Image credit: @megoizzy.
This may come as a shock to a certain strata of foreigners living in China but people can speak English here. A visitor to the Canton Fair had this lesson beaten home when, after being asked by a security guard to use a cargo elevator instead of a regular elevator due to the weight of his luggage he responded “fuck you”.
The security guard understood and responded in English, before he and several of his colleagues beat the crap out of the laowai, putting him in hospital and causing him to miss his flight home. The security guard has since been ordered to apologise and pay his medical fees.
Having grown up speaking Welsh, myself and many of my friends are blessed with a language that no-one speaks outside of the UK (bar a tiny colony in Argentina), enabling us to use it with impunity abroad when we don’t want to be understood by those around us. Nevertheless we’ve all screwed up on occasion and spoken too freely in the presence of an (unknown) Welsh speaker. There are less than a million Welsh speakers, there are almost two billion English speakers. If you’re speaking English, assume that most people can understand you.
Also, not to labour the point, but it’s pretty easy to tell when someone is insulting you in any language, unless they say it with a completely straight face.
[Via: The Nanfang]
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