.: Mandarin :.

My brother is into the first week of his Mandarin class.

A few nights ago, I asked him what he learnt there thus far, and he opened his book, referred to some phrases he wrote down, and started saying a few words.

Now, I am a banana, and my Mandarin is half-past-six, but it’s not as bad as him, who can’t even distinguish between Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien. So when he said some of the phrases, I could not really understand what he was tryin to say. I asked for the English translation – and when he gave them to me, I was like “Nooooo… it’s suppose to be pronounced as such-and-such.”

He insisted that his pronunciation was correct and endorsed by his Mandarin teacher, so I did the only thing I could think off at 11pm that night – I called Tammie. And of course, I was thinking to myself, I shouldn’t be selfish and be the ONLY one amused and entertained by my brother attempts to speak Mandarin.

I made my brother said a phrase to Tammie – he struggled a few times, and Tammie could not understand. And so he passed the phone to me, and I said the same phrase. She could perfectly understand me.

So there we were, humoring ourselves as Ben tried to say “mother scolding horse” (a tongue twister in Mandarin), and silly lil things like that.

Well Tam, hope you had a great laugh over the incident! I know I did! :)