Ken's Blog

Conversing with the locals from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.

In this series of short clips, Ken encounters a couple of locals. And someone else’s teeth. Explains the poor lip-syncing in the opening sequence. So please do not adjust your set.

Instead, admire Ken’s fluency, his innate ability to converse with those he encounters on his travels. Or more likely, be truly horrified. Left wondering if he’s swapped his sun hat for a Pith helmet and a longing for the good old days of the Empire. Well, he is heading for a former British colony.

Incidentally, in the clips the expression "Wo bu mingbai" means "I don’t understand". It crops up quite a bit. A lot actually.

And the cyclist? Eventually worked out that he was intrigued by Emma’s tyres. Did they work on snow? Alas, phrase book didn’t contain quite what was needed to explain "Not really. Only skis and tank tracks really cut the mustard."

Tags: diplomacy, linguistics, Mandarin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 at 5:00 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.