To see, Kàn (sounds like: can); Dog, Gǒu (sounds like: go)
Over enough drinks with a certain couple we like to talk about how we’ll someday make millions — or at least hundreds — with a curriculum that teaches “Chinese math” to white people. Remember those timed times-table tests we used to do in math class? 100 equations in four rows, ready set go? Second-grade Rich apparently blew through those (while I counted on my fingers) thanks to Chinese math, which consists not of this but of getting rid of all extraneous words.
Instead of thinking “2 times 2 is four,” you think, “2, 2, 4.” Instead of “4 times 4 is 16,” “4, 4, 16.” That’s it. Seriously.
Leave out “times” and “is” and you go from finger-counting American to an I-finished-15-minutes-before-everyone Chinese American. Emerson is going to kick some math ass.
I tell you this because Mandarin apparently works the same way. There’s a handy little word — “ma” — that basically acts like a question mark. Tack it on and you’ve got yourself a question. (Ni hao ma?) Another awesome word is go, which means dog. Which means it’s impossible to say “dog” in Mandarin without imagining a happy, energetic, running dog. To see, is can.
Since Mandarin handily works like Chinese math, if you wanted to say, “Do you see the dog?” you could just link together the essentials: dog, see, question mark. “Can go ma?”
Rich is going to be devastated that I’ve shared this top-secret information. If you somehow wind up making hundreds off of Chinese math, please do send a portion of the proceeds this way.
*Above is Emmy’s dog cousin, Nigel, whose mom is Emmy’s talented Auntie Mina. (Hi, Mina!)
