I am working to try and at least obtain some small working vocabulary of Chinese while I am here. I really should’ve worked harder while in the US to get it done but I can’t change that so I move forward, I’m just a little farther behind that I wanted to be at this time (I’m somewhere over the Island of Misfit Toys I think; like a cowboy that rides….an ostrich.). Some things I am learning are rather simple and I’m always listening while I’m in the supervisor’s office (my temp. location) to see if I can pick up some “common” terms or phrases. Unfortunately there is a twist to this location. Also in the supervisor’s office are the machinery manufacturers from Germany and so I’m surrounded by Germans and Chinese (the axis of evil?). I worked hard over the last two years to polish up on my German for my trips to Germany and unfortunately that’s working against me a little since I can pick out the German words faster (and by faster I mean I understand one word out of a hundred) and when I’m hearing both Chinese and German at the same time my mind shuts down and I want to curl up into a ball under the desk (tell me when it’s over). I may not know German well but I feel more comfortable with it since it’s not based as much on tone and pitch as the Chinese language and it seems to make more sense to me.
I digress a little so I’ll get back to the point; at all times you must remember that they are speaking Chinese and although something sounds familiar, it isn’t. For example, while I was listening the other day I heard a word/phrase that stood out to me. “Bù xiè” is term (pronounced “boo shee” just to be clear) when said is tough to distinguish from a word used in the US to describe cow manure (it’s ma, which is good, followed by nure which is also good…so you see it’s really a positive word). These words are said quickly in normal speech patterns so you react like you heard something bad but you have to remember where you are and that the word isn’t what you think. By the way, “Bù xiè” is the term for “you’re welcome”. So when you say “Xiè Xiè” (shay shay) and they say “Bù xiè” (boo shee), they aren’t telling you that you said it wrong or you’re full of it, they are responding as you would in English. Thank you. You’re welcome. Notice that it’s the combination of words that detail the meaning, the word “xiè” (spelled and pronounced the same) is not the same here. How can it mean both “thank” and “you” and “welcome” (and sound different)? I don’t know, it just does…this is why the language is so difficult to grasp. There are also multiple local dialects that stray from the standard Mandarin, so someone from Suzhou and someone from Shanghai would use different words to mean the same thing. Believe it or not, there are places where the Chinese go in China that they don’t understand the Chinese spoken in that region. I thought getting used to “Southern” was tough (I still don’t understand how “running like a scalded dog” is a good thing….I’m not sure if that would translate properly in Chinese, it might mean to them that I’m hungry and I’m indicating what I want to eat). There are plenty of other examples of a word/phrase that I didn’t know what it meant in Chinese but I knew what it sounded like in English (that is if I understood it correctly). I was in the office with a Canadian as well (takeoff eh) so I would ask him about the word/phrase I just heard (What was that!?!). I wanted to be sure I heard it properly. I’ve found many cases that build upon this concept but in some cases the English word that closely resembled the Chinese word/phrase would be considered offensive and so I’ve decided against stating more examples (despite the good intentions, I don’t want anyone to feel slighted. Those who know me would understand but in this case discretion is warranted). The bottom line is that a different language is just that…different. Slang terms don’t come into play at all and you have to remember that it’s not English (in most cases it’s not the hard to remember). Even though there are times when words sound like English words, they are not English words. When I hear some Chinese terms; I know that in the US that word/phrase could get you in a world of trouble in a hurry, not because of the intent of the speaker but because of the interpretation of the listener (isn’t this the same with e-mail [or blogs for that matter], tone cannot be conveyed in written form and a simple word or phrase taken in the wrong way by the reader can lead to big problems). It could also happen in reverse, say I’m swearing at a Chinese person in English and tell him he is full of bull**** (not that I would ever do that…got to keep “face” right), he’s wondering why I’m yelling at him and saying you’re welcome at the same time (and he’s wondering why I can’t pronounce it properly…Stupid American, he’s very excitable isn’t he, if he keeps it up and I’ll have to go all Jackie Chan on him). This is one of those major reasons why learning Chinese or any other language is so difficult and why I’m struggling to keep up. All I know is that right now it all sounds like boo shee to me that’s for sure.
I digress a little so I’ll get back to the point; at all times you must remember that they are speaking Chinese and although something sounds familiar, it isn’t. For example, while I was listening the other day I heard a word/phrase that stood out to me. “Bù xiè” is term (pronounced “boo shee” just to be clear) when said is tough to distinguish from a word used in the US to describe cow manure (it’s ma, which is good, followed by nure which is also good…so you see it’s really a positive word). These words are said quickly in normal speech patterns so you react like you heard something bad but you have to remember where you are and that the word isn’t what you think. By the way, “Bù xiè” is the term for “you’re welcome”. So when you say “Xiè Xiè” (shay shay) and they say “Bù xiè” (boo shee), they aren’t telling you that you said it wrong or you’re full of it, they are responding as you would in English. Thank you. You’re welcome. Notice that it’s the combination of words that detail the meaning, the word “xiè” (spelled and pronounced the same) is not the same here. How can it mean both “thank” and “you” and “welcome” (and sound different)? I don’t know, it just does…this is why the language is so difficult to grasp. There are also multiple local dialects that stray from the standard Mandarin, so someone from Suzhou and someone from Shanghai would use different words to mean the same thing. Believe it or not, there are places where the Chinese go in China that they don’t understand the Chinese spoken in that region. I thought getting used to “Southern” was tough (I still don’t understand how “running like a scalded dog” is a good thing….I’m not sure if that would translate properly in Chinese, it might mean to them that I’m hungry and I’m indicating what I want to eat). There are plenty of other examples of a word/phrase that I didn’t know what it meant in Chinese but I knew what it sounded like in English (that is if I understood it correctly). I was in the office with a Canadian as well (takeoff eh) so I would ask him about the word/phrase I just heard (What was that!?!). I wanted to be sure I heard it properly. I’ve found many cases that build upon this concept but in some cases the English word that closely resembled the Chinese word/phrase would be considered offensive and so I’ve decided against stating more examples (despite the good intentions, I don’t want anyone to feel slighted. Those who know me would understand but in this case discretion is warranted). The bottom line is that a different language is just that…different. Slang terms don’t come into play at all and you have to remember that it’s not English (in most cases it’s not the hard to remember). Even though there are times when words sound like English words, they are not English words. When I hear some Chinese terms; I know that in the US that word/phrase could get you in a world of trouble in a hurry, not because of the intent of the speaker but because of the interpretation of the listener (isn’t this the same with e-mail [or blogs for that matter], tone cannot be conveyed in written form and a simple word or phrase taken in the wrong way by the reader can lead to big problems). It could also happen in reverse, say I’m swearing at a Chinese person in English and tell him he is full of bull**** (not that I would ever do that…got to keep “face” right), he’s wondering why I’m yelling at him and saying you’re welcome at the same time (and he’s wondering why I can’t pronounce it properly…Stupid American, he’s very excitable isn’t he, if he keeps it up and I’ll have to go all Jackie Chan on him). This is one of those major reasons why learning Chinese or any other language is so difficult and why I’m struggling to keep up. All I know is that right now it all sounds like boo shee to me that’s for sure.
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