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tasty bytes from China
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09/21/11
Ting Boo-Boo Dong
Filed under: General
Posted by: @ 5:36 am

NoSpitting.jpg

It’s a good thing all of us were too young to remember mastering our native tongue. If we did remember the trials of mastering English, I’m sure we would have gone nuts .  Maybe that’s why we postpone that thing called bowel control until we hit two.

But after a year of listening to Chinese, I think I’m ready to give the language a whirl.

According to expert advice (in other words, info gleamed from game shows), the average infant hears over 15,000 hours of babble before trying it out.

Then it still takes them several years to master it. 

Plus, the first year, I doubt if an infant is challenged with understanding the phrase, “It’s   a ¥50 fine for poohing in the squatty”.

Actually, instead of bonding with a baby learning  the lingo, I  feel like Helen Keller when she first learned to say “wa wa”.

But in Chinese–thanks to tones– “wa wa” could mean a variety of things, none of which is water.
Water by the way, is “shway”,  like Wayne World’s schwing!!!!

Ma however, can mean: mom, mule, a very inappropriate expletive deleted, or good.

Mà, mă, má mà, literally means you are glad your mom swore at a mule.

Or is that  mà mà, mă, má?

 Anyhow, that’s why I’m tempted to bring  a tuning fork to Chinese practice.

There are four tones to the Chinese  language and a few others in the Kunming dialect.

The first tone, ā, reminds me of my bando days, holding a  “C” note on my tuba  while drool from the previous player dribbled out of the spit valve.

The second tone, á, changes the inflection of the word into a question like, “huh?”

The third tone,  ă, reminds me of the classic Palmolive dishing washing liquid commercial with Madge. I’m soaking in dishwashing liquid?” . It’s a tone with a bit of sarcasm.

The fourth tone, à, ends quickly with a kung fu chop.

The final tone, a, is a shorter version of the first one.

But then, thanks to more game show knowledge, I remember that there are more people in China studying English than there are English speakers in America.

So why bother?

Anyhow,  I’m studying it, one weird word at a time. If you are interested in learning some Chinese, I recommend you visit http://zhongwen.com/ziyin.htm. This site explains the method to the madness of Chinese characters.

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