Hacker News Reader

Do the Chinese call it English Whispers?

Chinese-Americans, at least, call it a game of Telephone, like everyone else in the English-speaking world except for the actual English.

We call it “Telephone” because “Chinese Whispers” not only sounds racist, it is also super confusing. You need a lot of cultural context to understand the particular way in which Chinese whispers would be different from any other set of whispers.

I happened to re-read this, and to be clear, I'm not Chinese-American. the "we" there means "everyone else in the English-speaking world except for the actual English."

It’s all Greek to them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com