Hello everyone, and welcome to ChinesePod.
I'm Carly.
Carly, finally I get to do this video with you.
That's true.
Yeah.
It's actually our first time on screen together.
And you know what's confusing?
What?
Your name is Carly.
Your name is Charlie!
That is a little confusing, isn't it?
But we have the technology.
Post production!
Names gonna pop up, not gonna get confused.
Exactly.
So in this episode, we're going to be talking about food, which is my favorite topic.
I just had lunch with you, so I know.
And we're also going to be looking at the service.
And a particularly, well, impolite waitress.
Well I mean, if the food is good, then...
Maybe that's for you, but I still think that it is a very important part.
How bad can it be?
Like, she's not going to throw food at the customer or anything, right?
No, but you know what, let's just listen to the dialogue three times.
Alright, so we just heard the dialogue.
Now let's break it down line by line.
Is she for real?
Unbelievably rude, like beyond rude.
So in the first line, we hear our main character say...
Okay, let's take a look at
it means "waiter" or "waitress".
You might think addressing the waiter as "hey, water!" can be somewhat rude,
but in Chinese culture, that's not the case.
It's actually respectful and it's standard to do that.
So we should address people by their occupations.
Okay, you're a teacher.
I am!
So if I call you like "hey, Carly".
That would be considered a little bit rude.
Yeah, but on the other hand if I address you with your title, like
you know, "teacher Carly"
Carly老师
How does that sound?
Much better.
Or, you know my last name.
I think it's like 文...
So I call you 文老师
Yes.
It doesn't...I just know you as Carly!
Carly is fine.
So
招牌菜
next.
Yeah, 招牌 means like the store sign.
But what might be confusing is that when you put the word 菜
after 招牌, so you might think you can eat the 招牌, right?
No.
So 招牌 means "store sign".
So for example, if you have a store...
Okay.
And you have beef noodle soup as your signature dish,
you would likely have...fried chicken?
Fried chicken, yes, is that okay?
Yes.
So you have a store with fried chicken and you name it
Charlie's Fried Chicken.
I'm picturing that right now.
So that would usually mean if it's good enough to be on your store sign,
it's probably your signature dish or one of your best dishes.
Yeah, I can follow that but I guess in Western culture if
the restaurant is really famous already, you might not actually
put the dish on your store sign, like you, I've never seen a hamburger
or anything on a McDonalds store sign, right?
That's true.
So next, let's look at
which means a dish or a course.
Yeah, we gotta be careful here because like "dish" is like one singular
plate of food, right?
And then a course would be what?
You've got starters, mains, and deserts.
Like lots of dishes.
And in Chinese, we just have the one word.
Yeah.
So it's the same word for us, and then it would depend on
the context for which one it means.
For example if we're at a Western restaurant and we do have
starters, mains, and so on, we would say
But for example, if I'm out with my family and we have a family meal,
we would order fifteen dishes.
Wait...you said fifteen?
We have a big family!
Or like are they all for you?
No.
But in that case, we would say...
我知道了
So, all together...
would mean "waitress, may I ask what your signature dish is?"
Great, and she replies...
Okay,
that means "compare".
And you might think it's a verb, but what happens when you
put an adjective like 贵 after the 比较?
So in this case we're still comparing something, but we're
comparing the prices of these dishes.
And since our adjective is 贵, which means "expensive"
we're looking for the more expensive one.
Okay, let me clear this up for everybody.
Alright, so there's zero confusion.
The customer asks the waitress "what's your signature dish?"
and her reply was that the more expensive dish.
Can you believe that?
But that's actually not the rudest part.
No??
Because she actually says
Ah, the 就是 makes everything worse.
So
it doesn't have a direct translation for this context,
but you can think of it like "duh!" or "obviously!"
It implies that whatever you said is very obvious.
And so she's actually saying "Duh!
The most expensive one."
Duh!
She's really rude.
And duh, I think he should get out of there.
But he doesn't, and so he continues to ask...
Alright, 辣, alright.
So "is this dish spicy?"
I was thinking like, does he really care whether the dish is spicy or not?
Because I really think it's an excuse for him to get out of there.
He's banking that the waitress is going to say
哦，有点辣
and then he's going to be all "oh, I don't take spicy"
and out.
But she doesn't actually answer this straight up.
She says...
So "why don't you try it and you'll find out".
Wow, this waitress is out of this world!
Yeah, so first how about let's look at
吃吃看
Yeah, that sounds very cute because of you know, the double 吃吃.
So what's the whole structure for that?
So this structure if you repeat a verb two times
and then add 看 at the end.
It becomes sort of like "try it".
Or in this case, "try eating it".
And it does not work for every type of verb, right?
No, so it needs to be a one character verb.
For example, "swim" is a verb, and swim in Chinese is...
Just two characters, so we cannot say
游泳游泳看
Yeah, it's kind of long and not easy to say.
So we like to be convenient, right, when we say stuff.
I actually thought of one single syllable verb.
Which one?
The word for "see".
看
I know what you're thinking, you want to say
看看看
Yes, what's wrong with that, like...
看看看
We can't say that.
Because in this case, we would actually just say it two times.
看看
But I followed the rule, I doubled 看 like 看看
and I put an extra 看 at the end for "try".
Well, you know every language has exceptions,
so this is one of their exceptions.
Yes, that's what makes learning languages such an interesting thing.
So altogether, this sentence means "you'll find out when you try it".
At this point, I really think that the customer has had enough of her nonsense.
So what happens?
He has.
So he says...
It's just a 算了算了!
It makes him seem like he's about to explode, he's like furious.
So 算了 itself already means "never mind" or "forget it".
But if he repeats it two times, 算了算了, it really
emphasizes that he is ticked off.
And he has every right to do that
because you know, consumer's rights.
He needs to execute that.
Yeah.
So he says...
Oh, so very convenient.
There's like another bun store right across the road
and he says "let's go there instead"
Yeah, and so I guess at this point, he would like to leave.
Yeah, but this waitress, wait for it, she needs to get the last laugh no matter what.
Exactly, so she says...
It kind of scared me a bit.
你!!!
I was waiting for something.
So she says "You..."
I mean, at this point she could have said something really inappropriate,
but she doesn't and she says "don't eat then don't eat"
which just translates to "if you don't want to eat, then don't".
It's not too bad, right?
And then she adds...
Which means "take care".
That's kind of polite if you just look at it directly.
Exactly.
That's a...if you do use 慢走 with a different tone of voice, then what happens?
So in her case, she was very sarcastic.
And she was like...
So in this case, I don't really think she wants him to take care.
No, if I was the customer I would do exactly what she says.
You know, I would actually 慢走
I would slowly get up and walk out of there.
Block the doorway and stop other customers form coming in.
I think in that case, you would have the last laugh.
I would laugh while I block the customers.
Now let's listen to the dialogue three more times.
it's safe to say that we both agree that the waitress was kind of rude.
Yeah, she was definitely not the nicest one.
And also, like we saw a lot of these things that depend on your tone of voice.
Yeah, I was thinking that if somebody with a pretty face says the same thing,
it might be different.
It might be different.
So and also if you think about it, these places that serve
good and affordable food, they don't amazing service anyways.
Yes, spot on, it's like the fast food concept, right?
If I'm to go to a fast food place, I would not wear a suit to go there.
For sure, they just want the turnover
and I just want the food.
And that concludes the first part of our two-part series.
If you want to watch the second part, there is a plot twist at the end.
Well, I can tell you one thing.
The waitress is not an undercover CIA agent, that's it.
If that was what you were wondering.
Alright, so that it for this time, and we'll see you on the part two.
I'm Carly. And I'm Charlie.
See you next time, bye!