Students' version of Chinese: 01 (London)

See also blog Let me show you my…

In my experience of teaching Chinese in London (23 years teaching mature students doing evening classes, and another three teaching full-time BA students), students were always mortified when they made mistakes.  

It didn’t matter (to themselves) that they were diplomat trainees (Oxford graduate Peter would draw, in the days long before emoticons came into currency, a cross face against his uphill struggle at a translation).  Or the holder of a PhD in geology.  Or an MOD [Ministry of Defence] Russian-English translator.  Or a polyglot (English/French/Spanish) administrator at a notary public firm.  Or an IP (Intellectual Property) specialist lawyer.  The list goes on.  However eminent their professional (and personal) achievements might’ve been, learning Chinese (and the attendant outcome of making embarrassing mistakes) seems to turn them into shrinking violets.

What these (self-)Doubting Thomases don’t realise is how much of an eternal source of mirth they are to a teacher with a kooky sense of humour.

Example 1:

Before I went into mainstream teaching of Chinese, I was invited to teach a 10-week course at SACU (Society for Anglo Chinese Understanding) for people who’d booked a 3-week tour of China with them.  When it ended, one of the students, Ceri, wanted extra lessons.  

I thought it might be useful for her to find out the Chinese names of things she’d see (say, in the market), or how to say certain things in Chinese.   This way, she could learn more, and interact with the locals, when she was actually there.  

Where she could point at the item in question, she could say, “How does one say this/that in Chinese?”  Where she had an English word in mind, she could say, “How does one say XYZ in Chinese?”

The Chinese format for this is either: “This/That, Chinese, how to say?”;  or: “Foreign word, Chinese, how to say?”

As they’d been taught Huánghé (“Yellow River”), and mǎ (“horse”) in their drills of the four tones (mā má mǎ mà), I decided to throw in an exercise as well in how Chinese versions of foreign concepts are put together (cf. blog entry: How to say “spaghetti” in Chinese).  

The example I had in mind was “hippopotamus” which is “river horse” in Chinese.  So, I asked her to translate, “Hippopotamus, zhōngwén, zěnme shuō? / Hippopotamus, Chinese, how say” following the format of “Foreign word, Chinese, how to say?”

She looked quite puzzled but, like the good student that she was, obediently started to give the translation, very hesitantly, quite sure the teacher had gone mad, “How … does … a … hippopotamus … speak … Chinese??!?”