It\u2019s time for another installment about my attempts to learn Mandarin Chinese. This is a never-ending series. That\u2019s because it\u2019s a never-ending quest. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m an \u201cintermediate\u201d student. I was an intermediate student four years ago. I\u2019ll be an intermediate student four years from now. My parents taught me that I should strive for consistency. Is this what they had in mind?<\/p>\n
Anyway, I eventually decided I\u2019d rather have a solid grasp of the basic stuff than a fuzzy grasp of a larger scope. <\/p>\n
It never ceases to amaze me how the basic stuff can hide in plain sight. Textbook language and street language are two different species. <\/p>\n
I hired a tutor to help me revisit the most practical and basic of things. She is married to an airline crew member and she\u2019s got an appreciation for the practical side of communications and travel. Practicality, not fashion, is the goal here. <\/p>\n
The big picture here isn\u2019t the actual Chinese translations. I\u2019ll spare you those details. The big picture is that we found these terms to be important and yet they went overlooked (by me) for so long. I\u2019d want to know these terms in just about any language:<\/p>\n
1)<\/strong> \u201cMcDonald\u2019s\u201d<\/p>\n One audio course I took taught the term \u201creindeer milk\u201d in Chinese. That stuck in my head, but darned if I could ever remember, if in fact I ever knew to begin with, how to say \u201cMcDonald\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n According to an Aug. 8 article in USA Today, there are currently 2,500 McDonald\u2019s in China. This number is expected to increase to 4,500 by the year 2022. The worldwide tally stands at about 37,000.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve had Chinese colleagues on Saipan, in Guam, and elsewhere specifically request McDonald\u2019s when it was time to eat. It\u2019s not just an American thing. For my colleagues and I, it\u2019s a good word to know. <\/p>\n 2)<\/strong> \u201cKFC\u201d<\/p>\n KFC has even more restaurants than McDonald\u2019s does in China. According to a company website there are over 5,000 KFC restaurants in China.<\/p>\n 3)<\/strong> \u201cWhatever\u201d<\/p>\n This word enjoyed favor as part of California\u2019s \u201cValley Girl\u201d lingo in the 1980s. The \u201cvalley\u201d refers to a sprawling, concrete-and-freeway expanse of the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area. <\/p>\n \u201cWhatever\u201d can do doubly duty with nearly opposite meanings. In one sense it can be a term of dismissal. In another sense it can be a term granting assent, as in, \u201cWhatever you want to do is OK with me.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s the latter meaning that I\u2019m interested in here. Here\u2019s a random slice of life from my little corner of the world:<\/p>\n \u201cDude, what do you want to eat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs KFC all right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen do you want to go?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCool. Let\u2019s make it two-o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n This is probably about how 80 percent of my conversations go. Life has proven to be just a bigger version of high school. Like, totally, for sure.<\/p>\n 4)<\/strong> \u201cI emphatically do not care about politics\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found myself in a few situations internationally where an American in the group wants to stir up political discussions. Being able to immediately dissociate myself from that behavior is an important skill. <\/p>\n 5)<\/strong> \u201cNone of your business\u201d<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t field tested this one yet, and I\u2019d be careful where I use it, but I like having it in my hip pocket anyway. I\u2019d probably employ a more diplomatic spin, such as \u201cI don\u2019t understand why this matter is your concern.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n Those are the words and phrases the tutor taught me during our first session. Yeah, I\u2019m still stuck at the intermediate level, but, well, whatever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s time for another installment about my attempts to learn Mandarin Chinese. This is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[169,21,2643,309],"class_list":["post-260833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-china","tag-life","tag-mandarin-chinese","tag-ok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}