09 March 2009

Two "Zhi"

Poor Daddy thought he was confused trying to decipher the girls' English pronunciation and Chinese, now there's the new dimension: the hodgepodge combination using both, the same that I confused my family with. Today's example: G drew some pictures for him and wanted to gift two in particular. I assume she couldn't remember the English for "[pieces of] paper" so she substituted the Chinese – "Daddy, don't forget your two 'zhi'". Out of context, a Chinese phrase can sound like a lot of different things and Drew wasn't attending as he was looking for his watch, and he thought she said the Chinese for "rabbit", or "tu zi". Of course that put him off even more thinking, "What rabbit?" Add that to my resume: adept translator.