The Power Of "Hi, How Are You?"
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I have just entered the bus going from a small city Horsens to Copenhagen (in Denmark). It's so full like an unopened bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I keep on walking slowly, scanning through my glasses for a place. And suddenly...
A warm welcoming SMILE out of nowhere catches my attention. It's hers. And she has one spot. I come closer, middle of the bus, and say: "Sorry, can I take that seat?" She immediately replies: "Oh, yeah, sure." with an accent that doesn't seem Danish.
From her look, she is clearly an Asian. I thought for a minute or two and decided to go with two options. She is either from 1. Japan or 2. China. How do you distinguish Japanese from Chinese? Hm... So I turned on my intuition and felt China, undoubtedly.
My voice runs through my mind pushing: "Let's give it a try!" So I open Google translate on my phone, type in "Hi, how are you?" and translate it into Chinese. I listen via my right headphone several times until I was confident to say it. I am READY, here it goes...
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I turn to her and say: "Nǐ hǎo nǐ hǎo ma?" She starts to laugh! Almost crying. I was confused for a moment but then started laughing together. We connected. The same frequency. The frequency of spontaneous friendship and laugh. After ~34 seconds, she says: "That was so unexpected, I love it, so cute!"
Those 3 and a half hours went like minutes. A GREAT new friendship. The power of "Hi, how are you?" works. You just have to do a little practice to prepare and say it in their language.
What is your most used foreign phrase? Have you ever had a similar experience?
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I did. I trusted someone to teach me how to say Good morning in Vietnamese. Instead he taught me how to solicit a prostitute. I found out about it too late after embarrassing myself.
Thanks for stopping by, Chuck! Now that's a good morning... :) How people reacted to it?
It happened when I repeated the phrase to a mother with her young daughter. If they did not think ill of US soldiers before, they certainly did after that.
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How do you do????? I like this post so much.... Thank you for share
I'm great, thanks and you, @augraphy? ;)
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