One of the biggest language mistakes I've been making so far is one that has been following me since I started learning Mandarin. An early addition to my vocabulary was 邮局 (post office). In all of my pimsleur lessons I could never remember this.
Well it's caught up to me a bit. There's another word (游戏) which means "game". They aren't too similar - both the tone and the sound for the second character are different, however I've said the wrong thing twice.
Situation One - Trying to borrow Jenga from the hostel bar in Xi'an:
Me: 你们有没有邮局？ (Do you guys have a post office here?)
Bartender: huh?
Situation Two - we were at an arcade and the skeeball machine ate our tokens. I had to go find an attendant.
Me: 请问，在那边一个邮局坏了你可以看一看？ (excuse me, over there a post office is broken can you come take a look?)
I need to get these two words sorted out. I think I'll learn from the two mistakes.
Today I got a haircut. I just kept pointing and saying shorter here. It seemed to work out but it reminded me that I have a lot to learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment