126 dtg (that was unintentional)

Look, I just want it officially on the record that it was not my intention to make my teacher almost sick in class today. I was asked to write an essay on those cute and cuddly kangaroos, which I duly did. Now, how was I meant to know that prior to reading the essay, my teacher did not realize that:

a) you can eat kangaroo meat
b) most trucks and buses in Australia have "roo bars" on the front so that when they hit a kangaroo on the road they can just keep driving and don't have to worry about damaging their vehicle and
c) you can make a leather coin pouch from a male kangaroo's scrotum

131 dtg (naughty)

Warning: This blog contains an open reference to female mammary glands.

Any of you who had the misfortune to be educated in English will know of the dismay felt during Year 7 Science Class when you were expected to automatically remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. Seriously now, think about it - which are the ones that goes up and which are the ones that goes down?

Luckily, these are two more great examples of where the Chinese habit of making everything especially literal come to the fore. Let's start with stalagmites.

石笋 Shi-Sun

These two characters literally mean "stone" and "bamboo shoot". Now I am sure you will all agree that remembering that the stone bamboo shoot is the long pointy thing that grows up from the ground is pretty easy, right?

Well, even if you didn't, no matter, because stalactite is also quite straightforward.

钟乳石 Zhong-Ru-Shi

The literal meaning here is "Come to a point - Breast - Stone". Think about it; it hangs down, it comes to a point, and liquid slowly drips from it. There's some pretty clear imagery going on here and if you haven't worked out yet that stalactites are the ones that point down then I suggest you have a chat with your Mum.

So there you go. Apologies for the references to nudity but as Bart Simpson once said, when discussing Religion, "you sure as hell can't talk about hell without mentioning hell", so it is that when discussing Chinese, you sure as hell can't talk about stalactites without mentioning breasts.

134 dtg (back in the Qing)

Back in the Qing(dao) with 134 days to go after some brief holidays and life is great. Cancelled my enrolment at the university in favour of attending a private school where I get to set my own curriculum, how cool is that? So I asked the teacher: Can you give me a new topic every day, I go home and write and essay, and then the next day in class we can review it together? Repeat this 100 times over 100 consecutive days and I reckon in three months time I should be able to write like a native no problem. They agreed, and we started today - I'll post the more interesting ones here.

In the meantime, my friend's book (the one about how to learn any language quickly and easily) is almost ready for print. If you have any interest at all in learning a new language (and more to the point, learning how to be fluent in just a few months), then check out http://www.the-third-ear.com/