People are choosing funny English names here in Taiwan. An engineer will call himself usually Aaron or Adam or sometimes come as far as B... in the book of English names to choose a name suitable for international business for himself. They do that in English school, which they usually attend at young age in Taiwan. But now don't think people here would actually talk English to foreigners, even my Taiwanese friends don't talk to me. They write emails, yes, but they don't talk, no. Some have uncommon names like Thor, Magic, Summer, Winter, Pussy or Hitter (a play on Hitler maybe?), Mars or Wonder.
When our QA guy in one of my last companies here told me his team member "Magic" will solve the problem, I replied to him "Then I am absolutely sure magic will manage". Guess he never got the joke.
"Yesno", I am wondering if that is a play on the tendency of people here to avoid clear Yes or No answers. Chinese actually does not have words for Yes and No, what foreigners think Yes would be is actually "correct" (due) and what they believe to be No is actually "nothing" (meo). However, in anglicized Mandarin, Taiwanese will use a lot of Due and Meo to support the foreigner's language patterns. Clever move actually.
The best name I ever encountered was "Popo Peng" though, which actually may be a real name. Well, "Popo" means "backside" in German as the thing you sit on and "Peng" means "Boom". Almost wanted to tell him the way to the toilet when he introduced himself.
So, enough of this, wife said my first name reminds her in "Pigfoot" in Chinese.
EDIT: Well, he pronounces "Noyes" as "noise". Sigh.
2 Kommentare:
There is a similar pattern in Ireland. There is no "No" and "Yes" in Gaelic, so the Irish approach to English also virtually eliminates these words:
Q: "Will you have another pint?"
A: "Ah, I think I will."
Q: "Did you look at that girl?"
A: "Whatever makes you say that, woman?"
As you can see at the second example, this usage can be quite useful. He isn't technically denying it, but not admitting it either.
Interesting, didn't no Gaelic does not have them either.
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