“”Xiang…think or miss.

sometimes I want to say wo xiang ni gousu blabla (I thought you said…) but I am always worried people will hear “wo xiang ni” (I miss you).”"

For starters: it’s a bit more formal (but not *too* formal), you can say 想念 instead of just ‘想’ to convey missing/longing for something. That helps big-time with Chinese people understanding your meaning.

There’s another problem, though: “Miss”, in the sense that Chinese people are using it above, conveys active longing, something you actively want to return back to.

So, talking to my friends here in China, I asked them — I lived in Japan a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it at the time, but I don’t want to go back there and live there again; it was an interesting phase of my life, but it’s done, I’ve moved on. How would you express that? Like the English concept of ‘Nostalgia’?

They gave me this form:

我怀念——-的日子, “Nostalgic for the days where _________”.

Stay vs. live was a problem for me in Chinese for a long time. Our campus is a boat ride away from the place most of us live. Some teachers live near the campus and some stay at the hotel if they have late classes. But my Chinese counterparts would tell me they were living at the hotel when they meant staying for one night. I was confused for a long time. As were the Chinese who I told that I didn’t live there but would stay for one night

sometimes I want to say wo xiang ni gousu blabla (I thought you said…) but I am always worried people will hear “wo xiang ni” (I miss you).

This could be very awkward.

Almost as awkward as when I said I like to eat toufou (wo xiang chi doufou) which mean I like to take advantage of women.

@Ben T: I feel for you. I sometimes resort to the literal translation in English that I know will be understood, rather than idiomatic English.

It’s funny growing up learning Chinese as an ABC. My parents would laugh at me for my English directly translated into Chinese speaking. For example I didn’t know the vocabulary for the word “Chef” (now i know it’s 厨子–chu zi) so instead i would translate it into 炒飯人 (the cooking guy, or fried rice guy).

My roommate also discovered another interesting vocabulary from talking with Chinese people in English. My roommate is multi-racial. His mother is white and his father is Chinese. However, when he tells Chinese people he’s mixed or multi-racial they get confused. When he tells them he’s “Mixed Blood” then they understand since in Chinese they call it simply “混血” (literally “mixed blood”).

Oh thought you might be interested in this post I did about the different free online video lessons they have on youtube (http://blog.howma.com/?p=70). It’s kind of interesting. Check it out if you get a chance.

Cheers!

On the other hand, I discovered my English students are always always forgetting to put “s” after a plural noun not because they don’t get the concept, but because it just doesn’t seem necessary for them to specify the singular or plural of every object they’re talking about. Maybe with enough exposure this interference will eventually go away.

Chinese people say “I’m very interesting in something” when they mean “interested”, and “he doesn’t interesting in” when they mean “he isn’t interested in”.

In Chinese you ask 什么意思 shen me yi si (lit. “what meaning?”). In English, Chinese people say “what’s means?” instead of “what does it mean?”.

We first noticed the grammatical value of bad English when we were teaching in Taiwan.

I’m four chapters into a book right now written in English by a Yunnan villager called “Mr. China’s Son.” Aside from being a really interesting memoir, his English I’ve not found anywhere else: he overly-literally translated a lot of words on purpose. ‘University’ becomes “big-school,” for example, and grammar comes through sometimes, too. It gives the whole thing a really interesting flavour.