So I had an extremely ridiculous idea the other day. My girlfriend, who is originally from Hong Kong, speaks Cantonese as her first language and is proficient in Mandarin. I, being a good ol’ American mono-linguist who took Spanish in high school and is now learning Japanese in college, only barely know the difference in sounds between these two Chinese dialects.

From time to time, I find it amusing (at my girlfriend’s expense) to string random syllables together that I deem sound like some sort of Chinese. I then look at my girlfriend with a wide, cheesy grin and ask expectantly for her professional translation. Of course this is ignorant, and I hope I am not accidentally overheard and misunderstood by a passerby. However, I have actually managed to come up with sentences- most of the time gramatically incorrect. It was after one of these “sessions” that I talked with a friend and decided it would be a great exercise in internet stupidity to blog about my findings. I call it Trial and Error Chinese for the Average Man Hoping Not to Learn a Language But Instead to Butcher it At the Expense of a Poor, Patient Chinese Girl: For Beginners…