Liver blood very much!
During my university gap year I visited my family in China and picked up quite a bit of Mandarin Chinese (the native language). So when we went for a posh Chinese meal on my last night I was keen to show off my new-found language skills (ahem...). On leaving the restaurant, I went over to one of the waitresses and politely said gan xie! - intending to express my gratitude. But in Mandarin (as I now know) getting the exact 'pinyin tone' of your pronounciation is absolutely vital as there are many words which sound the same but mean different things. The waitress looked quite taken aback at what I had said and gave me a very weird look. My cousin then came over, grabbed my arm and pulled me away, saying: 'You said that completely wrong! The way you pronounced gan xie meant 'liver blood' not 'gratitude'!'
Sent by: Choon
Comments
Haha. Languages do give us so much fun in life. Anyway, gan xie is seldom used in spoken Mandarin to express gratitude. Instead, a simple xie xie would be more easily "recognised" when spoken by a tourist in China.
Oh no! I know the feeling of getting your tones wrong. It takes my Chinese friends a while to understand what I actually want to say with my horrendous tones. Hehe.
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