An 意思 issue!

hamshank

July 04, 2011, 07:53 AM posted in General Discussion

I got forwarded an email today with an interesting look at the word 意思 and its various guises. 

I am not sure whether the story is true but in a nutshell it talks about a foreigner that had studied Chinese for 10 years and then when to take a Chinese test. In the test he was asked to translate the meaning of the passage provided. Apparently the foreigner just turned in a blank paper...

See if anyone can work it out. It is quite fun. I spent a while trying but didn't get the exact meaning without a bit of help :)

一老外苦學漢學10年，到中國參加漢語考試，試題如下：

請解釋下文每個“意思”的意思：

 

阿呆給領導送紅包時，2人的對話頗有意思。

領導：“你這是什麼意思？”

阿呆：“没什麼意思，意思意思。”

       領導：“你這就不夠意思了。”

阿呆：“小意思，小意思。”

領導：“你這人真有意思。”

阿呆：“其實也没有别的意思。”

領導：“那我就不好意思了。”

阿呆：“是我不好意思。”

 

老外淚流滿面，交白卷回國了。