If you're a french or a spanish speaker learning chinese

From my experience, the following expression is difficult if you speak french : 去K歌 (to go karaoke) ;o) and if you speak spanish : 去K歌儿 (to go karaoke with Beijing accent) ;o) 去K歌 in a video :

Chengwo, I don't know if I'm helping here but 果冻 (guǒdòng - the sweet jelly) has almost the same pronunciation in cantonese and PTH.

This has nothing to do with French or Spanish but everytime I hear the phrase 饿死了 I'm reminded of the way the name Ursula is pronunced in English.

Thats a good one lunetta! :-) This one is definitely off topic in this thread...but i traveled in China together with my friend Cécile, and when Chinese try to pronounce her name it always sounded like: "Sissy!"

I think the Chinese cannot pronounce an L at the end of a syllable, only at the beginning. I bet they could pronounce it as a three syllable word: Cei-Ci-Le.

Sorry chenggwo, I hope i did not sound like making fun of Chinese pronounciation in a offending way! Listen to my Chinese and have a good laugh!;-) Actually we had lots of fun with everybody when we (our translator) explained the meaning of the english "Sissy" to them ;-)

去K歌儿 - I might be a bit slow, but why should this expression be weird? There's actually a Cantonese term that sounds a bit like cojones, which always cracks me up. Unfortunately, my Cantonese is pretty rudimentary. A bit off-topic: It's so hilarious when Europeans visit South America and try their Spanish on the locals - too bad they usually learned it the way it is spoken in Spain, which almost always creates a funny situation (coger...) . Could something like this occur in China as well, i.e. apart from there being dialects etc, are there words that have a totally different meaning in certain regions/in v?

I dont know if this really fits here..., and my french is bad..., but when I first came to China I found it very funny when people answered the phone with: 喂?/喂! (wei4), because (at least in the Yunnan accent) they often pronounced it very similar to "Oui?"... :-)

才子 (cái zǐ) means "gifted person", "great scholar" ;-) At least there is one good meaning. chengwo - "so I think I nailed it" Why exactly is that? Do you grow pineapples or something?

@ nuevacarpeta, When a chinese word sounds like somethink sexual or scatological in your native language, it need lot of training to stay focus on the chinese meaning. Here 去K歌 brings 去大便. Then 我们一起去K歌 sounds like an improper suggestion.

Hey Gesang, The first time I went to China I felt exactly the same. All these people answering their mobile phone going "wey ?" sounded just like "ouai" in French... I suppose it is really a situation where your ears seek familiar sounds and your mind will oblige. I have been to China a few times since, but now I hear the sound for what it is... Cheers,

alainl002. yes, i felt this too. When i read this thread yesterday, I first though I can post about 10 examples like this...me and my friend had this situation so often on our first trip..."did you hear that women/men right now? it sounded like the german/french/italian "..."! " But then I only remembered the "oui?" thing...lets hope this means we are one little step closer to understand chinese ;-)! (oh,... i dont know for you... maybe you already took some more steps... ;-))

Hi Gesang, Pas de probleme...... I think learning Chinese is a lifelong pursuit. No matter how good you think you are there is always something new to learn... Cheers,

nuevacarpeta, No of course not. But my goal is to find something that sounds the same in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Gwo fits that nicely. Also 'fruit' can mean many things metaphorically. I doubt it will be taken to mean something you eat in this context. The proper word for 'fruit' in Mandarin is 'shui gwo', 'water fruit'.

No, I am not Chinese. I made up the name to sound Chinese and attached Chinese characters to it after the fact. Gwo means fruit in both Cantonese and Chinese, so I think I nailed it, but the Cheng part probably needs an update. I choose if because the character is so common. So, for all I know, Cei-Ci-Le may not mean something very good in Chinese. The challenge and compromise is to find something that sounds similar, but means something good or at least acceptable in Chinese.