Sep. 5th, 2005 11:17 am
Celebrating labour by goofing off
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muckefuckIt's been a low-key weekend so far, just a few people over for grilling last night. The Chinese calligrapher & co. are due this afternoon for Kaffee und Kuchen which will give ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu a chance to show off some seals (and, one hopes, get a few stubborn ones translated) and me another chance to embarrass myself in Mandarin. I never wrote about my experiences last time since they were, if anything, more humiliating than my attempts to speak Dutch a few weeks earlier. Sitting next to the calligrapher's wife, I turned to her and asked "Ni3 yao4buyao4 ka1fei1?" so I could instruct the waiter to pour and she answered "Yao4!" It was my only fully-successful foreign-language communication of the day.
At the time, I could blame my comprehension problems on a noisy restaurant and sinus congestion. No such excuses this time, so I tried to prep by listening to Chinese Internet radio. Even with news stories I know ("Ka3te4li3na3" was, as you might expect, the top story--even beating out news of the one typhoon currently laying waste to Anhui and the other heading for Kyushu), I could only nab a few comprehensible phrases out of the incessant flow of syllables. I don't favour my chances.
monshu a chance to show off some seals (and, one hopes, get a few stubborn ones translated) and me another chance to embarrass myself in Mandarin. I never wrote about my experiences last time since they were, if anything, more humiliating than my attempts to speak Dutch a few weeks earlier. Sitting next to the calligrapher's wife, I turned to her and asked "Ni3 yao4buyao4 ka1fei1?" so I could instruct the waiter to pour and she answered "Yao4!" It was my only fully-successful foreign-language communication of the day.At the time, I could blame my comprehension problems on a noisy restaurant and sinus congestion. No such excuses this time, so I tried to prep by listening to Chinese Internet radio. Even with news stories I know ("Ka3te4li3na3" was, as you might expect, the top story--even beating out news of the one typhoon currently laying waste to Anhui and the other heading for Kyushu), I could only nab a few comprehensible phrases out of the incessant flow of syllables. I don't favour my chances.