There is a group biking across China to raise Autism awareness. We got this update today -

Current Location: Turpan

Distance Traveled: 4272km

Distance To Go: 728km

Toilet Paper vs. Prostitutes

Mon, Aug 15, 2005

Thought this story might help some of you through your Monday/Tuesday morning.

http://www.biketheworld.org/gallery/view_album.phpset_albumName=Stage6%3AJiayuguantoTurpan 

And now onto my plunder in the Chinese vernacular:

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Chinese is a pretty easy language to become 2-year old fluent in -- that means being able to say 100 words so that people pretty much understand you (with a few hand gestures if necessary). But after that it becomes tricky.

See it's a tonal language meaning you can say "ma" four different ways and it means four different things. This can create some interesting situations...

So we had just arrived at our "hotel" for the evening. I needed to head to the backyard to do my personal business (remember toilets are not necessarily included in the room fee...), but I didn't have any toilet paper. Confident in my 2-year old vocabulary I waded over to the grouchy inn keeper and asked "Yo Mai Yo Xiao Jie" -- what I thought ment "Have don't have TOILET PAPER".

But I got an usual response -- the lady looked up at me and sparked (in chinese of course) "You just got here and you want Xiao Jie. There are many Xiao Jie downstairs. Wash up first."

I looked at her with a glazed look, wondering why she seemed so angry that I wanted toilet paper. I persisted -- maybe they just didn't have toilet paper -- "Wo Ca-ee Mie Xiao Jie Zai Nar" (Where can I buy "TOILET PAPER")

At this point Fang Weng Guang runs out and says, "Brad, you just asked where you could buy a prostitute." He hung out his head and explained the situation to the inn keeper -- she didn't seem convinced and still thought I wanted a prostitute.

And that's pretty much how we found out that a prostitute in QiKeTai costs 30RMB for one home-run and 120RMB for the whole night. Just make sure you don't get your "Shou Zhi" confused with your "Xiao Jie" next time you are in China

Ruggysgirl,

I like the story. It's so clearly NORMAL to screw up the language here and say something dumb without realizing it. I had a good laugh with that one.

The two men (Brad and Guang) are doing a really good thing. I believe they started their ride in the first week of July. Everybody is following their progress here.

I was going to ask you if those kinds of mistakes are fairly typical. In college we were told that Chinese is a very difficult language to master, because of the intonations that this story describes.

Heather

Heather,

It's VERY difficult. I cannot elaborate that enough. Korean is not so bad, Thai is harder, and Japanese is pretty rough due to the many words you have to say and the written alphabet.

I'd have to say that Chinese (Well, at least Mandarin, which is what I'm exposed to) is the hardest of all. It's entirely tonal and there are many different tones to use. Many of the tones are ones that we as English speakers have NEVER used, so it is literally a sound that we cannot make. Sort of like trying to "trill" your R's if you've never spoken spanish. Asian's usually have a bit of a time with "R's" and "L's" since those there isn't an "r" in their language.....it's the same situation.

Mandarin has about 56,000 different characters. To read a newspaper you need to know about 3000 of them. To read literature maybe around 6000. Each one of these has a different sound and meaning. Many of these sounds are VERY similar. Compared to our 26 characters you can see the trouble.

For example there is one word...it sounds like "bang" but it is actually 12 different sounds with 12 different characters and 12 different meanings. To us it all sounds the same, but to them it sounds different.

Tough stuff....but always a blast.

"Deck the hawrs with bows of horry, fa ra ra ra raaa, ra ra ra raaaah"

From A Christmas Story.

hirarirous!!!

You're a real class act Tailgater. A real class act.

Oh, come on. I have a friend whose best girlfriend growing was Asian/American. Her mother was "off the boat" so to speak. She called them Londa and Rhinda.

I'll bet they laugh plenty about people who mess up their language.

As for me, I'll be having the robster craw.

Heather

Adroomi,

A Christmas Story is one of the classic "B" movies. The Chinese Christmas dinner scene is great and its not a slam about asians butchering the language or anything else.

Don't forget the best line of all...

...you'll shoot your eye out, kid.

Thanks tailgater.