Fwd: [FANYI-L] "Tall test" for university entrance exam

[Benjamin Barrett]

Evidently the issue in the e-mail below is that "tall" and "test" are  
the two characters used as the abbreviation for what appears to be a  
national unified regular high (tall) school entrance examination  
(test). This is akin to saying that we call a television a TV because  
Churchill flashed the V sign in a broadcast during tea time (I just  
made that up), or something like that. BB

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Don Rogalski <drogalski at BILLIONBRIDGES.COM>
> Date: August 12, 2008 9:05:23 PM PDT
> To: FANYI-L at HAWAII.EDU
> Subject: [FANYI-L] "Tall test" for university entrance exam
> Reply-To: FANYI-L <FANYI-L at HAWAII.EDU>
>
> Remember the curious meme about the saying "may you live in  
> interesting times," in that it was falsely stated to be a "Chinese  
> curse?" It has shown up in movies and news articles and numerous  
> other types of media, but lately you don't seem to see it much  
> anymore. My guess is that it has been safely relegated to the status  
> of myth.
>
> However, there seems to be another one out there which is something  
> of an interlingual malapropism: "tall test" for 普通高等学校招 
> 生全国统一考试 aka 高考 ("because it looms so large"). I  
> just saw it in an article linked to from A&L Daily (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080623-000004&print=1 
> ), and subsequent searches found more examples of the coinage in  
> English. Since ideas spread like viruses in the blink of an eye  
> these days, my guess is that this probably got started by a  
> journalist asking a friend teaching ESL in China with a smattering  
> of Chinese ability about education in China. Or something like that.

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