maxiewawa

Watching the Olympic games, I got the idea of commentating on what was happening around me, to practice my spoken Chinese. Here’s what happened.

(i can’t get podpress working, so you’ll have to do the “right click/save As…” thing here. Sorry.)

A foreigner walking down Nanjing rd can’t fail to be approached by people trying to sell things. At 5 minutes 30 I meet one of these guys. Here’s what we talked about.

什么？
包包手表要吗？
包不要。
看一下吧。(不要。)
衣服，手表。。。
衣服不要。
你要买什么东西呀？
什么都不要！
什么不要，什么都看一下。你喜欢的给你便宜。
不喜欢的不便宜呀？
不喜欢的不要买。喜欢的话给你便宜。你想去哪里？
我想走一走。欣赏这个。。。
上海的buildings.
你走到我店里，更好看!

What?
You want watches, bags?
I don’t want bags.
Have a look. (Don’t want to).
Clothes, watches…
Don’t want clothes.
What do you want to buy?
I don’t want to buy anything!
If you don’t want anything, have a look at everything. (As nonsensical in Chinese as in English!) I’ll give you what you want cheap.
The ones I don’t like aren’t cheap?
Don’t buy the ones you don’t like. If you like something, I’ll give it to you cheap. Where are you going?
Just having a walk, enjoying the…
Shanghai’s buildings. Come to my shop, it’s even better (than the buildings)!

Hope it’s helpful! I’m always interested in bringing the personality of a language, how it’s actually used in real life into my posts, so I hope you’ve been able to get a feel for where Chinese is spoken as well as how it is spoken.

Stay tuned for Commentary #2. As I “rehearsed” this I had all these interesting observations about what was going on around me, but when the mic was on I froze up a little. I hope I’ll be a bit looser next time.