It’s nearly 2. I haven’t yet had a chance to sit down to the computer to speed read through two dozen articles and find the one or two snippets of information that can boiled down for a good blog post. I enjoy doing it. Even if the rewards for this bizarre and nerdy activity seem more and more distant. I’ll get to it, my patient blog readers, but first let me tell what’s going on here.
It’s damn beautiful here in this corner of the world. I keep meaning to stop the car and take pictures of the little bits that are especially awesome — the ancient river rock walls that are sprinkled throughout our town, a patch of perfectly happy blue hostas, the twin baby girls rolling around on a blanket on the neighbor’s front lawn. I keep meaning to stop the car and snap photos, but usually I’m on the way someplace and I’m terribly late.
It’s so beautiful that I would rather not go anywhere. On Friday, I met some friends in New York City for dinner. And it really took a lot of energy to find a nice outfit and get on a train. I would rather putter in my backyard than drink wine in a cafe? Who is this person? In the end, I went and had a lovely time, even though I missed the connecting train and got stuck in Secaucus in 1 am. Steve had to come rescue me. Which was sweet, because Saturday was our 17th year anniversary. Husband the hero.
After a two-hour special ed PTA meeting this morning, I zoomed into the driveway and hauled the empty garbage cans back to the garage. The Chinese grandma inched by our house, holding the hand of her one-year old grandson. My roommate from college had a mom who didn’t speak English. Whenever I said “Ni How Ma” to her mom, she laughed hysterically. I tried out my “Ni How Ma” on the Chinese grandma last week. And she also hysterically laughed. Now, she’s my best friend and waves enthusiastically whenever we cross paths during the day.
After a nice Greek salad with my sister for her birthday and a dozen or so little chores, I’m almost back to business.
Apt. 11d 
“Shay shay” is thank you in Mandarin – she’ll love that too.
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“Da bizi wai guo ren” is “big nosed foreigner”–that and ni how are the only Chinese I know. I used to have a Chinese associate who thought it was very funny when I said that.
Note that whereas Westerners seem to notice Asian eyes foremost, Asians seem to notice Western noses as the major racial difference.
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You don’t mention whether or not you are aware of the tonality of Mandarin. You may get the pronunciation perfect but if you get the tones wrong, you may be saying “Gadzooks my monkey wrench is full of cheese” or whatever, which is why the native speakers are cracking up laughing.
(Yeah, “tone argument” 😉 )
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That just makes it more fun.
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ni alone is 3rd tone, but tone sandi with ‘hao’ (third tone becomes second tone (rising) if followed by another third tone. There doesn’t appear to be a first tone ni (high level), but fourth tone (falling) ni could mean to plaster sthg, or bigoted. There are more nis, but there are some examples. Hao is third tone (contour falling rising). There are 59 haos, so you could really be saying a lot of things. First tone hao could be to pull up weeds, or wormwood. 2nd tone hao could mean oyster. Fourth tone hao means number, size, mark (non-abstract), or vast, etc. Ma is generally used to show the minimal pair tone paradigm in mandarin: ma(1) is mother, ma(2) is hemp, ma(3) is horse, and ma(4) is to scold.
Interestingly, the word for alpaca in Chinese is now a homonym for “fuck your mother” due to an internet prank in 2009. In order to get past the censors, which censor swear words, someone devised a song whose lyrics were entirely ‘grass mud horse’ cao(3) ni(2) ma(3), accompanied by a picture of an alpaca. The name sounds like an extremely vulgar swear phrase, cao(4)ni(3)ma(1), as mentioned above. The song was a huge hit and quickly removed from the internet, but not before ‘grass mud horse’ stuck as the name of an alpaca in ordinary conversation.
My other favorite tone moment is a friend asked me where my partner currently was, and I wanted to say he was in the Czech Republic, so I said: ta(1) (third pers pronoun) zai(4) (locative preposition) jie(1)ke(4), which I thought was Czech Republic. (I knew the last part was fourth tone, and fudged the first part). My friend was like “where??” “what??” The whole exchange repeated until finally I said “a country in central Europe!” and he responded, Oh. you mean jie(2)ke(4). I was like, “uh yeah, that’s basically what I said.” Later on he recounted the story to some mutual friends, and I found out that ta(1) zai(4) jie(1)ke(4) means “he is soliciting clients (for a brothel).” zai is also a progressive aspect marker, and jie(1) first tone means to receive, get, or solicit, and ke(4) means client or guests.
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This is why I’m dubious about Mandarin immersion schools in the US. (Apparently even French immersion schools have had very iffy results.)
Click to access hammerly.pdf
Way safer (but obviously more expensive) to either live in China with your kids or have a Mandarin-speaking nanny.
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Why not wine in the back yard? It’s a nice compromise, and very civilized.
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