The “Where Shark Never”-Mnemonic
You will need:
- one or more Chinese speakers that also speak English (preferably no German)
- one or more German speakers that also speak English (preferably no Chinese)
- one innocent bystander (e.g., a waitress, etc.)
Where do you find a party for such a party trick? Well, you can find a lot of Chinese speakers in China. You’ll also find offices of German airlines, German car manufacturers, German logistics providers, etc. right there as well. Between September and November quite a few companies will organize Oktoberfest for their customers and suppliers.
Basically, at the right place at the right time… most of the parties will look like what you need for this to work.
Setup:
- Get a German speaker to agree that it’s impolite to say “thank you” to the waitress in English instead of Chinese and that he should try in Chinese the next time she comes around.
- Mention to the Chinese speakers that German and Chinese is more or less the same language anyway. You’ll quickly teach the German speaker some English-German-Chinese.
In case the German speaker knows how to say “xiexie” or one of the Chinese speakers wants to help out and tells him, just say “sure, but that’s tourist Chinese” and you’ll show him a much better and more natural way to say it.
Execution:
- “Where” is what in German?
- “Shark” is what in German?
- “Never” is what in German?
- “Where shark never” is then?
…and done. Make sure you do that as you see the waitress approach, so they can use their newly acquired skill when she gives them their beer. The German words by the way are:
- Wo
- Hai
- Nie
…put together you get the sentence “Wo Hai nie.” (“Where shark never.”) which sound almost exactly like 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ) and will make all the Chinese speakers laugh. The German speaker will most likely be a bit confused and ask what they said. Just say “Well… thank you” but in a very, very affectionate way and ask one of the Chinese speakers to explain further.
What the Chinese should sound like: click the speaker button (includes the punchline)
What it sounds like using German: click the speaker button (also with egg instead of shark)
Follow up:
Go explain and apologize to the waitress!
Considerations:
There is a chance that you will get “Haifisch” (shark fish) instead of “Hai” or “niemals” (nevermore) instead of “nie”, so just say “right, and the short form of that is…?” which will then get you the answer you are looking for.
Technically, “Where egg never” should be closer, but with most German dialects/accents the “h” in “Hai” will be relatively soft and since Chinese is a tonal language you normally get a better “wo” when followed by “Hai” instead of “Ei”. I guess the “h” forces a bit of a stop and gets you the third tone you’re looking for (maybe).
Follow up on the follow up? Yes, you can use this whole party trick, ice breaker contraption as a pickup line to get the waitresses phone number… I’m not taking responsibility though.