Supplies or Surprise; Fun or Fan?

Fun, funny and interesting are words that always confuse our Chinese students - and did I have a good laugh today when trying to explain these three concepts!

Why the confusion?

Quite simple. In Chinese they have only one word for our two separate ideas of "Interesting" and "Fun" (youquu de). Their closest translation for our "fun" is "to play with an open heart (to play nicely)" - a sweet idea but  not exactly what we mean with "fun", is it?

An example of a common error, demonstrating this confusion, is for them to say that playing football or computer games is interesting (because they do not get the concept of fun).

The way we explain our concepts of fun vs interesting in a way that they will understand is to say that interesting comes from the brain. It is also mostly a once off experience. For example, I read an interesting book and I learnt something I did not know before. Next time I read the same book it is  not as interesting as I already KNOW this. John tells me an interesting story (from which I gain new knowledge or insight) but if he tells me the same story 5 days in a row it is no longer interesting. In fact, it becomes boring.Thus "interesting" is also the opposite of" boring" (boring is a word they understand, so this always helps).

Fun, on the other hand, is from the heart and happens again and again and again - the reason we do it so many times is exactly because it is fun (play football, kiss, play computer games ...).  We do explain that the two concepts can overlap, but normally only for the first time.

"Funny" we simply explain as humorous, for humorous is a word they understand and know because it is longer than "funny" and when they use their little electronic dictionaries, they always choose the longest and most difficult option to use. Humorous it is then, not funny.

So, now having explained this all to you, let me get to my own "humorous" story from class today.

As a lead up to the explanation above, I asked my rather advanced students if they know what the word "fun" means. One lady piped up, saying that she knows. I asked her to explain.

Her answer: "You are a superstar, so I am your fun" .......

I fell off my chair laughing.

Obviously she meant "fan" but the double-entendre simply got to me in that unguarded moment.

My next lesson is going to be on the importance of vowel recognition ;-)))