Here I may go and be making myself unpopular after less than ten posts, but I’ve just gotta respond to this.
Ok, so I can’t see the initial post on this thread because it got deleted but [DEITY], PEOPLE. I’m an American who studied Chinese history in Uni. Nearly everyone I talk to – whatever shade of pink or brown – says “Wow, why’d you want to do that?” I don’t see why Miss CC’s curiosity should be any different; she’s curious not to put you down or make you feel excluded but because it’s unusual and people tend to wonder about unusual things. And, hey, people also often tend to wonder about why others do what they do – it’s like storytime, hey? Sure, you’ve probably had some bad experiences with Taiwanese people trying to get you not to learn Chinese, or imply that you’ll fail if you try. That doesn’t mean that everybody’s curiosity is automatically a threat. Chill out for a sec, da3 a little tai4ji3 and let go.
…as far as translating the side meaning of “chi doufu” – personally I’m glad that someone else explained the idiom because a lot of slang terms, esp. ones that People Shouldn’t Talk About, don’t get translated in dictionaries. I was having to guess until someone translated the idiom (aka ‘explained the slang’) – and while I wasn’t too far off, it was enough that I’d have made a fool of myself if I’d tried to use it, and not quite understood if I’d heard it again.
This entire thread (up until Feiran started yelling at people) was actually extremely useful for me learning Chinese. Because how often do you get to see an actual, authentic dialogue, transcribed (even halfway in romanization!), of people flirting in Chinese? I learned something from this, up until people started yelling and getting personal. This particular forum is very much stuck in “meta-learning Chinese.” Much more time spent talking about learning it than actually, well, learning it – which you accomplish by reading things that are a little too hard, and trying to write things that are a little beyond you. By actually trying to use the language. Which is why something like this is useful.
Oh, and one other thing – about spelling out slang. Yes, it’s a bit awkward, and CC made some slips. But I’ve seen a 45-yo American man do the exact same thing on im. Precisely because he was trying to fit in with abbreviation culture in the online context. People say lots of silly things on chat, and they often spell them wrong (OMG WTF LOLZ). So Miss CC was just being a colloquial chatter really…
In conclusion, let’s all sit back down, my legs are cramping…
If I was seriously correcting her whatsits, I would hardly be likely to write :‘aint got nuttin’ to say," now would I?
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