Chinese Language Course: Telling Some Jokes to You

When we begin to learn mandarin(學普通話), it is easy for us to make some jokes due to our misunderstanding or misuse of some language points.

In this Chinese language course, I am going to tell you some Chinese jokes. You can learn something useful over having fun of them.

Last weekend, Tom attended his Chinese friend’s birthday part. They drank a lot of beer and wine. Suddenly, his friend said to him: “Sorry, 我有点喝高了(wo3 you3 dian3 he1 gao1 le5)”. Tom felt puzzled. What did “喝高了(he1 gao1 le5)” mean? Did that mean someone who had drunk wine would increase his height? And so Tom took a close observation on his friend. It seemed that he did not get height increased. Tom is an American man who has just begun to learn to speak Chinese. Later on he came to his friend to figure out what does that sentence mean. Actually, that means someone has drunk too much alcohol and even has got drunk. “高了” does not refer to the height but the degree of your alcohol-drinking.

Let us come to another joke. There is robbery caught a young man in the street. The man tried to escape however the robbery was too strong. And then the young man shouted at the passerby “报警(bao4 jing3)”. Most interestingly, the robbery held the man more tightly because he misunderstood the man’s word as “抱紧(bao4 jin3)”. “报警” means “call the police” while “抱紧” is totally different, which means “hold someone tightly”. The difference between “警(jing3)” and “紧(jin3)” lies in whether there is a “g” in the Pinyin. That is also an important point——the front nasal and the back nasal, which has been emphasized in many Chinese schools.

As you can see, a small misunderstanding may cause a big joke during your daily communication. It is hard to avoid these mistakes completely but you can try your best to pay more attention to them.