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Oooh I really like that for when people ask ambiguous questions. So is there an equivalent in mandarin for "Have you stopped beating your wife"? It seems like
by Enginerrrd 4y ago
Oooh I really like that for when people ask ambiguous questions. So is there an equivalent in mandarin for "Have you stopped beating your wife"?
It seems like maybe you could just say "no beat" and there's no linguistic trap.
- Tao3300 4y ago> "Have you stopped beating your wife"? The correct answer to this perennial bad riddle is "only because your mom got jealous".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- messe 4y agoI'm not sure how that's any less ambiguous than answering "I don't beat her".
- eloisius 4y agoI think I’d have trouble explaining this joke to someone. There is a way to say ‘I’ve stopped’: 我停止了, but I think they’d probably just answer me 我從來沒有打過我的太太 ‘I’ve never beaten my wife’. It does make the binary logic humor answer ‘yes’ to ‘do you V A or B?’ impossible, because there are different ways to express ‘or’ for questions or statements. I suppose puns and humor dependent upon word play is one area where I do think differently in Chinese vs English. You can crack jokes if you know how similar sounding words might be mistaken.