Want to play "Chinese Whispers"?

Up until today, I wasn't aware that Chinese Whispers was an alternative name for the game known as Telephone. If you haven't heard of that, Telephone is a game where people line up and transmit a message between the first and last players via a series of whispers along the line. The idea is that the message is inevitably garbled a little more every time it's told, and the fun is the final revelation, where the last player repeats the crazy nonsensical concoction aloud for all to hear. Purple monkey dishwasher!

The interesting thing is how many have found nothing wrong with the name. It's not terribly offensive, but it is offensive. It's not because we, the offended, are a collective of anal-retentive whistle-blowing teetotalers with giant sticks up our rectums, but because it only takes a second thought to see where the offense lies.

The object of the game is to create gibberish; the players' delight lies in the magic of error, in both speaking and listening.

The defense argues that gibberish is simply defined as "meaningless sounds", and thus, to an English speaker, Chinese may legitimately be called gibberish.

The trouble lies in how culturally self-centred this view is. There is a difference between identifying actual gibberish (which, in the game, is English, but in error and confused) and acknowledging a real language, with its own particular order and vocabulary, which you may not have the capacity to understand, but which does mean something to an educated speaker.

Calling the game "Chinese Whispers" is to say that Chinese, spoken correctly, is equivalent to a screwed-up, silly, garbage version of English ... which is, yes, a little offensive.