Illustration by Ruth Silbermayr-Song
I’m at the supermarket. A little girl who’s probably not older than 5 is playing with the cup you usually use for putting rice into a plastic bag. I ask her:
“Can I borrow this for a moment?”
She says: “Sure.”
And then, after looking into my face: “Wow. Are you a foreigner?”
I: “I am.”
She: “Do you speak foreignish?”
I: “I do. I speak German.”
She: “Where’s your home?”
I: “In Austria, where’s yours?”
She: “In Shaanxi. Did you come here on a plane?”
I: “I did.”
She: “Why would you want to come to China?”
I: “I like it here.”
Have the questions of a little kid ever thrown you off guard?
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China elevator stories 
Very sweet 🙂 Did she ask if you speak 外语？
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Yes, she was quite cute indeed. She asked if I speak 外国话.
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I think you might have made a typo. It’s probably “Shanxi”.
People in Shenzhen are from all over the places lol.
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If I heard the tones correctly, it would be Shaanxi (陕西) – not the Pinyin, but the English spelling that differentiates it from neighbouring Shanxi (山西). Without tones both would be written Shanxi in Pinyin, making them even harder to distinguish :-/.
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I just googled it, you are so right! How come you can even tell these subtle differences?
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Small children more often than not speak Mandarin slow and clear, making it easy to understand ;-).
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I see, how did you learn the English spelling of Shannxi then?
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Can’t remember how I learned it, I guess one of our Chinese teachers mentioned it or I read it in one of the books about China – or both.
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It is spelled like that in English-language China guidebooks. I still always get the two confused. I always asked “Taiyuan Shanxi or Xi’an Shanxi?” 🙂
Also, wouldn’t you just translate 外国话 as “foreign language”?
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It’s hard to distinguish the two, but being aware of the similarity already solves half the problem.
You could definitely translate 外国话 as “foreign language”. I’m neither a professional translator nor a linguist, but I thought that the word “foreignish” better suited the context in this situation. In my interpretation what the girl wanted to know was if I spoke a foreign language in contrast to Chinese, but without her actually differentiating between different foreign languages, that’s why I chose “foreignish” instead. Of course I might still be wrong in my assumption and I’m influenced by German, which has a word that would directly be translated as “foreignish”.
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a more common word is engl-ish
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but then, not every foreign language is automatically english 😉
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first time caught you not capitalize your first word first letter lol, you tend to write your stories and comments in a very formal way..
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@dave,
Are you just trying to find mistakes here? …
First with Shaanxi, then because she didn’t capitalize the first word letter….
Anyway, how cute are these small conversations with kids, they ask simple questions that for them are very interesting.
🙂
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I love conversing with small kids, they have interesting world views and their thoughts are often not as restricted as those of grown-ups ;-).
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