Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5754 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 41 of 43 08 September 2012 at 7:38am | IP Logged |
Duke100782 wrote:
When I first started using Chinese Mandarin, I used to ask "Cesuo zai nar?" when looking for the lavatory, until once while sharing a pizza in restaurant with my Mandarin teacher she corrected me by saying that "Cesuo" was too coarse to use for a polite situation, and it would be preferable for me to use the more elegant "Weishengjian". |
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Yes, that's correct. I personally use xi2shou3jian1 which is also polite enough.
Edited by Snowflake on 08 September 2012 at 8:14am
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songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5004 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map
| Message 42 of 43 08 September 2012 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
Dagane wrote:
I had found different words in English, for example WC, toilet, lavatory and loo (I think I'm the
first one in mentioning this one and I don't really know if whether is formal or informal) |
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A quick note re. "loo": this term isn't known in American English. It's used in Britain and some other countries, e.g.
Ireland and Australia. I'm often/generally understood when I use it here in Canada, but most people use
"washroom" when asking for directions in stores, restaurants, etc.
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Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4306 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech
| Message 43 of 43 08 September 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
Quote:
A quick note re. "loo": this term isn't known in American English. It's used in Britain and some other countries, e.g. |
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Thanks, I appreciate your explanation. I'm really curious about the differences between American and British English. It's really hard to distinguish a word from a particular region when the language is so extended as English is.
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