Chinese whispers — or telephone in the United States — is an internationally popular children's game, in which one person whispers a message to the ear of the next person through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. I believe the game gets its name because what started out making perfect sense often sounds like Chinese by the time it has reached the end of the line.I introduced this game at the PhD Cafe yesterday ... yes, even super-intelligent PhD researchers need moments of utter silliness!!
Our games started with a phrase in Mandarin provided by Chi and we worked our way through the languages of those present ... Arabic, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Creole, Swahili, French, etc. The multi-cultural aspect of our game made it harder as the phrase passed through so many strong and varied accents.
My favourite round was in Sinhala which started it's whisper journey as the word 'Ayubowan' which is a greeting meaning 'May your life be longer', but it somehow translated in to 'Are you open'.
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