Dispatches from a Chinese class

There's no room for subtlety in foreign language education. If instructors delved into the nuances of actual discussion and debate, they'd fall short of the goal of effectively conveying the vocabulary and grammatical structures. The end result is classes filled with sentences that, as they increase in grammatical and syntactic difficulty, commensurately increase in simplicity of subject. In short, because saying "The gendering of labor in the modern era is a complex issue" is a poor mechanism for conveying a grammatical structure, you're much more likely to hear "Men are stronger than women, therefore they make more money."

Thus, grammar review sessions in my Chinese class provide some pretty ridiculous quotes. I recorded some of them today for your reading pleasure.

"Everyone has reasons to be proud. Homeless people are no exception"

"You cannot kiss other girls in front of your girlfriend's face"

"In Beijing, the dumplings taste good. As for the traffic, it is very congested"

"People who are fluent in 3 languages not only aren't rare, but rather are very common"

"Giving lazy people money not only doesn't help them, but rather makes them not want to work."

"My university's demand of me is that I pay a lot of money."

"America's legal system is effective against the president."

"The president has a girlfriend. His wife knows. She's dying to scold him."

"Even though your wallet was stolen, you can't really want to be homeless now."

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