User Comments - helzcurrah
helzcurrah
Posted on: Give Up Your Seat, Young Man!
February 1, 2013 at 12:27 AMHas anyone here actually tried to give up their seat in China? I have and it's not easy, you really have to insist a lot. If I stand up and gesture to an old person to sit, they put their hand on my shoulder and force me back down again.
It might be the Chinese equivalent of what sometimes happens in London. You offer your seat, and the person you offer it to says "do I LOOK old?".
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 30, 2013 at 7:37 AMHmm, I haven't had that much luck with Chinese and any kind of humour to be honest. There's only two occasions I can think of when I've made my colleagues laugh:
1) When I told a really geeky joke that relied on math(s)/physics more than word play. All my western friends groaned heavily at the same joke because it was so terrible!**
2) When I commented about a fellow colleague who does not come across as particularly managerial or refined but is enrolled in an MBA programme sponsored by our company. I said "I can't really imagine that person doing an MBA", to which my colleague laughed and said "you are right, I also think this!".
** The joke was: Einstein, Newton and Pascal were playing hide and seek. Einstein closed his eyes while Pascal hid. However, Newton just stayed where he was and drew a 1x1 m square around himself. Einstein finished counting and said "ahah, I found you Newton". Newton replied "no, you found 1 Newton over 1 m2, you found Pascal!".
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 5:49 AMIt's the crime of stealing apples. Specifically apples, not anything else! e.g. you can't "scrump grapefruit"!
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 5:03 AMIn my hometown we also use blinkers as slang to mean "car indicator lights".
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 5:02 AMBlinkers are the black things you put on a horse's eyes to make them look straight ahead and not get distracted or frightened by other things happening around them.
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 4:56 AMWe have a better sense of which words are standard because we are exposed to a lot of American media, so we can see which words are only American, which are only British and which appear in both (our daily lives and the American TV shows). However I did make a mistake recently. I was doing a standup comedy show to an expat audience in Shanghai and I made a joke about "scrumping", only to realise when almost noone laughed that scrumping is a uniquely British word!
You can hear the mistake in this recording: https://soundcloud.com/helen-currah/new-faces-of-komedy-show-2
At Bababardwan, you can also hear my accent here, albeit a very nervous version!
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 4:10 AMTo me, standard English is the basic set of words that every English speaker would know pronounced in a received pronunciation accent (think 1950s BBC newsreader). I don't speak standard English, I speak in a Northern accent using a set of words that includes standard English plus some local terms that Americans or even people from Southern England wouldn't know, with further additions of jargon, slang and/or swearwords, depending on who I'm talking to. :-)
Clearly not everyone knows the word "re-up" so I would not consider it standard English until at least 90% of native speakers are familiar with it and use it, which may well happen over time. However, it was obvious from the context what it means.
Posted on: Upgrading Software
January 28, 2013 at 1:03 AMI'm British, and I've never heard it before.
Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men
January 25, 2013 at 8:01 AMI'm not sure a domestic partnership exists in China. Best you could manage is "room mate".
Posted on: Sina's Microblogs
February 7, 2013 at 3:31 AMI have a Sina Weibo account. Username is 孔海伦 if you want to follow. I have the iphone app which allows you to choose the language, so I chose English for the interface.
I also have Tencent QQ on my iphone and PC, but almost never use it. On the PC I have international version which can translate the conversation in real time of you want!
I tried to get verified on Sina Weibo, but it wouldn't recognise my details. It seems only Chinese nationals can get verified without doing an awful lot of work, and I can't see any benefit at all. I signed up using my phone number, so I didn't have to go through the real name verification process. However, I have since changed my phone number, so I'm not sure what the government will do if I say something I shouldn't...