<font color=skyblue>I frequent a resturaunt here that serves Chinese food, and today I asked the girl who is from Hong Kong how to say "Thank you" in her language. After she said it, I repeated it, and then came back to work to write it down in English phonetics to be able to remember it well. What I came up with is rather odd.

Do' dge...

Dodge? Like the truck?? :D </font>

[ 04-09-2003, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

Odd? Try learning the script, it'll warp your miiiiind :D

actually just for a correction.. the correct pronounciation of chinese thank you in mandarin is siue siue with the s closely pronounced with a c like "Ciue Ciue" [img]tongue.gif[/img] .. at least i learned something from the 16 years i have been in studying in a chinese school.

'Thank you' in chinese is 谢谢 or 'xie xie' in phonetic. What the waitress gave you is 'Do jey' (pronounced 'Dor jay') which is 'thank you' in cantonese (a chinese dialect). Most of the cantonese speaking population is in Hong Kong.

Learning Chinese is ok at a conversational level but writing *shudder*, ten years of education and I still suck at it. :D

[ 04-09-2003, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: Rimjaw ]

<font color=skyblue>Thanks! I guess she did not think it mattered to me that there is a difference in Cantonese and Mandarin.

My father in law knows Mandarin really well... I would like to impress him but I guess I have a long way to go. I speak Spanish and understand Portuguese...but would like to take up French or Italian next. He says that Mandarin is the most important to learn, as more people speak it than any other language in the world. </font>

Mandarin is considered as the "official" language for the chinese; on top of that, there are many dialects, for example: Cantonese, Hakka, Teo Chew, Hokkien, Hainan, Hock Chew and etc.

But to dine in a Chinese restaurant, being able to speak mandarin and cantonese is suffice. Luckily for me, I speak more that one of those dialects. :D

in China, mandirin is called as " pu tong hua " = normal language or " pei jing hua " = beijing language. they don't normally called it as mandirin.

hmmm..having learn chinese for 14 years in school kinda make it my first most fluent language. As I'm not a chinese, people get very suprise when I can speak or type chinese very well. :D

The only Chinese I know are a couple of bad words :D

i love languages, and chinese sounds like fun to learn, but right now i am working on korean, not in school or anything, just words here and there, like ginsana and anyo. a friend's wife is korean and i would love to be able to talk to her more in depth. tho i think she is learning english faster and better than i will ever learn korean

[ 04-10-2003, 09:46 AM: Message edited by: RevRuby ]

Of all the dialects I speak hokkien (probably the crudest) only and some canto. Of the other dialects Hainanese is probably the most alien, totally can't understand it.