi5 daa2 ngo5 ngo5 daa2 keoi5
he hit me I hit him
Bob remarks: "If my interpretation is accurate, then he could hardly be said to have done a good turn for the day. This must have been an inside joke for the Cantonese speakers."
I'm told that the sound track was made in the 30s in New York city. At that time, nearly all Chinese there would have been Cantonese speakers. It was also a time when there were few strictures on racial stereotypes.
———–
Last minute arrivals:
From Ashley Liu:
It is Cantonese, but it's also almost gibberish. It seems to be about the boy witnessing some 台山人 randomly beating up an old person on the street.
From Abraham Chan:
我講畀你聽吖先生，我唔知點喎，嗰啲番鬼人打個路人，呢個路人唔知點呀咁樣，啲番鬼人
[h.t. John McWhorter; thanks to Nelson Ching, Ranting Jiang, Fangyi Cheng, and Alan Chin]
