Mandarin Chinese is a very interesting language, I think.  The more I know about it the more intriguing it becomes.  (Although I must admit that this past week was probably the lowest I’ve had on the motivation scale…)  Here is an interesting example of one of the reasons I think the language is interesting:

he = 他

she = 她

it = 它

Do you know how to pronounce each of these pronouns in Mandarin? 

It’s easy: tā

The problem is that "ta" (tah) is how you pronounce all three pronouns even though the characters are different.  You can immediately see where this might cause some confusion. 

Ta goes to the ballet.  Ta has a baby.  Ta likes to chew tobacco.  Ta is on the table next to my pen.

When talking to someone in Mandarin the only way you will know what gender "ta" is is through the context of what is being said.  (For all you grammar geeks, Mandarin also does not have masculine/feminine/neuter endings on the words or verbs so there’s no help in that arena either.)

Because of this "ta" conundrum, you may have noticed that when a native Mandarin speaker speaks English they may often confuse he, she, and it.  "My mother, he always wear a skirt."

To make matters even more fun, Mandarin makes its pronouns possessive by adding a "de" (duh) at the end.  Tade pengyou shi Meiguoren.  (His / Her friend is American.)

So the language is just full of ta’s and tade’s (tah-duhs).  I hear people on their cell phones or in restaurants or on the bus saying, "blah, blah-blah, TA, blah-blah-blah, TADE, blah-blah-dee-blah-dee, TA).

This would not be such a big deal except for one thing…

My name is Todd.

Tah-duh and Tah sounds quite a bit like Todd.  It’s bad enough being stared at on the street, but then to hear murmurings that sound similar to your name being whispered by everyone within earshot…it can make a guy a little paranoid.  When I get to America some day I wonder if I’m going to really start to miss all this attention.

As a footnote, it’s also funny to hear Chinese speakers pronounce my name.  They tend to really emphasize the "d" at the end.  Tah-DUH.  Or more commonly, Mr. Todd.  I’m blaming this on ta.  It’s all tade fault.