Mind your language

I haven't tried terribly hard so far to learn any Chinese. I have just learnt the odd few words that I needed at the time - but more often than not, I lose my nerve with the pronunciation and just point to the word in my Mandarin phrase book. It's all about tones you see - there are different tones (raising and lowering pitch on certain syllables, according to my book), and different tones give the same word completely different meanings. So, the word ma for example, has 5 different meanings - mother, horse, question mark, hemp and scold - and the difference in meaning is all conveyed by tone. Apparently, foreign diplomats quite frequently introduce themselves in China as rubber U-bend pipes, simply because they get the tones wrong. You can see how scary it is.

I have given a lot of thought to this over the last couple of weeks. Everywhere you go, there are appalling English translations. There are terrible translations and spellings - and not on hand-written signs outside fruit and vegetable shops such as you find in England, but on huge adverts and in neon lights. Coming down the escalator at Carrefour today, there was an advert for toilet cleaner - "For a Sparkle Clean Bowel" - I am not joking (although perhaps the advertiser is). I have come across so few people who speak any English at all, that if you find someone who knows a few words, you're impressed, no matter how bad their grammar or pronunciation - so perhaps I shouldn't be so scared after all. Maybe they are just as impressed with my shocking Chinese.

Yompee, our waitress at 7 days, is probably about 18 years old, and speaks a little English - she is really keen to learn, and always wants to know how to say things, and tries desperately hard with her pronunciation, which is actually dreadful. I imagine I am just as bad when I say Thank You, Goodbye and Turn Left. We were there yesterday for dinner, and M had ordered steak. We had eaten steak there before, and S had learnt from bitter experience that "How done?" means how do you want it cooked, and "1, 2 or 3" does not, as you might expect, equate to rare, medium or well-done, it means minutes under the grill. S had asked for 2, and his Angus T-bone had arrived shortly afterwards, bleeding profusely into his pasta twirls. After elaborate discussion with Yompee, it went back for another 6 minutes under the grill. Anyway, so we were able to deal quickly and easily yesterday with the "How done?" question. But Yompee caught us on the hop with her next enquiry. "Shop?" We were silent for a moment. "Shop?" persisted Yompee. "Shop? Paper Shop?". No, we hadn't a clue. Yompee flicked frantically through the menu. By pointing at other dishes, in just 10 minutes we had managed to work out that Shop was Soup, in other words Sauce, and Paper was Pepper. When your raw beef comes with a Paper Shop, you can see how easy it is to be a rubber U-bend pipe.