Chinese lesson 1.2

A couple posts ago, I started with a fave word to teach you just a little Chinese. We will pick up with another favorite and very useful word. 麻烦 pinyin: máfan (this one is somewhat easy to pronounce: maa-fahn, not really fan. Think more nasal). The meaning:

1. Troublesome, inconvenient; To trouble, or bother somebody. e.g. "Because of all the construction, that road is really a bother to drive on." But this is one that even though I say that sentence, I am not sure that you get the full meaning of  麻烦 . For example, think of something that is such a pain to do that it is virtually impossible. And then you are getting close to the meaning. Because sometimes things in China are just difficult to get done (for various reasons), and nothing else describes it like this word. In fact, we don't even say this in English anymore. We will be talking along and drop this word in the midst of an English sentence. Chinese do this as well. One of the engineers at the company was talking to Andy about fixing a machine. He said that, "It would be broken for a couple more days and then they were going to have to build the part and it was going to . . . " (and here he paused, trying to think of a good way to describe it) . . . and finally he summed it up with: "it is going to be 麻烦 ."

2. Excuse me (with the intent of asking a question), . . . Because much like in English if we are going to ask a question of a stranger, we don't usually just walk up and jump in. Usually we say something like: "Excuse me, where is the  . . . ?" Similarly, in Chinese you would say: "麻烦 您, . . ." which literally means: "Can I bother you, . . . ?"

I think next lesson, we will tackle the tones. You know, those funny marks over the vowels. That adds a whole new level of hard.