Further to my blog entry Learning Chinese: tones, first posted 160811, another word for which Westerners often get the tone wrong in Mandarin Chinese is “笔 / writing implement”, which is bǐ (third tone).
Out of Western students’ mouths, it usually ends up being rendered in the first tone, which is the vulgar slang version of female external genitals（屄 bī：corpse radical 尸 shī, and 穴 xuè / cavity).
One evening, I was in the pub with my students for our usual post-lesson drink. The conversation, as ever, was an extension of the lesson — we often talked about things related to the Chinese language or culture. The students doing the evening classes in Chinese were all there out of interest, so it was natural that they were always interested in background issues beyond the textbook and the classroom.
At one point, I said something that caught Ronnie’s special interest, so he wanted to write it down.
At one point, I said something that caught Ronnie’s special interest, so he wanted to write it down.
Turning to Frazer (now deceased), Ronnie asked, in Chinese, what was meant to be: “你有没有笔？/ nǐ yǒu méiyǒu bǐ? / Do you have [a] pen?”
Unfortunately, Ronnie’s 笔 came out in the first tone.
Frazer had already got up to go to the loo, just as Ronnie put this question to him, so I said, “He’s going to check.”
Unfortunately, Ronnie’s 笔 came out in the first tone.
Frazer had already got up to go to the loo, just as Ronnie put this question to him, so I said, “He’s going to check.”
(London 1989)
Frazer: hope you’re having a giggle over this! You’re being missed lots.
Frazer: hope you’re having a giggle over this! You’re being missed lots.
PS: Frazer is also featured in blog https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/01/word-play-02-frazer-dewar-gleig.html
Blog Learning Chinese: tones (http://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/08/chinese-tones.html)
That was funny...
ReplyDeleteAnd it raises an obvious question: did everybody understand the joke, or did you have to explain it to some???
My sense of humour is not always easy to follow, so they mightn't have understood it at the time. I don't tend to try and explain humour to people -- it spoils irony, e.g., labouring the point.
DeleteAn example of my sense of humour: I was once teaching a full-time undergraduate Year 1 class (therefore mostly, if not all, 18-year-olds fresh from 'A' levels / high school) when I tried to use irony, commenting on something (maybe something linguistic, like the right way to express things or the right grammar). I said, "I was brung up right," and a student immediately corrected me, saying, "brought up", totally missing the irony.
I practically always let students know, at their first encounter with a "risky" word, what the horrible/hilarious wrong-tone version is, so they should have understood the joke. Otherwise, they'd forgotten, which happens with students too... I can't remember now what their reaction was at the time -- so, teachers forget too! haha
ReplyDelete