Ridiculous Conversations with Locals

tsukinodeynatsu · November 9, 2011, 1:18am

[quote=“Impaler”][quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]Bloke on the road (a while ago): Where are you from?
Me: England.
Him: England?
Me: Yes, England.
Him: Not America?
Me: Do I look fat?[/quote]
What if he answers, “Yes.”[/quote]

My immediate thought was to reply “You f*cking Koreans have eye issues. Like you’d know.”

A few conversations people have recently had with me about my SO…

Lady: You’re married!!??
Me: Yes.
Lady: But you’r TOO YOUNG!!
Me: Not really!
Lady: Do you have any kids?
Me: God no!
Lady: You should hurry up and have a baby! Don’t want to wait too long now!!!

…So I’m too young to be married, but should have already had a baby??

And the one men usually come up with goes something like :loco:

Him: Why’d you get married?
Me: Because I love him.
Him: Oh. Did he buy you a house?
Me: O.o; No. We’re saving to buy one together.
Him: He should buy you a house.
Me: I don’t subscribe to that.
Him: Well, does he have a car?
Me: No. That’s another thing we’re saving for.
Him: If he doesn’t have a house and car, why did you marry him?! How much is his salary?
Me: 30k?
Him: TELL HIM TO EARN MORE MONEY!!!
Me: …

I would dearly love to know how traditional Taiwanese marriages work. They sound perfectly miserable.

tango42 · November 9, 2011, 1:33am

Him: You handsome man.
Me: No, you handsome man.
Him: (smiling) No! You handsome man.
Me: Mmm… no, you handsome man.
Him: (smiling bigger) No!!! Youuuuuuu handsome man!
Me: no, you are handsome man.
Him: (now BIG smile and feeling happy) NO!!! You soooooo handsome man!!!
On and on and on…

I have this conversation almost once a week. Funny that men in taiwan don’t hesitate to tell another man he is handsome. I’ve even started doing it as an ice breaker and it seems to work quite well.

scomargo · November 9, 2011, 1:39am

This conversation was in Mandarin, but this is a rough translation:
Me (an American): My ancestors came from Germany, France, and Mexico.
Her: So what do pure Americans look like?
Me: What’s a pure American? Do you mean the Native Americans?

This conversation was with one of my wife’s good friends, so I had to be diplomatic with her and not make her look bad.

Soloman · November 9, 2011, 1:47am

:roflmao:

Local - Do you mind speaking with my brother for a while; he wants to practice English?

Me: Ok.
after a brief introduction of names

Brother: Where are you from?

Me: I’m from England.

Brother: I can’t speak English, only American English.

Me:

TaipieNewbie · November 9, 2011, 6:24am

Interview about difference between Americans and Taiwanese.April 2011 - this lasts about 45 minutes, the interviewer thinks america is everything they see on television and in the movies. Love the concept of no:

Her: Taiwanese people study very hard in school.
Me: Oh sorry Americans buy their grades. We study hard too. Take tests and have to put on presentations.
Her: Are the tests in English or Chinese? What kind of clothes is a presentation is that like cowboy wear… :eh:
Her: So are there many gays in America? My friend is gay (sitting with her - like I would rape her being american if she came to Starbucks in Taipei main alone?) and he thinks you are cute (they had not talked between themselves yet at this point ).
Me: Your friend has funny ears and acts like a mute deaf guy; he really needs to be aggresive if he expects a stranger to come on to him. Yes there are as many gays in America as Taipei. I think they ship them to Taiwan sometimes to reduce the population.
Her: My friend does have funny look ears. So what kind of Visa do they give gay guys.
Me: If it meant ARC I would apply. Does bisexual count?
Her: Oh my friend has to pay you for sex?

Buysexual…bisexual,potatoe patato…Changed subjects quickly…ZINGER time.
around the 40th minute…Yawn supressed, keep slurping the coffee, crap drank it all.

Her: I want to marry a foreigner so I can travel all the time.
Me: I hope you find a rich one most americans are up to their eyeballs in debt and can barely afford a trip to Six Flags.
Her: eyeballs in death? Is Six Fags nexts to San Francisco.
Me: Yes it is on the corner of Castro street at the BART station. Sometimes they move it to Polk so that the police cannot find them.
This is worse than an illegal Kinder interview…Please where is that earthquake.
Her to her friend: (Chinese murmurring which I half get) Oh he is not for you he has a boyfriend named bart in San Fransisco who is a cop.
Finally it is over.

GuyInTaiwan · November 9, 2011, 2:03pm

I get a variation on this one all the time. This happened this afternoon.

A boy drew a large picture of someone giving the viewer the middle finger. So (because I’m not allowed to deal with kids directly ), I sent him and his friend (because he’d blamed his friend) downstairs with the military service guy to talk to the director. Ten minutes later, they returned.

Military service guy: “This kid’s English is not as good as the other one’s.”
Me: “So who did it?”
Military service guy: “This kid. His English isn’t as good as the other one’s.”
Me: “What does that have to do with him drawing that picture?”
Military service guy: “Nothing.”
Me: “So what’s going to happen to this kid?”
Military service guy: “Oh, the director is going to punish him.”
Me: “Okay, great.”

Every single time a kid does something like hit another kid, throw something, or do something else that is inappropriate but has absolutely nothing to do with communicating in English with me (and often doesn’t involve me at all), the very first thing any adult at either of my two schools tells me is that the kid doesn’t speak English very well…as if the kid not speaking English made him do something crazy. :loco:

bababa · November 9, 2011, 8:10pm

[quote=“scomargo”]This conversation was in Mandarin, but this is a rough translation:
Me (an American): My ancestors came from Germany, France, and Mexico.
Her: So what do pure Americans look like?
Me: What’s a pure American? Do you mean the Native Americans?

This conversation was with one of my wife’s good friends, so I had to be diplomatic with her and not make her look bad.[/quote]
I think when we get people expressing opinions like this, we should explain. She didn’t mean the Native Americans, after all, she thinks there is a native population of white people that comes from America. My Chinese teacher and Japanese classmates all thought this as well - for eg., one day they were exclaiming about how well a fellow student dressed, much better than the other American students. They agreed that it was because his ancestors came from Europe. When I told them that the ancestors of all white people in the USA came from Europe, they were astounded.

We should explain when they think the difference between American English and British English is some huge gulf. After all, they are told that Mandarin is a language, and Taiwanese or Cantonese are just local dialects. So then they most likely assume the difference between the various types of English is like that - that they are mutually unintelligible, not just different accents.

GuyInTaiwan · November 10, 2011, 12:45am

bababa: Well, isn’t the notion of “Chinese dialects” a bit of a misnomer? I thought they were really more akin to separate languages, really. My understanding of dialect is that there are sometimes differences in grammar or vocabulary, but they’re basically mutually intelligible to some extent. Obviously, that’s a blurry line.

I think the above, regarding English (are British English and American English really different enough to be considered dialects?) and also regarding the ancestors of white people in America is borne out of an extreme level of ignorance and parochialism on the part of Taiwanese (and presumably also the other nationalities you mentioned). It’s not like they have a really thorough understanding of their closest neighbours that excuses them from not knowing anything about countries on the other side of the planet. The average Taiwanese person knows next to nothing about the Philippines or Vietnam, for instance. Not knowing anything about the major migrations of different ethnic groups (pre-historic or more recent) is just part of this whole thing.

Recently, I wanted to see how much some of my students knew about world geography. I gave them a test entirely in Chinese asking them to label the seven continents (I even gave them the names of the continents) and then a list of twelve countries (two of the most significant countries for each inhabited continent) and write which continent they were on. There were nineteen questions in total. The average score was somewhere around five, but plenty of kids only got one (Taiwan is in Asia, though oddly, they couldn’t figure out where Asia was).

A few years ago, at my previous school, I showed a class with fairly high level English a map of the world and I was talking about the Suez and Panama Canals. They weren’t even aware that they existed, and when I asked them why they might have been built, they couldn’t figure it out. The thought obviously hadn’t crossed their minds that people from Asia and Europe might want to trade and that Africa is a rather large obstacle to have to sail around. Likewise, one time, I covered a friend’s high school class on a weekend. I brought in pictures of pretty famous landmarks from all over the world (Angkor Wat, Christ the Reedemer, the Eiffel Tower, etc.). Again, many of the kids had never seen those images before. Many of the kids didn’t know where Cambodia was (even when one or two other kids told them the Chinese name). Those last two examples were at reasonably middle class schools in Taoyuan. Likewise, in Taoyuan, I taught a group of extremely wealthy adults who had all travelled to lots of countries in Europe, but who knew basically nothing about any European country, even the ones they’d been to. They thought all Europeans spoke English. The parochialism here, even amongst the wealthier and “better educated” is astounding at times.

_monkey · November 10, 2011, 1:11am

Some variation of this at least once a week:

Server: [Blank expression]
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Hi, what do you want?
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Big Mac.
Server: Do you want a set meal?
Me: Yes, Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Drink?
Me: Coke, no ice.
Server: For here or to go?
Me: To go.
Server: NT$115
Me: [Tries to hand over money but server walks away to fumble with a coffee machine or something]

30 seconds later
Server: NT$115
Me: [Finally hand over money]

2 minutes later
The meal is ready but it’s on a tray to dine in and the coke has ice …

mike029 · November 10, 2011, 7:01am

[quote=“monkey”]Some variation of this at least once a week:

Server: [Blank expression]
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Hi, what do you want?
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Big Mac.
Server: Do you want a set meal?
Me: Yes, Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Drink?
Me: Coke, no ice.
Server: For here or to go?
Me: To go.
Server: NT$115
Me: [Tries to hand over money but server walks away to fumble with a coffee machine or something]

30 seconds later
Server: NT$115
Me: [Finally hand over money]

2 minutes later
The meal is ready but it’s on a tray to dine in and the coke has ice …[/quote]

I’ll help you with this one: “Da4 mai4 ke4 can1, ke3 le4 qu4 bing1, dai4 zou3” Done. Far easier.

tsukinodeynatsu · November 10, 2011, 9:42am

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
I think the above, regarding English (are British English and American English really different enough to be considered dialects?) [/quote]

I’m pretty sure a dialect has the following features:
different grammar
different lexicon
different pronunciation
mutually intelligible to other speakers of the language (both written and spoken?)

So British English actually has about 100 dialects in there (maybe about 6 main ones), US English has at least three or four dialects, Australian seems to have two or three, then we have Kiwi and Saffa and Canadian (which also has Newfie). I’d say they were all different dialects - I think what we call native English speaker ‘accents’ are actually dialects, a pure accent would be, say, a Japanese person speaking Australian English with appropriate grammar and lexicon but incorrect pronunciation.

I often think Cantonese, Hakka and Taiwanese have to be separate languages rather than dialects, because they’re nowhere near mutually bloody intelligible. You can’t even read them (though you can take an educated guess). I’d think they were more similar to the Spanish-French-Italian-Latin connection than the different types of English or even the Russian-Polish-Czech-Slovakian group.

[quote=“mike029”][quote=“monkey”]Some variation of this at least once a week:

Server: [Blank expression]
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Hi, what do you want?
Me: Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Big Mac.
Server: Do you want a set meal?
Me: Yes, Big Mac meal with coke, no ice, to go.
Server: Drink?
Me: Coke, no ice.
Server: For here or to go?
Me: To go.
Server: NT$115
Me: [Tries to hand over money but server walks away to fumble with a coffee machine or something]

30 seconds later
Server: NT$115
Me: [Finally hand over money]

2 minutes later
The meal is ready but it’s on a tray to dine in and the coke has ice …[/quote]

I’ll help you with this one: “Da4 mai4 ke4 can1, ke3 le4 qu4 bing1, dai4 zou3” Done. Far easier. [/quote]

No, you use numbers.

English or not-too-fluent-Chinese:

Say “Number 1 Meal”
Wait for them to ask you if you’re speaking English or your Chinese isn’t perfect.

They’ll say “Number 1? Drink?”
And you say “Cola, No Ice.” (don’t say “coke”, it confuses them!)
“Big or small?”
“Medium”
“Have here or…?”
“Takeaway” (rather than “To go”. People don’t know what ‘to go’ means.)

Local Chinese is
一號套餐，（大、小、中）可去冰，外帶
Yi4hao4 tao4can1, da4/xiao3/zhong1 ke3 qu4bing1, wai4dai4

Unless you guys say weird things up in Taipei. That’s how we order. You can also say
一號套餐，可樂去冰（小的），外帶

PigBloodCake · November 10, 2011, 9:58am

GiT…I hope you’re being sarcastic given the number of years you’ve been here.

PigBloodCake · November 10, 2011, 10:01am

God, I knew it was going to happen. People used to bitch about being mistaken for English teachers, and I warned them that it was better than what was coming - being mistaken for mail-order brides.
OTOH, you probably could find the guy someone, if he was willing to pay.

As for the OP’s conversation, I’ve had Taiwanese people ask me if I was a foreigner many times. They usually mean, “Are you American?” - because I am obviously not of Taiwanese or Chinese ethnic background. My personal favorite is when they argue with me:
Taxidriver: Where are you from?
Me: Canada.
Taxidriver: I knew you couldn’t be American. What language do people speak in Canada? Canadian or American?
Me: They speak English. So do Americans.
Taxidriver: No they don’t.[/quote]

He’s right. You people speak Flench :ohreally: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

upandover · November 11, 2011, 6:41pm

[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
I think the above, regarding English (are British English and American English really different enough to be considered dialects?) [/quote]

I’m pretty sure a dialect has the following features:
different grammar
different lexicon
different pronunciation
mutually intelligible to other speakers of the language (both written and spoken?)

So British English actually has about 100 dialects in there (maybe about 6 main ones), US English has at least three or four dialects, Australian seems to have two or three, then we have Kiwi and Saffa and Canadian (which also has Newfie). I’d say they were all different dialects - I think what we call native English speaker ‘accents’ are actually dialects, a pure accent would be, say, a Japanese person speaking Australian English with appropriate grammar and lexicon but incorrect pronunciation.

[/quote]

Damn straight,

we newfie’s are reallllllll special :roflmao:

youtube.com/watch?v=i-9oKs-q … re=related

back to the topic at hand, I had the lady who works the counter at my gym today tell me I couldn’t possibily be American because i’m too short :loco:

I’m 5’2 and Canadian by the way

tsukinodeynatsu · November 11, 2011, 7:22pm

[quote=“upandover”]

back to the topic at hand, I had the lady who works the counter at my gym today tell me I couldn’t possibily be American because I’m too short :loco:

I’m 5’2 and Canadian by the way[/quote]

Old lady: Are you half-cast?
Me: No.
SO: She’s half English and half American!
Old lady (angry): Don’t Iie, you’re obviously half-Taiwanese.

bababa · November 11, 2011, 9:26pm

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]bababa: Well, isn’t the notion of “Chinese dialects” a bit of a misnomer? I thought they were really more akin to separate languages, really. My understanding of dialect is that there are sometimes differences in grammar or vocabulary, but they’re basically mutually intelligible to some extent. Obviously, that’s a blurry line.

[/quote]
This is what I was referring to. In English, the different Chinese varieties are different languages, but it is pretty difficult to find a Chinese or Taiwanese person who thinks so. The government promotes (or used to) the idea that Mandarin is standard, and everything else is a local dialect, even if the two aren’t mutually intelligible. So they’ve been taught that Cantonese is just a dialect, for example. Clearly it isn’t. When they then hear people talking of British and American English being different dialects, no wonder they then assume the two might not be mutually intelligible. I correct this misapprehension when my students make it.

GuyInTaiwan · November 14, 2011, 5:31am

tsu: I find the whole issue of dialects in English to be quite problematic though. At what point do local slang varieties get considered to be different dialects? Otherwise, we’d have thousands of dialects in English and the whole thing would lose any meaninful ability to differentiate. I wouldn’t really say there are different dialects in Australian English. The number of words (for instance, different sized beer glasses or clothes for swimming) that are different in different areas of Australia must be what, one hundred, two hundred words? The English language has somewhere in the order of one million words, depending upon who you ask. Even the differences between British English and Australian English, or even British English and American English, are statistically insignificant in this regard. How many completely different words (not including spelling) are there for the same thing in British or American English? One thousand, perhaps? The grammar differences are really not that massive either and usually amount to a handful of slightly odd expressions or slightly different verb endings in the past tense. There are some forms of English that probably would definitely be considered different dialects, but these are either from countries that were not settled initially by large numbers of native speakers or where English has basically been a second language. If you take the average Brit, Canadian, American, South African (non-Afrikaaner), Australian or New Zealander and get them to refrain from speaking slang (which is often even highly localised down to a particular region of each city anyway), their English will overlap 99% of the time. Does that 1% really constitute different dialects? I don’t completely disagree with the Taiwanese for not letting people from Singapore, India, Jamaica or Nigeria come here to teach English. I’ll tell you what is crazy. Apparently, a lot of Jamaicans are now getting work in China teaching English. Chinese with Jamaican accents?! That’s funny.

Chris · November 14, 2011, 5:42am

Sure they do. Certainly at McDonald’s they do.

[quote]Local Chinese is
一號套餐，（大、小、中）可去冰，外帶[/quote]
Or, 一號餐.

And if you order a Coke Zero, they’ll confirm your request by saying “Lero”.

_monkey · November 14, 2011, 5:48am