My Mandarin is really 烂
That day during lunch, my classmates asked me how to say "hi" in Chinese. I instinctively replied
"Its also HI".
Oops, too late to stop myself.. but I was frantically thinking what was the equivalent in Chinese? In Singapore, we always go 'hi' mah. It took me a while before I said in relief, " its 你好". And everyone repeated after me "ohh.. 你好"
My Swedish teacher has this irritating habit in class- to make us repeat the new vocabulary we just learnt, in our own language. SO one day, it was about food. What do u call TOMATO in Chinese? OMG, i dunno!! I had to embarassingly said I dont remember. The next round was POTATO. I was praying very hard, pls dun ask me pls dun ask me...thankfully he didn't. When I told YQ abt it, he was totally speechless. Yah I know, me too.
6 comments:
whahaha,I always thought your Mandarin was better than most of us. To think I always get laughed at by my colleagues. But I know fan qie and ma ling shu.
yar yar.. thanks for reminding. Not that I dont know ok, its just that I cant remember offhand.. haha.
yea, totally get you. it's one of those tip-of-tongue things. I forgot what was spinach at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago as well. actually, if you mix more with chinese/taiwanese, your chinese will improve quite a bit. at least i think mine did. also, did you know that potato and tomato are both called differently in china and taiwan?
~EY
Yar! I had a hard time explaining to mum what spinach was! Yes, my China classmate was talking about 土豆, and she was so frustrated that I did not know what it was, ha. What's tomato?
Heh...tomato is 西红柿 in China.
土豆 is peanut in Taiwan.
I find it quite amusing :D
~EY
Really? din noe that... interesting!!
Post a Comment