Sarcasm in Chinese

[Zhende ma?]

Is there a good way to express sarcasm when you are speaking or writing Chinese? I know in English it is usually context dependent and in speaking uses vocal and visual cues. Is it the same in Chinese?

[owen]

My experience seems to suggest that chinese humour involves much less sarcasm. It could be on account of my poor chinese but any time i have attempted sarcasm with chinese friends it has been taken as complete seriousness. I don't often here them use it with each other either.

But as far as how to use i don't think there is any special sort of sarcasm grammar or anything if thats what you are looking for. None that i know of anyways.

[HashiriKata]

It could be on account of my poor chinese but any time i have attempted sarcasm with chinese friends it has been taken as complete seriousness.

To some extent, I agree with this. I think sarcasm and humour are difficult to express or appreciate in the earlier stage of cross-culture communication, because people would have more basic needs to worry about. In addition to this, I think sarcasm and sense of humour are often culturally specific, so postponing judgement based on our own sense of humour may also help.

Is there a good way to express sarcasm when you are speaking or writing Chinese?

Use this sign [ ] , or this [ ] .

[marcopolo79]

If you want to ask a rhetorical question with the implied meaning that the answer is obviously false, you could use the 難道....嗎 structure, I do it all the time.

[marcopolo79]

If you want to ask a rhetorical question with the implied meaning that the answer is obviously false, you could use the 難道....嗎 structure, I'm a real sarcastic sonofabitch, I use it all the time.

[BeijingSlacker]

If you want to ask a rhetorical question with the implied meaning that the answer is obviously false, you could use the 難道....嗎 structure, I'm a real sarcastic sonofabitch, I use it all the time.

Not too sure if this is sarcastic.

Don't know about other regions, but in Beijing we use A LOT sarcasm, which I never had realized until some interesting misunderstanding happened when I talked to people from other areas.

[skylee]

Don't know about other regions, but in Beijing we use A LOT sarcasm, which I never had realized until some interesting misunderstanding happened when I talked to people from other areas.

Wouldn't those people find you 刻薄 then?

[Guest IVYtony]

no, we have Chinese-style humor:

您贵庚了？

回答：我吃的炸酱面。

中国人要是没有幽默，就不会有中国的相声了。

相声你知道吗？呵呵…… 牛群，冯巩，马三立等相声演员……

还有笑星:梁天，葛优等等……呵呵

不好意思，写了一堆中文，可能会让一些老外觉得晕乎了，

看完了还找的着北吗？

呵呵，我可还真是找不着北了，拉我一把……

[Guest realmayo]

This thread is over four years old. I found it by searching for "sarcasm". I wanted to ask about people's experiences of this in China. I don't mean nasty, sneering sarcasm. But, basically, where you say the opposite of what you mean, for emphasis, or for very modest comic effect! For example, straightfaced, "Nice and warm today" when it's freezing cold. I'd say this is fairly common, & low-key, throught conversations in the UK, and I'd have guessed the same is true in lots of countries.

However, I've found in China -- using English or Chinese -- such remarks fall flat on their face; they are taken literally. I don't think this is because of poor language comprehension.

Do Chinese people ever use this form of saying the opposite of what you mean? If they do, do they advertise it (eg with a laugh or whatever)?

(The posts above from 2005 do go some way to answering but I wondered if anyone has any more ideas in 2009...!)

EDIT: oh, I just found plenty more on this topic on another thread, don't know how I missed it a few minutes ago.http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/14288-sarcasm

[flywhc]

For complainant (讽刺):

(From Beijing TOEFL: http://edu.people.com.cn/GB/7494578.html)

"硌您脚了，耽误您脚涝地了" - I am very sorry for blocking your foot to stand on the ground. (you are stepping on my foot!)

“您找根绳吧” - could you please find a rope? (hang yourself, shame on you)

您还不自己撒泡尿？ - you should pee (to view yourself from urine. you are ugly)

For self-mockery (自嘲) (from Hou Baolin Xiangsheng (talkshow) )

我这辆自行车，除了铃不响哪都响 All parts of my bike sound aloud except the bell (horn).

To reply (search 噎人)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/forum/2005-05/16/content_2953583.htm

老婆非要买几斤苹果带回去，我说别买了，家里不是还有桔子么。老婆回了一句特噎人：“桔子能吃出苹果味儿来么？！”

My wife wants to buy some apples. I said we had oranges at home. My wife replied "Can orange tastes like apple in your mouth?"

我有一个朋友家的房子很气派，朋友们在一起聊天说起房子，这个朋友便说：“我家的房子如果搬到哈尔滨市中心，房价得翻五倍，要是搬到北京那就……”没等他说完，另一位说：“要是搬到北京天安门，那就是非法建筑，给你拆了！”

I have a friend just bought a big luxury house. When we had a chat to many friends, he said "if my house is moved in Central Ha-erbin, price of the house would be increased 5 times; if moved to Beijing, that would..." Another friend said "if moved on Tiananmen Square, that would be illegal and destroyed."

Edited October 21, 2009 at 03:30 PM by flywhc

[meah*]

"硌您腳了，耽誤您腳澇地了" - I am very sorry for blocking your foot to stand on the ground. (you are stepping on my foot!)

That one was really funny:mrgreen:, thanks for sharing. What is the function/meaning of 澇 in this sentence? Is it simply "tread on"? No dictionary seem to give such definition... Thanks for any help/advice

[flywhc]

"澇" is a wrong character, which should be "落" lao4.

落 can be pronounced as luo1, luo4, la4, and lao4 four ways, which each way has different meanings. Many native Chinese confuse about them.

When pronounced as lao4 is a verb means fall off, land, stay.

See:

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/104176296.html

Don't see http://iask.sina.com.cn/b/12618125.html, which are all wrong answers!

Just read another type of Sarcasm examples, which is reply on forums (回帖):

http://web.wenxuecity.com/BBSView.php?SubID=joke&MsgID=327680

楼主：养条狗和养一个男人哪个合算？

暴强回复：大婶，即使你能把男人当狗使，但你敢把狗当男人使不？

OP: adopt a dog and 'adopt' a man, which one is better?

Cool reply: Auntie, even you can use a man like using a dog, dare you use a dog as a man?

[aristotle1990]

My experience seems to suggest that chinese humour involves much less sarcasm. It could be on account of my poor chinese but any time i have attempted sarcasm with chinese friends it has been taken as complete seriousness. I don't often here them use it with each other either.

I have used sarcasm with Chinese people on many occasions with great success. One of the reasons a lot of native English speakers think that Chinese people don't get sarcasm is that they tend to use English intonation when saying something sarcastic, which not only is not understood by the Chinese but also messes up all the tones. (Not saying you're guilty of this, just saying that many people are.)

[valikor]

Chinese people have sarcasm?

(I'm sure there could be other explanations, and that I'm overgeneralizing, but there have been plenty of incidents when what I expected to be so blatantly obvious was simply not taken the correct way. If they have sarcasm, it must be different from the sarcasm I am used to.)

[renzhe]

As with many other things, I find this discussion to generalise too much.

Chinese people do use sarcasm, but often not in the same way and the same circumstances as in other countries. Language and culture understanding also play a large role, and the fact that many foreigners in China struggle to have basic conversations understood also decreases your chances to be the target of subtle humour, just like people will not expect such things from you.

When I was a kid visiting the US, I told some teenagers my life story (after being asked whether I had ever seen a TV and if I knew Coca Cola) -- how I grew up in a jungle, used grapevines to swing from tree to tree, and had a fridge on my treetop habitation. I proceeded to talk about grapevine buses you had to catch in the morning in order to go to school and the jungle supermarkets in the trees and it kept getting sillier and sillier, and they still believed it. I guess I didn't use the right tone. My conclusion was the Americans didn't know sarcasm.

Later, I met a bunch of Americans with an extremely sharp and refined sense of humour and had to radically revise my assumption.

It's not that people all over the world have the same understanding of humour and sarcasm; British humour is considerably different from American humour, and same can be said for German, the Balkans, China, and any other place. But humour is a tricky thing to nail -- how familiar are you with the person, what is the context (dropping a sarcastic remark to your boss is much easier to get away with in England than in Germany, in my experience), how good is your language, and are you reading all the signs, is the humour understood, but not appropriate (thus not evoking a reaction), a number of things.

If you sit in at a dinner where a bunch of close friends are having fun after some baijiu, you're as likely to hear sarcasm as anywhere else. On the other hand, if you walk up to a total stranger at a bus station in Wuhan during a thunderstorm and drop a "Today the weather is nice" with a deadpan face, they might think that you're rather weird, even though they understand that you don't actually mean it.

[jbradfor]

However, I've found in China -- using English or Chinese -- such remarks fall flat on their face; they are taken literally. I don't think this is because of poor language comprehension.

Again, a gross generalization, but I find Chinese don't tend to joke (including sarcasm) (1) with people they don't know well, or (2) in a business environment. So I find joking with strangers typically doesn't work well at all, as they don't expect it.

Of course, sometimes I say things in jokes to native English speakers as well that they take seriously....