Today’s Lunar Prophecy

It’s a good day for:
.: Trading
.: Traveling
.: Worshipping
.: Starting a business

It’s a bad day for:
.: Ground-breaking ceremonies
.: Installing stoves

I just hope to God that you’ve all installed your stoves already.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Engrish, lately, having to primarily survive on ill-translated text to know where to go, what to eat, and which way to the restroom; and I’ve decided, unilaterally, that it is hilarious. From a translated National Geographic article:

There are still wild places in Northern America where man does not rule. The grizzly does.

Every year an unfortunate few experience savage attacks from these dreaded bears. Some people are even more than killed.

It’s not so much the death that I am afraid of, it’s the more than death that keeps me up at night.

All kidding aside, though, it is amazing to me that an entire people are able to master a language to even the extent that they do. And, we certainly can’t fault them for trying to accomodate us. Signs, notices, packaging, etc are all printed in multiple languages here, including English. Can we claim to be as hospitable to our foreign visitors?

What’s more, I am starting to understand how difficult it must be to learn a language that isn’t just different, but is so different that it doesn’t even consist of the same tonal structure, grammatical syntax, or even basic structure. It is only recently that I have begun to be able to discern individual words from the otherwise constant stream of gutteral sounds that is modern day Chinese. I can only imagine similar difficulties for the locals here attempting English for the first time.