Friday, August 15, 2008

I simply can't win !

Before coming to China I spent months learning Mandarin. I learned simply phrases (I love you, are you hungry, hug, kiss, do you have to go potty, are you tired, thirsty.) Well, as I stated in previous posts, she laughs her head off. Wait until you hear her crack up. She will laugh so hard that she usually chokes on her saliva.

So here I am in a store making a purchase and I am showing off my Mandarin skills and the woman asked me what province she is from. I reply Guangdong, /meizhou City. The woman starts laughing. At this point I feel my nose beginning to flare. The woman told me that that province doesn't speak Mandarin but Hakka.

I LEARNED THE WRONG FRIGGEN LANGUAGE !

Well I simply refuse to believe this, so I bolted back to the hotel, with a big "L" on my forehead, jumped online and googled Hakka phrases. I picked some simply phrases like "Come here". My child walks right over to me...So I said to myself, 'self ', maybe its a coincidence. I tried another phrase, and she understood it. So here I am in China, very capable of taking with everyone elses child but my own.
The two languages are completely different, not even similiar in anyway.

Simply can't win ! Vicki and Tracy, I suggest you go to Barnes and Noble and buy the cliff notes or the book to "Learning Hakka for Dummies"
Annette, you can forget about my conversion list on my refrigerator. It doesn't apply.

5 comments:

Annette/Ken said...

Ok - so, now I'm "YI" Te Te and Ken is "YIFU" Kenny.

Yi and Yifu. Better than Yimu and Jimu or...sounded like Star Wars.

What are we going to do w/o your daily logs - I'm pissing here every day!!!

Love,
Yi

Jennifer said...

I've never even heard of Hakka. Shows how much I know about the languages of China. This post made me laugh out loud...

Lina said...

Hehehe I think "dumbass" is the same in every language...
HUGS,
Leen

Rina said...

Glad i can bring some humor to the table ladies...Stick around, I'm here all week.

Vicki said...

Uh oh. Shows what kind of friend I am. I KNEW Hakka was the language of Meizhou. I even met w/a lady this past Monday to practice some Hakka phrases. HOW did we ever skip over this detail? I got my info from someone on the Meizhou Yahoo group...but I only knew b/c ONE chick from New Orleans who has adopted from Meizhou told me. Forgive, please.
Geesh...and I'm a teacher.
:) Vicki

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