Waiter! A who** to go, please

The Chinese language is a very complex language and it takes lots of effort to learn it. For me, the most tricky part is the tones. A single word can mean many things depending on how you pronounce it. Mandarin is spoken based upon 4 different tones and something they call "toneless". Because of this it is very hard to make a sentence that the local habitants understand. Even if you know the words and pronounce them in a not so bad way, it is not for certain that the taxi driver has a clue of what you are talking about. It can be even worse than that, you might say something that means totally different. If unlucky, it can go very wrong. For example, the words for saying "Excuse me, I have a question" are "qing wen". A quite common mistake is to pronounce the last word with a slightly different tone, and the result can be "Excuse me, can I have a kiss?". Not a normal kiss, a French kiss.

My dear friend Armin wanted to buy lunch a week ago. He is, like I am, very much into dumplings. A sort of round dumpling is called "baozi" in Chinese. He knew that a very much similar word, "biaozi", is to be avoided when you order the dish. It means prostitute. So when he is standing in line, ready to order, he cannot figure out which word is for the dumplings and which is the bad one. He approached the waiter and sad his line to order the lunch, hoping he would say the correct words. When the people around him in the restaurant bursted out in laughter, he got the answer.