Friday, March 14, 2008
Yi, Er, San
Walking to work the other day, I heard a man speaking Mandarin Chinese on his cellphone. I caught the numbers 1, 2 and 3 (ee, urh and sahn). It made me smile and I recited the numbers in Chinese to myself. But I all I have is 1 to 8: yi-, er\, san-, si\, wu\/, liu\, qi-, ba- (the symbols indicate tone). I can't for the life of me recall what "nine" and "ten" are. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out why. When I was living in Taiwan, I regularly went to classes at the gym. The only reason I remember the numbers is because of the instructors counting (and there were always only eight counts in the repetitions!) Up, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; Down, tchee, leo, wuu, suh, sahn, urh, ee.
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9 = jiu (joe)
10 = shi (like sure with your tongue in the back of your throat)