Fili’s world

Naturally, every day we learn a bunch’o new words in Chinese class. Most Chinese words are, well, regular Chinese sounding - whatever that might mean, but every week there’s always a special words that sounds really cute. I could never understand if the reason there’s one every week is by coincidence or rather because the writer knew my taste in listening to words and have done his best to make my Chinese studies enjoyable.

So, not that anybody would be interested in this list but me, not that it ever stopped me before, here’s a list of the cute sounding words/phrases, by week:

• Week 1 - Obviously, the cute “she” sounds were part of what got me hooked up to Chinese : “Xie4 xie4″, pronounced “She4 she4″, meaning “Thank you”.
• Week 2 - “Yuan2 zi1 bi3″, pronounced “Yoo-an2 tze1 bee3″ - meaning “ball point pen”. Yeah, well, that’s the kind of stuff you can expect to learn on the second week.
• Week 3 - “Ma3 ma3 hu1 hu1″, pronounced “Ma2 ma3 hoo1 hoo1″ - translated as ‘horse horse tiger tiger’, meaning “so so”.
• Week 4 - “Zen3 ma yang4″, pronounced “Tzen3 ma yan4″ - translated, I think, as ‘How your way?’, meaning “What’s your opinion?”.
• Week 5 - “Cha4 bu4 duo1″, pronounced “cha4 boo4 dwo1″ - meaning “Approximately, about, almost”.
• Week 6 - “Huan1ying2″, pronounced “Hoowan1 yin2″ - translated to “Pleased to greet”, meaning “Welcome”. Always said twice, for some strange reason, repeatingly said when one goes inside a convience store or a restaurant. It is a common joke that most foreigners, such as myself, hear them saying “Good morning, good morning” and are often confused when hearing this at night-time.
• Week 7 - This has got to be the number one surprise. “Ma2 fan2″, pronounced simply “Ma2 fan2″ but sounds EXACTLY like the Israeli “Maafan” and with similar meaning - “Troublesome, annoying”. This word, funny enough, is used very often. I always thought we adopted it from Arabic, but maybe it has a different background.
• Week 8 - “Wei4 shen2 me?”, pronounced “Way4 she2 ma?” - translated to “Because what?” meaning “Why?”. It’s the combination of two words/phrases that I love hearing - “Wei4″ is the way folks answer the phone here, but they do it a lot longer with ‘Waaaaaaay’ and “Shen2 me” is also used to fill in blanks or do “Bla bla” by “she ma she ma she ma”. CUTE!
• Week 9 - “You3 de shi1 hou4″, pronounced “Yoda she1 ho4″ - translated to “have some time” meaning “Some times”. ‘Like sound of Yoda, fiLi does’
• Week 10 - “Zhen1 de ma?”, pronounced “Jan1 da ma” - meaning “Is that so? really?”.

So, Xiexie for surviving my Mamahuhu post. Zenmayang? Oh! Weishenme so Mafan? arrrr… Zhendema? Okay, I know, I know, you’re Huanying to Yaunzibi me (I made that phrase up - ball point pen me, bahh! ;). I imagine, Chabuduo, maybe one person will actually read this crap. You de shi hou I don’t understand why anybody does.

[Imagine that this sentence is a good example of what we do in class every day :P]

Categories :

• b-taiwan
• b-studychinese