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My buddy exploited this during the "breaking down the door" Chinese wedding tradition. We (the groom's party) showed up at the bride's apartment, and the matro
by KMag 4y ago
My buddy exploited this during the "breaking down the door" Chinese wedding tradition. We (the groom's party) showed up at the bride's apartment, and the matron of honor (bride's sister) opened the door and demanded a bribe to be let in. The groom knew the bride's sister was often non-specific, so he got a bunch of Vietnamese currency (dong) from a local bank, and used that to pay the demanded bribe when the currency wasn't specified. As tradition, we were then subjected to mild hazing by the bridal party until they were satisfied the groom was worthy of the bride.
The exploit relied partially on the negotiations being conducted in Cantonese, so the matron of honor asked for "500 lumps [of money]", with most/all currency using "lump" as the measure word. The same thing could have been done in English, had he figured out which of the world's various currencies called "dollar" had the lowest exchange rate vs. the USD. The exploit was helped by the fact that Cantonese treats currencies more uniformly than English, so it's syntactically easier to substitute a different currency.
(My friend just went to a local bank and asked which currency they had on hand that had the lowest exchange rate vs. the USD. It happened to be VND.)
- gfaure 4y agoIt can't have been Cantonese -- we use 蚊 (man1) as the currency counter and not 塊 ("lumps") like in Mandarin.
- KMag 4y agoThanks for the correction. I don't understand much Canto and I over-extrapolated to Cantonese from my knowledge of Mandarin. I thought man was the same as Mandarin's kuai. While I've got you... I've heard "ya man" for HK$ 20 in the North Point produce market in Hong Kong. One of my friends said that this is a "local count", but didn't give specifics. I'm familiar with the normal "yi sap" for 20. When is "ya" used for 20 in Cantonese? (Side note, 20 is "yi sip" in Thai, despite "yi" not being 2 in Thai... an interesting borrow/carry-over from Southern Chinese dialects.) Is "local count" something more formal than slang? I know it's written as two tens in a single character, but I'm guessing Canto slang also has dedicated characters in some cases. It was definitely Cantonese. My buddy's father-in-law only speaks Cantonese (grew up in Manhattan's Chinatown, poor enough English that he thought his son-in-law Dave's name was "Day" for long enough to spell it that way on his new-year's red envelope) and his daughters are bilingual in Canto and English.