Just a quick note about some open positions with the company I work for, Praxis Language (the ChinesePod people):

• ChinesePod Product Manager. Help keep ChinesePod running smoothly, while contributing to the best Mandarin lesson on the net. Managerial experience, Chinese ability, and insight into education required. Full-time position in Shanghai.

• ChinesePod Interns. Participate in the community and help us improve the product. Great for students of Chinese in Shanghai, as we can be flexible about the work times. Part-time position in Shanghai.

• FrenchPod Lead Teacher. Help make the best podcasts for learning French. Teaching experience and fluency in French required, but you can’t be a native speaker of French — this teacher needs to have the learner perspective. Full-time position in Shanghai.

E-mail me if you’re interested in applying. Thanks!

Remember that Indian music video subtitled with hilarious similar-sounding English lyrics? Well, here’s something along the same lines, only with Japanese and Shanghainese.

The video is the theme song for a Japanese anime series called Saint Seiya (圣斗士星矢 in Chinese — apparently it’s well-known among the Chinese). This case is a little different, because the song was actually re-recorded with (ridiculous) Shanghainese lyrics. (In a karaoke parlor, from the sound of it.) And there are subtitles for us Shanghainese-impaired! The kind subtitler put the Shanghainese “transliteration hanzi” on the top line, and the Mandarin translation on the bottom line.

Here’s a quick and dirty translation of the lyrics:

No hot water for washing my feet

Today I’ll go to bed without washing them

The water for washing my face is still heating up

Going to bed without washing my feet - so dirty

No hot water for washing my feet

Mom says the bills are too high

She says wash your face first, then use that water to soak your feet

Water for your feet and water for your face

They’re both heated with the gas burner

Why don’t salaries go up? The cost of water, electricity, and gas have

Oh my God

Heat it, heat it*

If you don’t heat it, the price’ll be higher next year

Heat it, heat it

Wash you feet, then go for the spa, oh yeah

Heat it, heat it

Heat it from now til the end of the month

Heat it, heat it

Why not heat it?

My mom is paying the bill

Lots of great cultural context here:

• Water in Shanghai has traditionally been heated with gas heaters (although electric ones are also common now)
• Traditional Shanghainese good old-fashioned thrifty living
• Washing one’s face and feet traditionally has been a common substitute for taking a shower

Here’s the original Japanese theme song.

The Shanghainese version of the video was recommended to me by a local friend who said the Shanghainese lyrics sounded like the Japanese. I don’t really hear the resemblance, but it’s good wacky fun nonetheless.

*Any resemblance to Beat It is unintended.

Some selected lyrics from Denison Witmer’s song “Are you a Dreamer?“:

Dream, are you a dreamer?

Are you a dreamer?

Do you dream?

Sleep, are you a sleeper?

Are you a sleeper?

Do you sleep?

[...]

Love, are you my lover?

Are you my lover?

Do you love me?

Save, are you a savior?

Are you a savior?

Will you save?

As a linguist with experience teaching English, my reaction was, this song could be good material for teaching simple derivational morphology and question forms.

(Of course, on a personal level, my reaction was, I need to listen to some punk to balance out this Denison Witmer stuff…)

I read this article on Discovery.com last week: Telling Bad Jokes Invokes Hostility, Violence. It prompted me to reflect upon my struggles with humor in foreign languages, and in English too.

Random observations:

• The more familiar I am with the people I am with, the funnier I am. Thus, in my nuclear family I am a comedic superstar, while at work or when meeting people for the first time, not so much. Other friends fall somewhere in the middle.
• I never got very fluent in Spanish (and I’m definitely not at my high point now), but I never felt it was very hard to make jokes in Spanish. In general, the humor translated well across the cultural gap.
• It was verrry difficult to be funny in Japanese. Granted, I only lived in Japan for a year, so I wasn’t super fluent, but I repeatedly made efforts to be funny in conversations with friends, and I crashed and burned a lot. My homestay brothers mocked my failed attempts rather mercilessly. (Their cries of “さぶっ！” still haunt me.)
• It was kind of hard to make jokes in Chinese, but I never felt as much pressure to be witty as I did in Japanese. Furthermore, failed humor tends to result in confusion or non-comprehension rather than mockery.
• Even when I make a bad joke in Chinese, rarely does anyone call me on it. The exception, of course, is my wife (one of the funniest people I know), who dutifully reminds me that in Chinese, I am not very funny.

Based on my experiences, it seems like familiarity raises the stakes in humor. When you tell a joke to someone you’re close to, you either score big, or you lose big. And losing big can mean violence (according to the study)?

But I’m guessing that’s pretty cultural. I’m not at all surprised that it’s hard to be funny in France. This is a great quote from the article:

“I may have been Nancy funny, but I was not French-speaking-Nancy funny,” she said.

I’m curious if any readers have had “violent” reactions to bad jokes in Asia.

Related: When Humor Runs Aground, Dumb Joke [on ChinesePod]

Here’s another illustration from Black Back’s book, 我们丫丫吧:

Two nice pop culture references there, but interested in Chinese onomatopoeia as I am, I can’t help but fixate on the Street Fighter sound effect label: 欧由根. This especially amuses me because I remember when I was playing Street Fighter II in high school, my friends and I could never quite agree on what the heck Ryu was saying. We always thought it was something like “Har-yookin,” but apparently at least some of the Chinese hear it as “oh-yoogun.”

For those of you who have no idea of what I’m talking about, or only a very fuzzy recollection, this video, taken directly from the Street Fighter II video game, has plenty of sound bites for you:

Anyway, curious, I Baidu’d the phrase and, on a page about 我们丫丫吧, found some interesting stuff. I couldn’t help trying to decipher these:

• 欧由根: the classic shoryuken in the illustration above (see 0:11, 0:12, and countless other places in the video)
• 啊卢给: Hmmm, either it’s a hadouken (0:08), or it’s someone else’s move. (Anyone…?)
• 加加不绿根: the hurricane kick (0:54)?

If you’re Chinese and you used to play Street Fighter II, I’d love to hear what you used to hear the characters saying.

[Sorry for the excessive early 90's nostalgia. All you people that liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle post, this is for you!]