dã jiä hçžo. wç’ jiã o mã©i jiã n hã¨. wç’ de shuäng jiã© gã¹n zã i nçžlç?!so it's chinese-language week here in new zealand. apparently it's the first timethis has been held and it's been getting a reasonable good amount of coverage inthe media - in newspapers, on television and the interwebs. a good friend of mine helped set it up and it's the same friend who got me interested in the chinese language andculture. (he's chinese).
easy diet nz, wç’ de pã©ngyç’u huã² jiã nqiã¡ng. he's alawyer now... he used to be a politician and we met when we were both journalists at thecountry's biggest daily newspaper. we would have morning tea together in thecafeteria and he would buy the same thing every morning at 10 o'clock. he'dget a muffin and he'd go up he'd and pay his money
and he would giggle. and one day i said "what's so funny about a muffin?". and he said "well, you know here in new zealandwhen you wanna say something's crap, it's bullshit. well, in china we have a similar sayingwhich is mçž fã¨n and so i am eating horse manure. so there you go - a little chinese lesson from him to me to you. you might not think that mçž fã¨n is going to be a very usefulphrase but i beg to differ some years ago i went to ireland and did a bus trip and on the bus was a father from mainland china and his... let's say, twelve-year-old son and they didn't speak a lot of english andwe stopped in the countryside at one point and there was some horses and theboy - he was trying to strike up
conversation with me - pointed and went mçž, and that sparked a memory and i pointed below the horse and went fã¨n. and he was a little bit shocked, sure, but there was also a mischievous delight and it brokedown some barriers. i nearly broke those barriers completely the next morningwhen i went down to the bathroom and they were already there brushing their teeth and as i was heading into a stall i thought i was giving them a greeting inchinese and their reaction was to pffffff spit all their toothpaste out over the mirror and i realized i'd meant to say something like "zçžo" (morning) and instead i said more like"såu", which is to piss... to urinate. they laughed so i guess it wasn't too bad but whooo. i've been learning chinese for many years now. i used to say
trying to learn and definitely failing.my pronunciation certainly needs a lot of work, but i realize now that it's justa process, that's growing albeit slowly. i've done school courses, night courses, self-taught books, web courses... flash cards and i've just gone back to having atutor as well - we had lesson tonight maybe one day i'll be able tounderstand do the dirty jokes at parties. maybe i'll go to china. maybe i'll even work out why these guys are fighting. i think it's about the dalai lama zã ijiã n!
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