A very tense young lady

There are no tenses in Chinese. The literal translation of a sentence like "I am going to the store" is "I go store," while "I went to the store yesterday" is "I go store yesterday." In other words, the two are exactly the same except for that last word, and you can only tell from context that the latter is in the past.

This makes tenses one of the more difficult things for our students - the concept is totally new to them - and it can also be tricky for us when speaking English with people whose proficiency we are unsure of. A colleague of mine discovered this in a rather uncomfortable way this past weekend.

Our Story: It seems my friend met a young Taiwanese woman (or a "bird," as New Zealanders tend to call them) at a party or a pub or some such place last week. She spoke English well enough for the two of them to exchange phone numbers, at least, and so they did. A few days later, not wanting to seem too forward, my friend sent her a text message on her cell-phone, to the effect of "Hi there, would you like to get together this weekend?"

Her response: "Hi handsome, where do we meet?"

Delighted, my friend responded, still by text message: "Do you want to come to my place?"

And her response: "Look, a&#*$le, I tell you I don't remember where we meet! Who are you and why are you so rude?"

I'm still scratching my head at how her English could otherwise be that good if she had no grasp at all of the past tense. Fortunately, my friend is pretty laid back about these things and thought it was all pretty funny. Which I must agree it is!