He suddenly let it out lol 😂 it's true when you are speaking another language you can't switch it to another immediately especially in such fight or flight moment.
i loved sheldon so much in this episode. though I'm not fluent in Mandarin, I've been studying it for a couple of years and it was great to hear someone else struggling with it. he nailed the "you scared me to death" bit though.
My Laoshi showed us this in one of the first few classes of Chinese 101. Even just a semester later in 102, I completely understand the importance of tones now.
0:05 我的名字是Sheldon. My name's Sheldon 0:40 梅毒驢子. donkey with syphilis 0:54 給我看你用的橙皮. show me your orange peels 1:04 哎呀！嚇死我了！Ah! You scared the hell out of me. he nailed it lol 1:21 長壽 ? ? 謝謝。Love live concrete. Thank you 1:34 猴子睡在裡頭。Monkey is sleeping inside 1:41 鼻涕在哪兒？鼻涕！Where is mucus? Mucus! 1:43 擤乾淨鼻涕後，快走快走。After blowing your nose, go away 1:46 這不是橘？腳踏車！This is not a tangerine bicycle 1:52 不必打給圖書館。鼻涕在哪兒？No need to call library. Where's mucus? 1:56 ？牛在我床上，很多很多？牛。Many cows in my bed. Many cows.
For non-Chinese speakers: In the cafe, Sheldon said: "Your monkey sleeps inside me". Chinese: 猴子睡在里头 pinyin: Hou Zi Shui Zai Li Tou He was going to say (or he believed he said): "it's good food (with good flavor inside)" Chinese: 好滋味在里头 pinyin: Hao Zi Wei Zai Li Tou Comparing the pinyin(pronunciation) of both sentences, they are actually pretty close.... But the last part in the restaurant didn't make any sense......
Its all about the tones and inflection. You cant get it sort of right. tonal languages are so tricky, Its so damm funny having them make the character speak Mandarin. Getting James Hong to appear as the restaurant owner is such a bonus and fence with this crazy mixed up man haha
0:40 , 0:52 , 1:21 , and 1:41 This show is always funny, along with its characters. This is one of my top 10 favorite episodes of this show. I never cease to be amazed at how Sheldon is so smart and yet so dumb at the same time. I know everyone is smart and dumb in different ways, but there’s little middle ground for Sheldon.
I think he meant 云吞 (wantons) when he said 鼻涕在哪兒？鼻涕！(Where is mucus? Mucus!) because wanton is a local metaphor for boogers in my place. The similarities comes when you see tissue wrapped booger and wanton... vice versa...
ditto goes for cantonese. For any one word you can think of, just hearing or saying it by itself can usually mean one of a 1/2 dozen things. like They're, their, there, in english but for cantonese, it's just about all words. very very subtle sound differences and context is key to understanding.
@michaelcky90 actually I thought he may be referring to 朋友(peng you) friends which sounds quite similar to 蛮牛(man niu) oxen. So he could be trying to threaten the restaurant owner that he has many friends at his place? Anyway thanks for response.. doesn't really matter.. just out of curiosity!
Note that tones are really important because many characters share the same pronunciations. If you mess up the tones, it is really difficult to understand for anyone.
Because, for some reason, he assumes that anyone working in certain types of businesses should know certain things, even if they are irrelevant. In another episode, he expects any worker at a pizza restaurant to understand Italian.
James Hong. He's been in everything from Charlie Chan to Starsky and Hutch to Chicago Hope to Seinfeld to Friends to Kung Fu Panda. IMDB records show that on several shows he played multiple characters.
@ohyeah0418 The old man only spent the first 10 years of his life in Hong Kong (where they speak in a funny accent in my opinion), but he's basically American
@msinvincible2000 See, the only way to learn Mandarin properly if you're not born into a Chinese family is to learn the meanings of the words after you have gotten the accent down perfectly. A little out of accent and all the words would have different meanings. For Sheldon, the only time he got the accent down almost perfectly was at 1:06 and that was about it. Personally, I understand quite a bit of Mandarin but I'm not too confident in speaking it in case I get the words wrong.
I think the thing with the citrus peels was because he was planning to confront a Chinese restaurant about serving orange chicken when he paid for tangerine chicken.
To understand the ease of Sheldon's confusion, know that the word "ma" in Mandarin can mean "mom," "hemp," "horse," or "scold" depending on how you say it (designated by a tonal marker over the vowel). So you can know the words, but if you don't know the tones then you're just going to be speaking nonsense.
