Chinese street talk ----------- short dialogues i made

[chenpv]

The other day, i bought an excellent book entitled 'American street talk', which is written by David Burke. Within this book, there are some short dialogues, that are totally different from what i have learnt from most of the english text books, conjured up in way of how americans make conversations. I am sort of enlightened by this idea and start this thread to show how we chinese, especiall young people, talk 'in our language'. Hehe, i dont know whether it is a good idea, or you will benefit from it, however i will try.

Dialogue 1:

A：我靠，真他妈背。

B：没事儿吧你。

A：哪啊，我新自行车昨天又丢了。

B：你搞笑，这才几天，你丢了几辆车子了？是不是又忘锁车了？

A：怎么可能？前轮，后轮------ 两把链条锁。就这还是丢了。

B：哈哈，我叫你别买新车，那么扎眼，不丢鬼了。再说，宿舍离教室才几步路，骑什么自行车。

A：唉，真是郁闷啊。

B：嘿嘿，人背不能怪社会。

A：操，老子从今不骑车了。

[Song You Shen]

this is very interesting, would you mind writing an english translation for this as well?

Youshen

[nipponman]

This is a great idea chenpv! I would love to see how natural chinese is spoken.

nipponman

[shiaosan]

我得说: 你小子, 写得真盖了!

[wushijiao]

Interesting chenpv! There should be more stuff like this. I, for one, strongly feel that students should be taught slang and "bad" words.

For example, my wife is in the process of hiring a translator for her American co-worker. Unfortunately, most job candidates won't have the spoken skills needed to get the job because the education system seems to shield students away from all slang and bad words, even though they are used all the time. It's like studying English through the filter of a "G" rated movie.

It's also worth noting that most people, uneless they have a high degree of linguistic awareness, don't even know what is slang and what is official in their native tongue.

[gato]

Chenpv, are the slangs that you used local to Beijing or more broadly used all across the north? Speech patterns are so different across China that I think it might be difficult to find slangs that are universal.

I wonder if there is such a thing as Putonghua slang since one might consider Putonghua to be a government-sanctioned clean, slang-free, and generic version of Mandarin. That could be a reason why Mandarin promoters used to say (and still say?) that Putonghua is more civilized (文明) than dialects.

[carlo]

There's a funny book with dialogues sort of like this called 汉语流行口语, published by Sinolingua 华语教学出版社 and available in many Beijing bookstores. Unfortunately it stops short at 我靠他妈的 etc, but I don't think this is a problem for professional translators, unless you interpret for a gangster conference or something.

[nipponman]

What does 靠 mean here?

[xiaocai]

Means "cr*p", "sh*t" or even worse......"f**k"

[nipponman]

Means "cr*p", "sh*t"

So 我靠 means "I crap?" I don't get it.

[xiaocai]

I feel it is more like "I f**k" in that example, but it can also be used alone like "靠, 真恶心", expressing the feeling which I think is similar to "cr*p" or "sh*t" in English, and it is slightly milder that some other colluquial words like "操" and "日" (just to represent the pronuciation but not the actual characters) cause those two definitely mean "f**k".

By the way, one thing interesting is that all these three are in fourth tone..

[nipponman]

I feel it is more like "I f**k" in that example, but it can also be used alone like "靠, 真恶心", expressing the feeling which I think is similar to "cr*p" or "sh*t" in English, and it is slightly milder that some other colluquial words like "操" and "日" (just to represent the pronuciation but not the actual characters) cause those two definitely mean "f**k".

Oh, ok. So basically you could translate that as, "Sh*t, my f*cking back!"

nipponman

p.s does anyone know the character for 日? There are only four characters in chinese with this pronounciation and it doesn't look like 衵馹 or 鈤 is the one. Ri4 is a new one actually, I've never encountered it.

p.p.s it seems natives don't like to use 肏, why? I hate using 操 for this meaning. Too much like cantonese for me (no offense!)

[Lu]

I read somewhere that 肏 is not an official character (anymore). I think even most Chinese don't know it exists, and you can't type it in most computer systems either, hence 操.

[nipponman]

Truthfully, I didn't know it was official to begin with. I read that some boys invented it in school back in 1914 or something and its been used since.

[xiaocai]

I really have few idea about these words and seldom use them, not necessary for me. Maybe someone else can help this.

[Lu]

Nipponman: no, that's impossible. I saw it in the Hongloumeng, which is from well before 1914 (that was also the only time I saw this character 'in the wild').

[nipponman]

Oh, well then I'm wrong. Anyone else got a guess as to where this character came from?

Maybe from schoolboys......In the 1800's!

[Tsunku]

I don't think there is a proper character for ri4. I've only ever seen it written (in SMS and on various bathroom walls) using 日. This word is purely colloquial I assume, and wouldn't appear in written form except in dialogues etc.

[Jim]

I swear i've also seen ri4 written using 肏 but that may have been a mistake of transcription or my memory. I guess considering the r- sound of the two constituent characters it might be a possibility.

I googled around a bit to see if I was completely mad on this (which came up with some interesting results as you may imagine) I found a comment on languagehat's blog that quotes Robert van Gulik transcribing it that way in Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period​:

A classical term for the man exercising the coitus is YÜ 御, lit. "to drive, to rule" [the meaning derivation is similar to that of cao 操, which does not appear at all here]; this term is much used in old medical treatises and other serious literature. SHE 射, lit. "to shoot", and JIH 肏 [i never saw the character transcribed this way] are obscene terms which occur in norpographic [intentional misspelling mine] literature. Such texts also use NUNG 弄 and KAN 幹 "to do" in this special sense [still the most common, unsurprisingly]. Other vulgar terms are K'AN 闞 and SHANG-MA 上馬.

But the commenter himself asks why van Gulik does this so maybe it was his mistake and I read too many dirty books from the SOAS library as a student!

[Mugi]

Here's an entry regarding Ri on a Sichuanese website. Doesn't really help much, but the website itself is interesting, especially if you're interested in Sichuan dialect.

http://www.bashu.net/custom/idiom/r.htm