David Letterman has joked
David Letterman has joked, “Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is fluent in Chinese. ... The last Republican president wasn’t even fluent in English.”
But is Jon Huntsman really fluent in Chinese?
The answer seems to be no.
When asked on the Colbert Report to speak Chinese, Huntsman spoke one sentence and then “translated” his words as “I just said you ought to consider being my running mate for vice president.” The studio audience roared in approval. Yet in reality, Huntsman’s mangled Chinese would translate as: “I really want you to do my vice-America president.”
In this brief and simple sentence, Huntsman managed to (incorrectly) insert the word America in the middle of the Chinese word for vice president (fu-zong-tong); made a less-than-ideal choice of verbs; and combined my and American vice president in a way that implies (in Chinese) that Huntsman possesses his own personal vice president of the United States.