Athletes' survival Chinese: lattes and love
BEIJING (Reuters) - When Italian kayaker Daniele Momenti strolled into the Chinese language centre at the athletes' Olympic Village, he was prepared with what he considered the most important Chinese phrase.
"Please give me a cup of coffee," he rattled off in near fluent Mandarin while sporting a bit of bravado and a sly smile.
"I'm Italian and I need coffee to live, so it's what I needed to learn how to say" during previous visits to China, he said.
He is just one of the more than 70 athletes who so far have dropped in to visit the centre, run by the Beijing Olympic organizing committee.
The centre, staffed by multi-lingual volunteers, offers instruction in writing Chinese calligraphy, an introduction to several other Chinese arts and, of course, basic language classes.
But Momenti -- an amateur linguist who besides his native Italian also speaks English and Spanish, plus a smattering of Russian and a few other languages -- had another pressing objective.
"I used to have a Russian girlfriend, and I could say, 'You are very beautiful' in Russian," Momenti said.
"I can't say it yet in Chinese, but I am here to learn."
(Editing by Steve Ginsburg)
