别怕说错

Xiao Yue, I said one wrong sentence last month, and after that I didn't dare speak a single word of Chinese for a whole month.

A whole month? What on earth did you say?

A coworker at school brought his girlfriend in. I wanted to give a compliment, and what came out was, your girlfriend is very cheap.

Pfft. You meant pretty, didn't you?

Exactly! I meant piaoliang, pretty, and out came pianyi, cheap. The first sound in those two words is just too similar.

Hahaha, sorry, I shouldn't be laughing.

Go ahead and laugh. There were six or seven people sitting in that office, and every one of them laughed.

And how did your coworker react?

He froze for two seconds, then said, thanks, she really doesn't spend much.

Haha, he was smoothing it over for you. Da yuanchang means someone steps in to save the mood when things get awkward.

He meant well, but I wanted to vanish on the spot. Back in the office, I switched everything I said into English.

Leo, do you know what that sentence really cost you? It wasn't those six or seven people laughing at you once.

Then what was it?

It's the month that followed. You could have spoken hundreds of Chinese sentences, and you spoke none.

Hearing you say that, my stomach just dropped.

One slip of the tongue makes you feel bad for five minutes, tops. But to dodge those five minutes, you threw away a month of practice. That's called debuchangshi.

Debuchangshi?

What you gain doesn't make up for what you lose. Protecting a little pride and losing a big chunk of progress — that's debuchangshi.

That word hits way too close to home. I remembered it instantly.

There's another line that fits you even better right now: bitten by a snake once, afraid of a well rope for ten years.

Bitten by a snake once, afraid of a well rope for ten years? What's a well rope?

It's the rope you use to draw water from a well. Once someone's been bitten by a snake, from then on any rope on the ground makes them jump, because they think it's a snake.

Bitten once, scared for ten years. Then that's me — wrong once, scared for a month.

Right. Today we're going to cure that fear of yours. But let me be clear up front — what I'm going to say is not just, mistakes don't matter.

It's not? I thought you were going to comfort me.

Comfort is useless. I want to tell you three things: which mistakes aren't worth fearing at all, which mistakes you should actually make sooner, and which kind of mistake is genuinely dangerous.

There's a genuinely dangerous kind? That one I never thought about.

There is, and most Chinese learners end up tripping on exactly that one. Don't rush, let's take them one at a time.

Okay, start with the ones that aren't worth fearing.

First, a question. Do you think there are a lot of mistakes in the Chinese you speak?

Loads. Definitely. The second I open my mouth it feels like nothing but mistakes.

That's exactly the problem. You pile every mistake into one big lump and fear the whole lump. But mistakes are wildly different from each other.

Mistakes come in types?

Of course they do. I'll give you three. The first kind doesn't stop anyone from understanding you.

Like what?

Measure words, for example. You say yi ge mao, we say yi zhi mao. Did you get it wrong? Yes. Did I understand you? Completely.

So this kind of mistake...

This kind, you could never fix it your whole life and it wouldn't affect living in China at all.

Seriously? I always thought getting measure words wrong was a big deal.

Let me tell you a secret. Chinese people get measure words wrong all the time too.

Chinese people get them wrong?

All the time. Plenty of people can't be bothered to think, so everything gets ge: yi ge xigua, yi ge yizi, yi ge dianying. All ge.

Yi ge dianying? That can't be right.

It's not. It should be yi bu dianying. But you hear it every single day in real life, and nobody stops to correct them.

I always assumed every sentence a Chinese person says is perfect.

That belief is the root of all your fear. You've been comparing yourself to something that doesn't exist.

Something that doesn't exist?

Right. That perfect Chinese doesn't exist. Take me — in this very episode I'll definitely misspeak, repeat myself, and change my wording halfway through.

You? But you're Chinese.

So what? Lots of us down south can't tell n from l. We turn niunai, milk, into liunai.

Haha, niunai, liunai.

Then there's the front and back nasal sounds — plenty of people never sort those out their whole lives. And people who can't say four and ten clearly are everywhere in this country.

So how do you shop? Forty and fourteen are pretty different.

You hold up your fingers. When Chinese people shop, our hands are busier than our mouths.

Haha, so you have your own workarounds too.

Here's an even funnier one. We call it tibiwangzi.

Tibiwangzi?

You pick up a pen and suddenly forget how to write the character. Everyone types on their phone now, so there are tons of characters we can recognize but can't write.

Chinese people can't write characters either? I always thought that was just me, the foreigner.

Super common. Hand me a piece of paper right now and ask me to write penti, sneeze, and I'd have to think for ages.

I honestly never expected that.

So you see, that perfect Chinese person you're chasing is one you invented. Real Chinese people are messy, wrong, and mumbly when they talk.

That one really shakes me.

Okay, back to the three kinds. The second kind makes people misunderstand you.

Like my your girlfriend is very cheap?

Exactly, that's the classic second kind. What came out and what you meant are two different things.

That must be the most serious kind, right?

It sounds the scariest, but it's actually the easiest to fix. Want to know why?

Why?

Because the moment it happens, the other person reacts — a pause, a frown, a laugh. The second they react, you know you got it wrong.

So this kind of mistake raises its own hand and tells me.

Nicely put. A mistake that raises its hand is never scary. You fix it on the spot, and once fixed you remember it forever. Let me ask you — will you ever say pianyi when you mean piaoliang again in your life?

Absolutely not. Those two words are clearer in my head than anything else now.

See? One moment of embarrassment buys you a word you'll never forget. That's a great deal.

Put that way, I actually came out ahead.

You came out way ahead. If you'd never opened your mouth, you still wouldn't be able to tell those two words apart.

So what's the third kind?

The third kind makes people uncomfortable. That's the one worth putting effort into.

Uncomfortable — you mean swear words?

Not swearing. It's misjudging how much weight your words carry — how you address someone, your tone, being too blunt.

Give me an example.

Say you're in a shop and you tell a woman in her fifties, hey, come here a second.

That does sound a bit harsh.

The grammar is perfect, not one word wrong, but she'll be annoyed. You should say, excuse me, would you mind coming over for a moment.

So this kind of mistake isn't a language mistake, it's...

A politeness mistake. In Chinese, one nin, one mafan, one buhaoyisi matters far more than your grammar.

Then how do I know if I'm making that kind of mistake? Grammar books don't cover this.

They really don't. The only way is listening — how Chinese people talk to a waiter, to an elder, to a friend. Same meaning, three different ways to say it.

So I should move my energy off the first kind and onto the third.

Exactly right. You spend all day scared of measure words, while the thing that actually offends people slips right past you.

Xiao Yue, there's still one hurdle I can't get over — losing face. You Chinese care a lot about face, right?

We really do. The phrase diulian carries a lot of weight in Chinese.

In Britain we get embarrassed too, but it doesn't feel as heavy as diulian. Diulian sounds like your face fell on the floor.

Haha, literally that's exactly what it means. There's another expression too: chu yangxiang.

Chu yangxiang? Does it have something to do with foreign countries?

Historically a little, but now it just means doing something hilarious in public and having everyone see it. That time of yours was a textbook chu yangxiang.

Diulian, chu yangxiang, nao xiaohua — you have way too many words for this.

Because we're genuinely afraid of it. But let me tell you something that might make you feel a lot better.

Go on.

Your mistake lives less than five minutes in someone else's head. In your own head, it lives five years.

Say that again.

You said that sentence, the office laughed, and by the afternoon they'd forgotten. But you still remember it, and it still stings.