Winning imaginary arguments

I remember seeing a post on Reddit (which I have been unable to track down - let me know if you can) which was roughly as follows:  "This is a graph of how I spend my time in the shower:"

There is certainly some truth to this, and judging by the response to that original graph, there are plenty of people who do this - imagining scenarios, presenting clever arguments, and winning convincingly.

And, for people studying another language, some of those imaginary arguments end up being in Chinese. Don't pretend that you haven't done it too … you know, you imagine a scenario where you're having to deal with some difficult person who only speaks your target language, and you win while arguing in that language.

What's fun is that this imaginary arguments sometimes happen in real life (although probably not arguing with strangers in the shower  :)

Sure, you get the easy scenarios where - in real life - some Chinese person is looking confused and you end up helping them by giving directions in Mandarin.

But you also get the real arguments.

For example, last year I went to South Africa and was standing in the queue at immigrations, waiting my turn to get through. Suddenly a group of five Mandarin-speaking people tried pushing in front of me. I told them in English there was a queue and they should please go to the back - but they pretended they couldn't speak English (or maybe they actually couldn't) - but either way they just ignored me.

I got really annoyed, and started telling them - in Chinese - that there was a queue, and that everyone else is waiting, and they should go to the back of the queue. They stood there speechless. The main guy said something back in Chinese, but I didn't actually understand him - so I just repeated myself, reminding them that there is a queue.

And they backed off, and then slinked to the back of the queue.

I felt fantastic - winning an argument in real life in Chinese - in a scenario that normally would only be imagined during 95% of one's shower time. Then some of the other (non-Chinese speaking) people in the queue smiled and gave me the thumbs up.

So yes, if you're looking for a reason to study Chinese, or to study a little harder, then winning arguments like this - whether privately & imaginary during your shower, or publicly with real Chinese people - definitely makes it worth while.

Have you ever had something along these lines happen to you in Chinese?

Who's on First? (this time in Mandarin Chinese)

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post entitled "Who's on First?" - which made reference to the famous Abbot & Costello sketch. If you haven't seen it, now would be a good time to watch that video.

With all the hype around the Gangnam Style music video, there is even a Mandarin version called "Laowai Style" - I wrote a post that included the lyrics of the Chinese parodied version (and also included some vocab & grammar lesson :-).

It was put together by Jesse Appell, and it seems that he has also created a Mandarin version of the "Who's on First?" sketch in Mandarin Chinese.

Having just watched it, I can confirm that the humour still works, and in fact it doesn't even require a very high level of Mandarin to follow.

For your amusement, here is the video ...

The world's funniest joke (now available in Chinese :-)

I saw an article on the CNN website, where they announce: "The world's funniest joke has been revealed after a year-long search by scientists."

It's actually a joke I'd heard before, and it goes like this:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?"  The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead."  There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"



I memorised a joke in Mandarin about 2-3 years ago, and I've got great mileage from it since then - so I decided to translate this one, and will set about memorising it over the next few days. Because of the subtle wording required to make this joke work, I did this yesterday as an exercise with Judy, my Chinese teacher.


In case you'd also like to learn the joke, here it is joke in Chinese. (For an easy pinyin pronunciation of any of the words, here's a shortcut to MDBG.net's version.)

两个猎人在林子里打猎，其中一个突然昏倒了。看起来他没有呼吸，他的眼睛干瞪着。他的同伴打电话叫救护车。他说，“我的朋友死了，怎么办？” 接线生说，“冷静一点，我来帮你。首先确定他真的死了。”  安静了一下，那边穿来了一下枪声。同伴说，“好了，然后呢？”

Get a free collection of Mandarin jokes now (beginner to advanced):

So what was the first joke you memorised? You're welcome to copy it into a comment below, or at least provide a link if you have one.

A laughable blog post

It's Friday, and I like Fridays. Not as much as Saturdays or Sundays, but it's heading in the right direction.

So using the concept of WordPacks, here are some common (and useful!) words which are all tied around a "laughable" theme ...

• hǎo xiào (好笑) funny (adjective)
• xiào huà (笑话) joke (noun)
• wán (玩) play, have fun (verb)
• kāi wán xiào (开玩笑) to make fun of / to joke (verb)
• wēi xiào (微笑) smile (verb)
• kě xiào (可笑) funny (adjective)
• gé gé xiào (格格笑) giggle (verb)

And to make it easier to memorise, note there are many words which end (or begin) with xiào (笑). Also there is a short "run-on" (hǎo xiào / xiào huà) which - if as a beginner that's all you memorise - then that's 90% of the usefulness for 10% of the effort.

PS. If you know any short Chinese jokes, or links to any jokes in Chinese, please leave a comment to this post ...