男人不坏女人不爱 – nan ren bu huai, nu ren bu ai
男人不快女人不爱 – nan ren bu kuai, nu ren bu ai

Another good example of my Mandarin follies.

The first sentence essentially translates to “Women won’t love men who aren’t bad”. While the second sentence reads as follows: “Women won’t love men who aren’t fast”.

The key differences being “坏” (huai4) and “快’ (kuai4). Taken independently, the pronunciation of each character is fairly easy to distingish. However, when spoken quickly by my friend, it is a little more difficult. Being the dirty old man that I am, I thought she had said the latter.

I still think both phrases are quite funny.

A few weeks ago I was in Shanghai talking to a cab driver. I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He said no. I then proceeded to ask why, to which I received a very good English response

“No money, no honey”

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