Simple wedding speech
wise123
March 27, 2011, 10:37 PM posted in General Discussion大家好
I need to give a simple wedding speech at my brothers wedding in Singapore, he's marrying a local chinese girl. I'm at around the elementary / low intermediate level, I could probably cobble something together, but would like it to be good and to say the right things culturally. Basically welcoming his new wife and family to our family, that sort of thing.
Any help would be much appreciated. I gotta give the speech in 2 weeks! If I get enough interest I'll post my speech as it develops for comment and let you all know how it goes. ( 大家好 is all I've got at the moment)
tingyun
It just occurred to me - any particular reason why you will be giving the speech in Chinese? Most Singaporeans speak much, much better English than they do Chinese. Throwing in a few nice expressions in Chinese might be nice either way, but I'm wondering why make the entire speech in the language?
wise123
March 28, 2011, 03:19 AMHi tingyun,
lol I love the crow expression.
My future sister in-law's parents don't speak any english, they are quite elderly and quite conservative, so we thought it would be nice for me to make a short speech in mandarin.
I might give the crow joke to the best man, he's also an Australian of british background and will giving a speech in english.
tingyun
Glad it was helpful. Ah, the 爱屋及乌 one is also nice in that its the sort of Chengyu ripe for modification and play, using the form 爱_及_ . I've seen 爱女及婿 (the love for one's daughter extends to one's son in law), but there's no special validity to that, its just an example. So if you are brave enough you can have fun creating your own ;) (do note that there is in art to indicating to others you are creating a new word in order to land it correctly, but once you master it its a wonderful source of fun and humor)
tingyun
March 28, 2011, 02:05 AMPeople seem to like the Classic of Poetry 诗经 quote "执子之手,与子偕老" 'holding your hand, with you together growing old'. It's slightly less over-used and cliche than 白头偕老. ;) other than that, 相亲相爱 is a nice expression, as is 比翼双飞 (analogy to birds flying wing to wing). If you want to double some up, here a are a couple of possibilities:
海枯石烂,矢志不渝 (even to the time when the see drys out and rocks wrot, sworn oath and will not changing)
一生一世,长相厮守 (for an entire life, long acompanying one another)
I also think there are great humor possibilities with the expression 爱屋及乌 (loving a house extends to the crows living on its roof - or if you love someone you should also like their family members, no matter how undesirable they are). ;)
That should be more than enough fancy/meaningless language - just leaving the more important part of you saying what you want to say.