Weekly Mandarin: 3

Edition 3: Ji-ro

This week my friend Kate and I had a big milestone: We ordered dinner for ourselves. This wouldn't be impressive except for the fact that neither of us had ever used any Chinese until we arrived here in Taiwan. And I'm picky and she's a vegetarian. But one night this week, instead of relying on someone else to translate for us, we decided to go out to dinner with our trusty Chinese dictionary.

Yes, there were pictures, but there were only generic pictures for the page, not for each dish. And, ok, we only pointed to the part of the menu where it said the name of the dish. But let me tell you, that meal tasted fantastic because it was hard-earned.

So my word of the week is "ji-ro." It directly translates to "chicken meat," since "ro" is the ending added to any animal to indicate that you're going to eat its meat, rather than requesting it as a pet. And I can even independently recognize its characters on menus without checking my dictionary.