Re: Real Chinese Whispers -- Broken Telephone
Wolfspirit, on host 206.47.244.93
Tuesday, October 10, 2000, at 21:50:05
Real Chinese Whispers posted by Teacher lady on Sunday, October 8, 2000, at 00:04:28:
> I need to use a Chinese whisper as a teaching aid in a talk I am giving on communications. > > I only know one - the famous war whisper - > > "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance" > > Which became - > > "Send three and fourpence (remember this is a pre-decimalisation whisper!) we're going to a dance" > > Can anyone help me out with a good whisper?
Sure. I understand one of the classic ones was "a pox on both your houses" becoming something like "a box for both your louses". I don't know if you'd consider that a spectacularly 'good' example, however.
Incidentally, isn't the term "Chinese whisper" considered passé in multicultural parts of the country? No one knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the phrase. We call it "Broken Telephone" instead. Chinese dialects would be some of the few monosyllabic languages that would be the *least* affected by this type of verbal chain distortion. Maybe we just don't 'get' it up here in Eastern Canada. "It's all Greek to me". :-)
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