Greetings from Ork!

One side-effect of my Chinese improving is that I feel the need to teach other people. This includes you, my dear reader. This short Chinese lesson is also necessary for you to understand the rest of my story, so don't worry, you will put your new Chinese skills to use very soon.
The first part of the lesson is grammar. In Chinese they like to say things twice, especially verbs but sometimes nouns. For example, instead of saying, "I want to look," they would say, "I want to look-look." Instead of saying, "We are chatting," they would say, "We are chatting-chatting."
Second, I would like to introduce some vocabulary. The word for person is "ren." If it is a man they say, "nan ren" if it is a woman they say, "nu ren." So "nan" is male and "nu" is female. Understand so far? If you want to say a boyfriend and girlfriend or couple you can simply say, "nan nu". I guess it's their equivalent of bf/gf. This concludes our Chinese lesson for today.
Since my Chinese is progressing I am starting to have more complex conversations in Chinese with my friends. On Wednesdays I usually have lunch with two of my students, Spring and Lynn. They are two of the sweetest people I have ever met. Both are very soft spoken and thoughtful. I probably speak the most Chinese with them and my other friend Shirley.
During lunch with Spring and Lynn this week we were talking about dating. Dating in China is very different. Many students don't date until they are in college, and if they date it is serious. They often marry the first boyfriend or girlfriend. However, Lynn said that these days she saw more and more younger boyfriends and girlfriends holding hands. But when Lynn said boyfriends and girlfriends she said, "nan nu-nan nu," and it sounded exactly like Mork from Ork. Exactly. I couldn't help but laugh, and after explaining to Spring and Lynn about the old TV show where a man came from space to live with a woman and said, "Nanu nanu!" to greet people they were laughing as well.
Mork was not from Ork. Mork was from China.