Chinaisms - How the English language works

[Robert S.]

"count tu-nut" = can of tuna

[sylinchinastill]

A bit off topic- but close enough- I saw an 80-year-old lady in China with a "Big Johnson" t-shirt on- really funny.

[Jeikun]

A bit off topic- but close enough- I saw an 80-year-old lady in China with a "Big Johnson" t-shirt on- really funny.

Reminds me of an old lady I saw once in Japan with a T-shirt on for the heavy metal band "Slayer" (black shirt with some kind of demon face on it).

[turtle]

A bit off topic- but close enough- I saw an 80-year-old lady in China with a "Big Johnson" t-shirt on- really funny.

When I was in Beijing last year, we saw an old woman with a "Boob Inspector" hat. Too funny

[MikeXiao]

I sent my wife an email, telling her that I can not wait to hold her in my arms again. I use a English-to-Mandarin translator program. When my wife read the email, with me on the webcam, she laughed so hard, she just about fell out of her chair. I did not think I wrote anything funny, so I asked what she laughed about. Well the program had translated the email to say, " I can not wait to hold you in my weapons". I was embarassed, she thought it was just too funny.

[eeyore]

" I can not wait to hold you in my weapons".

sounds like some kind of terrorist plot. Just better hope I.N.S. does not read that.

 

WMD's?

[JPD]

I read these from a book on literal translations of Chinese words -

not sure how accurate they are . . .

 

China = middle country

This one at least is accurate. China used to be called the Middle Kingdom, and the character for "China" also means "middle".

 

"she/her" -- might mean "he/him", and vice versa

China is the Central or Center Country.

Saw a lady walking down the stree in Nanjing, her t-shirt said, "lay me dude", trust me; she had no clue.

JPD

[JPD]

How many times have you heard, " ...this is China".

JPD

[Robert S.]

Saw a lady walking down the stree in Nanjing, her t-shirt said, "lay me dude", trust me;  she had no clue.

JPD

That is funny!

 

You know, people here go around with Chinese writing on their shirts and have no idea what it says. I'll bet they laugh at us for that!!!

[se_lang]

Saw a lady walking down the stree in Nanjing, her t-shirt said, "lay me dude", trust me;  she had no clue.

JPD

That is funny!

 

You know, people here go around with Chinese writing on their shirts and have no idea what it says. I'll bet they laugh at us for that!!!

I read one story about some Italian guy wanted to impress a chinese girl that went to the same club as him, well he had a sentence tattoo'd on his arm however the tattoo said " In the morning this boy has an ugly face" he had no clue until she laughed at him and told him what it said, needless to say it was the "artists" parting laugh as he already knew he was going out of bussiness.

[eeyore]

You know, people here go around with Chinese writing on their shirts and have no idea what it says.  I'll bet they laugh at us for that!!!

I have a mindless shirt like that. It is from Kent State university. The shirt says Kent State in English and has 2 Chinese characters under each English word. I assumed (big mistake) that the shirt said Kent State in Chinese since the Characters are real (that much I could tell). The shirt is cool looking but my lp translated the characters, one is something like older persons and the other is respect, has no meaning in Chinese. She kindly requested that I not wear it in Shanghai (unless I wanted to look like an idiot). At KSU there is a joke students say. Ask us where we go/went to school and we say 'Can't read, can't write Kent State' That seems to be true at least in Chinese anyway. So much for all that diversity the faculty loves to brag about having.

[MarkLuvsShuPing]

I liked this thread, so I thought I'd resurrect it.

 

During my recent stay in Nanning, I noticed a tube of something in the shower, it had both Chinese and English written on it. The English was a little off the mark, I hope.

 

"Deep Shiten & Glowing Skin Cream, One Application Dispels Horniness"

 

True, if your skin is glowing, you may be in deep shit, but why would anyone want to get rid of their horniness?

 

Maybe it's the OTC antidote for a Cealis hard-on that lasts over 4 hours.

 

I often thought that if I lived in China, I could make a ton of money correcting English for businesses or providing them with intelligent slogans for their advertising.

[MarkLuvsShuPing]

One of my favorite pasttimes when we were shopping was reading the T-shirts and hats. Of course, I really had to be careful about how long I would stare at a girl's t-shirt. "Dahling, why you look at the girl?!!!" "Just reading the T-shirt, honest!"

 

ShuPing asks "Why?" for anything that doesn't make sense to her.

My son struggled to find something he liked to eat there, when he didn't like something that had been cooked she would ask, "Why Naniel (she has a hard time with Nathaniel) don't like the food?

 

Any exclamation is "Aye Yo!", so much so that I still say it.

 

Finally, my favorite thing for ShuPing to say is "clo-gis" for clothes.

[Guest Gene]

"Deep Shiten & Glowing Skin Cream, One Application Dispels Horniness"

My Lao po tells me if you have pimples it means you have not made love for a long time, so I guess this stuff will help you not tll the whole world as you walk down the street

[eeyore]

My lao po said a cute one on the phone the other night, something 'scared the piss to come out'

 

eeyore.