Dreams of White Tiles . . .

6/30/2004

您贵姓

Filed under: Uncategorized — Roddy @ 10:12 pm

Today was the first time I heard ‘您贵姓?’ (very formal way of asking for someones name) used apart from at hotel reception desks. It always seems to be taught in textbooks, but I’m not sure it deserves to be, given how rarely I hear it. I think I hear ‘怎么称呼你?’ (how to address you?) more often – knowing someones surname is Zhang is only one part of the battle, do you call them old Zhang, young Zhang, Mr Zhang, Manager Zhang . . .

Introductions here often cover this, like the answer to 您贵姓? today – 我姓田, 叫我小田吧. Increasingly people are using English names – saves the hassle of figuring out who is 老 and who is 小,I guess.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress