flemmings | (no subject)

Am still reading (slooowly) The Study of Forbidden Kanji, and come across this gem. The author says he isn't going to deal with current Chinese slang for sex and genitals and so on, because

a) how would he know them? having begun his study of Chinese during the Cultural Revolution and unable to visit China at all until he was 27

and

b) he'd like to avoid the possibility of people trying these words out on any visiting Chinese they happened to meet, to demonstrate their fluency in the colloquial vernacular.

"Suppose there was a book published in America about the Japanese language with all these kinds of words in Japanese plainly laid out, and some smirking American with a smattering of Japanese came and used them in conversation-- how would you feel? First off, no one would pat the American on the head with a 'My, how well you know Japanese.' They'd have deep doubts about his character and wonder where on earth he'd learned the words in the first place."

Suppose, sensei? Past praying for, I'd say, if you asked me.

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In an ideal world, one would hope that the Americans would know better than to go about in Japan attempting to swear their heads off in "fluent" Japanese.

Unfortunately, as we all know, we don't live in an ideal world!

(And I tend to be very, very quiet when in conversational situations with native Japanese. That way I'll get into as little trouble as possible.)

Edited 2008-06-27 17:45 (UTC)

It's another country. They do things differently there-- swearing most of all. It isn't enough to know what the word for a thing is. It's far more important to know *when* you use the word. Blithe foreign assumptions that the Japanese swear the way we do should be dispelled by even a passing acquaintance with shounen manga. Calling someone an asshole is not an option.

I trust these books on 'how to talk dirty' all have a preface explaining that the Japanese don't, that much; and that you don't endear yourself to anyone by showing familiarity with what blue vocabulary exists because-- well, because all the rules of conversation are different. But I bet they don't.

Very very quiet is the polite thing to be. You can't go wrong with silence.

I think I'll be saying "So des nee!" a lot... (or "So des ne!" depending on which is the proper way to romanize it)

To my ear So des nee! is the emphatic agreeing 'you said a mouthful' and So des ne! is the more casual 'you're right.' Prolongation of the e = degree of agreement. Some people can make ne last for four syllables.

嫐嬲肏屄

^_^ Forget about learning to say it. The fun is trying to figure out how to type these characters using MS's crappy free chinese input

Japanese seems to think that 嫐 = 嬲 and that 屄 doesn't exist at all.

Well, the pronunciation is different in Chinese. 嬲 is niao, 嫐 is nao. 嬲 is to harass, tease. 嫐 is also to tease, but more in the flirtatious sense. 屄 I think is written in Japanese with the character for nine under the corpus radical, not hole. Obviously enough.

Also in Beijing when we call someone an idiot we call them 傻屄. It's not considered that filthy a word. It's only recently that I realized that the second character is 屄, and not 鄙. >_

Mh? Mandarintools says 屄 means vagina. 尻 in Japanese means buttocks.

Oh, you're right. Duh. 尻 is buttocks in Chinese as well. Just not in common use anymore.

Written Chinese so much more fun than swear words in English. ^_^. Can't forget 屌, of course.

This is quite the education...