10. Mandarin is a tonal language.
If you say "hua hua" with a rising tone, it means "slippery". If you say it with a flat high tone, it means "licentious" or "womanizing". If you saying with a descending tone, it means "drawing".
If you are tone deaf, congratulations! You are going to make a lot of Chinese people laugh.
Situation: A street vendor has asked you if you wish to buy a tiger claw (for medicinal purposes).
You meant to say: "不要. Bu yao (descending tone). I don't want it."
You have actually said: "不咬. Bu yao (dipping tone). Please don't bite me!"
9. It is very hard for foreigners to memorize proper nouns.
If I tell you my name is Max, all kinds of neurons fire. Maybe you think of a dog named Max. Maybe you call me Maximus and you picture me in the gladiator arena. Maybe you just fixate on that sexy "x" in my name. Or maybe you picture me in M.C. Hammer pants "taking it to the max". Which, of course, I do on a daily basis.
If I tell you my name is Li Feng, no such images are elicited. Not a damn one. To you it's just a random string of letters. Without those silly, fleeting associations to serve as subconscious cement, no memory is formed.
Situation: You run into me on the street after just having met me.
You meant to say: "立丰，你好. Li Feng, ni hao. Hello Li Feng."
You have actually said: "Um….. 凤梨，你好. Feng Li, ni hao. Hello Pineapple."
8. You will be tempted to translate directly from English and it won't work.
高 means "high".
潮 means "tide".
So 高潮 means "high tide", doesn't it?
Nope, it means "orgasm". I found this out the hard way when I asked someone about surfing during high tide.
7. Hangman becomes a *lot* more difficult.
6. The bad dictionaries are worthless.
My electronic dictionary translates 发紫 as "empurple", 更改 as "rejigger", 品尝 as "degustation", and 荡漾 as "popple". Which are really fancy ways of saying "to turn purple", "to update", "to try (food)", and "to ripple", respectively.
Who in Sam Hill wrote this? Clearly someone who is more intimate with the Oxford Dictionary of Pompous Twaddle than he is with actual English-speaking human beings.
5. The good dictionaries are worthless too.
Look up 蛋 and you'll see that it means "egg". Simple enough.
But it's wrong, wrong, wrong. 蛋 only refer to eggs that are similar to chicken eggs. Try asking where you can buy fish蛋. Chinese people will imagine that a sizable, oblong egg with a hard shell has come tumbling out of the fish's cloaca. Then they'll laugh at your ignorance of basic aquatic reproduction. And certainly don't use 蛋 to describe human eggs.
On a similar note, Kleenex is hard to translate because the same word is used for both facial tissue and toilet paper. The word for "toast" refers to sliced bread whether it is toasted or not.
4. Chinese typos totally alter the meaning of the sentence.
Chocolate. Chocolat. Chocklit. Chokomut. Whatever. They all mean the same thing.
Chinese is typed by punching in the romanization of the character. An autosuggest program will then pick the best character among many homonyms based on context.
Your typos will not be shown an ounce of leniency.
Situation: I was IMing a friend once, inattentively letting the autosuggest do its thing.
I meant to send: "你有没有申请圣地亚哥的大学? Did you apply to any universities in San Diego?"
Two mistyped tonal numbers resulted in: "你有没有深情圣地压歌的大学? Do you have deep feelings for the Holy Land's university of squashed music?"
3. Idioms Gone Wild
Chinese is full of idioms that don't make sense when read literally. For example, if your Chinese friends take you to eat the best dumplings in town and you can't taste the difference, they might say "Play piano for a cow!"
What they are really saying is that the art of the fine dumpling is lost on an ignorant cow like you.
马屁精means "brown-noser", but character for character it could mean "essence of horse butt". Wow! Is that by Calvin Klein?
2. The Chinese language reflects a difference in thought, not just a difference in expression.
How do you say "You got the check? Are you sure? Well then, thank you." in Chinese?
Answer: You don't.
Instead you say "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Then you steal the check from him forcibly. Bat off his attempts to recover it and foist your cash on the waiter before he can.
1. You guessed it: it's the writing system! The number 1 reason why Mandarin will kick your ass is that it has 6500 pissed-off, knuckle-dusting characters in common use.
"Damn!" says Pierre, reading the daily news.
"怎么了? What's wrong Pierre?" I ask.
"日本人真可恶! It's those damned Japanese!" he says, slamming his fist on his desk.
"Oh. You hate them for historical reasons," I say.
There's a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in China. It reared its ugly head a while back when the Japanese government printed textbooks overlooking the Rape of Nanjing. Chinese citizens launched bricks into the windows of local Japanese restaurants.
Which is why I never, ever tell anyone here that I am part Japanese.
"It's not just the rape of Nanjing; it's their entire bloody culture. Tell me Max, do they even have a culture? Who knows! Name one cultural product that came from Japan," he says, smiling at me and poking me in the ribs.
"Sushi?" I offer in a pitiful attempt to defuse the situation with humor.
"There's only one, and I'll name it for you: porn!" Pierre states defiantly. "That's the whole of Japanese contribution to modern culture, nudy flicks."
I think of my wonderful host mom, Masumi, frying tonkatsu for me back in Tokyo. The impish grin on this doofus' face makes my blood flash boil in my veins.
Quom, the bigger-than-life boss of the apparel department, pokes her head into the room.
"每天要洗澡！不洗会臭!"
"SHOWER EVERY DAY! IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL BE SMELLY!"
Somewhere, a young woman laughs.
"这里不准笑!"
"THERE WILL BE NO LAUGHTER IN THIS OFFICE!" Quom snaps before shuffling off.
Why can't we all just get along?
"PIIIIINK!"
Quom, fifth horseman of the apocalypse, comes barreling across the office with a pink collared shirt in her thick hands. She stops in the vicinity of my workstation and rubs her crew cut vigorously, staring down the room. Quom yells when she's mad. She yells when she's happy. She yells when she's describing what she had for lunch. She would have made an excellent Viking.
"PIIIINK! 你们看这件PINK的衬衫。谁敢穿? 举手!"
"PIIIINK! JUST LOOK AT THIS PINK SHIRT. WHO WILL WEAR IT? HANDS UP!"
Her voice pierces the entire floor of forty silent apparel buyers, half of whom report to her. The seasoned among them pay her no heed.
"HOW ABOUT YOU PIERRE," she yells, singling out my unfortunate neighbor. "ARE YOU A PINK MAN?"
Pierre giggles deferentially like a mewly-eyed schoolgirl before a pop star. Tee hee. Tee hee hee. Quom contemplates him menacingly like a disgruntled silverback before sauntering over to my desk.
"你呢，MAX. 你穿不穿PINK? 说!"
"YOU, MAX. DO YOU WEAR PINK OR NOT? SPEAK!"
"Umm… sometimes?"
She turns to face the room.
"PIIIIIIIIIIINK!" she bellows, pointing at me with one hand and energetically waggling the shirt with the other.
A few tense seconds pass. Quom snatches the used umbrella casing on my desk and hands it to me.
"脏!"
"DIRTY!"
I toss it in the trash and she gives me a reckless smile before moseying back from whence she came.
I love you Quom. Will you marry me?
