Lake or Tiger?
I came to China without knowing a drop of Chinese. I did so on purpose in order to get the experience of being in an unknown country and only knowing people from it but not much after that. From what I have learned, which is extreme elementary, I have said many things that have been lost in translation when I speak Mandarin but I can come back from the experience with writing the characters in my phone and showing the people I am dealing with until they understand what I am talking about. As of now, I have nit had a better friend than Pleco which is a Chinese-English dictionary. I have realized though that there are many things that are said in English that do not have words for in Chinese which have become a little frustrating at times when trying to explain my Hispanic heritage and customs.
Chinese Mandarin is actually one of the hardest languages I have learned in that there are four different tones that you can say one spelling of a word and they can all have different meanings. When practicing with my language partners and the other partners of the elementary group, I remember once that I asked them if we could go to the Green Lake which is very close from campus. The Lake is actually the best place to buy souvenirs and get a great scenic walk. Well anyways, instead of saying “Zhè ge lǜ hú.” Which means, “This is the Green Lake.” i said, “Zhé ge lǜ hǔ.” Which means, this is the green tiger. It has served as the best way to tease me as I frequently reminded of my mispronounced word. What can I say, I’m a beginner.
Although being a beginner, I am often looking for funny sounding words that I can say over and over. I am also a native speaker in Spanish so searching for words has become an easy hobby. In Spanish, my favorite word is “albóndigas,” which means “meatballs.” It is not so much what they mean than how they sound to say it. Till this day my favorite word came up from a moment where my class watched a scene of the Minions in Chinese. In the English version of the movie, there was a scene where two Minions would be around a photocopier with one taking copies of his butt. They would laugh about it immaturely. In the same scene in Chinese, they called butts, “pìgu,” and I lost it. For a single moment, I became a minion and laughed about bottoms too. It has become my favorite word for the week.
