Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Who is Yujin?

On the way to work yesterday I heard this on the radio:

Yujin needs to be proud of himself since in his country kids know how to make shoes at 4 years old. During the exchange, Nicolas won because he got 4 bags of potatoes and Yujin only got 2 Louis Vuitton bags.

The host kept going on about Yujin so I looked at hubby and had this conversation:

Me: Who is Yujin?
Him: The president of China.
Me: But his name is Hu Jintao!
Him: hmmmmm

I thought for a while, then I realize that it is very easy to make this type of mistake because:
1. The French do not pronounce H, so Hu becomes U.
2. Since the Chinese put their family name first followed by the given name, for the host Hujin = First name, Tao = Last name.

So the next time you see a French talks to a Chinese and the French says something about Yujin, don't be surprised to see a blank face on the Chinese. :-)

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bee Ean,

    I am a Malaysian and I have some questions about internship in France. I was google-ing and stumbled across your blog. Do you mind contacting me on andy.kw.leong@gmail.com? I have some questions about the visa. Couldn't find your email on your blog so I have to drop a comment here. Hope to hear from you soon!

    Regards,

    Andy

    ReplyDelete