The Chinese Can't Say "no"

Today was quite fun... but I'll start with yesterday.

As tomorrow is Labor Day in the USA, several American families got together for a cook out. Most of us had forgotten that it was labor day weekend, but had noticed a drop off in the emails from home.

My highlight was baked beans. Real, homemade baked beans. The kind only someone from Arkansas can make. So as we were starting to eat, the gentleman from Texarkana says to his son: "come here knothead".

I about choked and said: "Man, you must be from Arkansas. That is what my Dad called me!"

And so the evening progressed; there were some color characters there, but there is no reason to go into that on these pages.

Today we went and had lunch and most of the afternoon with the Germans. Yes, we were the only Americans and the only people who could not speak German. We had a great time. The kids don't care what language you speak and it was a blast watching them all.

As I was sitting around realizing that I could not understand a single thing. However, a few words did come through, such as Nein. (Which is German for no and is used in the same way as we use it: to tell kids to stop.)

At that moment, I realized that Chinese parents have it rough. You see, there is no direct translation for 'no'. Of course, they can get across the point of a negative, but it is always coupled with an adverb, adjective, or noun. There is no simple negative word.

My language learning continues. Tomorrow is another day of 2 hour class. We'll see how that goes as we are getting to the point where we are making complex sentences. Critical to sounding fluent, but not critical for daily survival. Needless to say, I'm going to stick with it as trying to give some instructions to our driver tonight regarding what I needed him to bring from the office (company chop) and where to take Jackie and where we want to go tomorrow was a challenge. I'll know how well I did about 11 am tomorrow...