Undoubtedly one of, if not the, hardest things about living in a foreign country is dealing with the language barrier. Unless you’re a natural linguist then life suddenly becomes a blur of indistinguishable sounds which can be quite disorienting at first. In the past I’ve equated this with going deaf but this is a poor analogy since tone and volume can also be valuable indicators of what someone is trying to express.
Here’s a little tip for men in China hoping to avoid public castigation: don’t wear a green hat. Unfortunately this advice came a little late for me, but first a little background as to why it’s a cultural faux pas over here: In China “wearing a green hat” (戴绿帽子 or dài lǜ mào zǐ) is an expression that Chinese use when a woman cheats on her husband or boyfriend because the phrase sounds similar to the word for cuckold. This apparently dates back to the Yuan dynasty when the relatives of prostitutes were forced to wear green hats. If you’re given a green hat by your significant other then the news is probably not good. To wear one is to be a bit of a…
This post is part of a series exploring Chinese culture. See the links at the bottom of this page for more. Photo by My Hobo Soul It has often been said that you cannot fully understand a country’s culture without knowing its language as language is the verbal expression of culture. The same can be said of Chinese which is the most widely spoken language in the world as well as one of the most impenetrable for foreigners. There are many regional dialects of Chinese although the most widely spoken is Mandarin (the official language, spoken on the mainland) and Cantonese (used in Hong Kong and parts of the south). Photo by nocas Written Chinese characters evolved over time from earlier forms of hieroglyphs.…
In China the English language is a fickle thing where the normal rules of grammar, punctuation and general comprehensible sentence structure do not seem to apply. So prolific is this phenomenon that they even have a name for it: Chinglish. Today’s post is a homage to this most wonderful of Frankenstein languages which keeps foreigners chuckling all day long and undoubtedly has sign makers busy when hapless proprietors realise their English faux pas (or not as the case is usually). The following collection of shop sign shots were taken around the Haiya area of Nanshan District, Shenzhen nearby where I live: No Right Just Suitable – a clothes shop where you’ll never find exactly what you’re looking for but it’ll be suitable nevertheless. Hot…
One of my goals for this year is to learn spoken Mandarin Chinese. Given that I live and work in China it only makes sense that I learn the language which will ultimately help improve both hopefully. Also given that Mandarin is one of the harder languages to learn (hard as in virtually impossible if you want to read as well as speak it) I am not expecting an easy ride. Last year I read an intriguing article by the author and self proclaimed “life hacker” Tim Ferris titled “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour“. He reasons that before you invest a lot of time on a language you should first deconstruct it into its core components by examining…
On the 10th anniversary of its founding Google has recently been asking 10 of its “experts” to give their predictions of what’s going to happen in the next 10 years as the internet evolves. I’m no expert but as a curious partaker in this brave new world I thought I’d give a shot at coming up with my own list of future predictions – Computation moves into the cloud – obvious but important. This is the key to the future which will provoke massive social change. No longer will we be tied to our desks or fortified corporate networks. Work anywhere on any device with the same access to all the same resources. Technology is humanised – forget “plug and pray”, it just works.…
It’s been a long time since I posted anything under the “University” category since I graduated over two years ago and whilst I may be a little older and wiser the learning never ends! Since visiting Korea twice this year I felt it was about time I learned a bit of the language so signed up for the Beginners Korean course at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Three lessons later and it’s not going to badly but I think I’m going to have to put a fair bit of effort in to be able to keep up with the work – somewhat reminiscent of when I studied Japanese! Korean is significantly easier to learn than Chinese or Japanese…