Your Wife
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Casual
It was an embarrassing experience. I chatted with a friend, I asked about how his wife and his son were doing. He said they were doing good, then he added, "By the way, she is not my wife yet." OOooppss .... I should have mentioned her name instead of addressing her as "your wife".
I met an Indian lady who works in Hillsboro. I asked Chloe to call her "auntie", guess what? She told me that Chloe could call her by name. It was awkward for me as an Asian. Our culture taught our kids to respect the elders by calling them "uncle" or "auntie", however it's an opposite in US, where Americans prefer to be called directly by their names. That Indian lady told me that try not to use "sir" too!
There are quite a number of DON'Ts that I have learnt, one of them is do not simply ask people if they are married or have any kids. Because you do not know what you might bump into. There was this lady, I knew she had a husband. 3 years later, I met her again and I asked her, "How's your husband doing?" And, she told me that she was divorced. I was speechless.
We have to be careful with our words, in order not to offend other people.
I met an Indian lady who works in Hillsboro. I asked Chloe to call her "auntie", guess what? She told me that Chloe could call her by name. It was awkward for me as an Asian. Our culture taught our kids to respect the elders by calling them "uncle" or "auntie", however it's an opposite in US, where Americans prefer to be called directly by their names. That Indian lady told me that try not to use "sir" too!
There are quite a number of DON'Ts that I have learnt, one of them is do not simply ask people if they are married or have any kids. Because you do not know what you might bump into. There was this lady, I knew she had a husband. 3 years later, I met her again and I asked her, "How's your husband doing?" And, she told me that she was divorced. I was speechless.
We have to be careful with our words, in order not to offend other people.
7 comments:
haha, I have experienced the 1st incident too. I asked and received the same answer as you, "she is not my wife yet". *bish*
Another way to identified whether they are married or divorce or remarried is check out their last name :):)
According to one of the american family i know here, they say auntie and uncle is only for close relationship/friends they know, we need to call them by name or Mr or Mrs :)
another thing is if you see someone kids and you dont know whether they are boy or girl, just assume it is girl rather than boy because if it is boy, it still mean good that the boy is "pretty" but if the others way round, then the person might feel a bit sad cause their daughther looks like boy.. :-)
Thanks for your valuable comments, guys!
Haha... I find that so silly... erm... I mean "you" =P Don’t mean to sound offensive, it seems that you run into this kind of embarrassing situation too often, hehehe...
or ask "where are you studying" instead of "working" if you are not sure :P
Sounds younger indirectly, say this to a lady :)
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