In another case of mistaken speech, my Chinese teacher busted out laughing at me when I mixed up “hotel” and “9 o’clock”. To my credit, both words, when you leave off the tone marks, are written as “jiudian”. And if you add the first tone mark but leave off the second one, the word is still written the same: “jiǔdian”. Written out correctly the words are:
- Hotel: jiǔdiàn 酒店
- 9 o’clock: jiǔdiǎn 九点
Looks like the Chinese characters add a lot more meaning instead of the English-like Pinyin!
Next time I’m going to meet someone at nine o’clock I hope to not tell them to meet me at the hotel!