How to translate 'Fuck you!' into Chinese?

Language Learning Chinese
21

OK, a recap of a previous post that went poof. I’ll go from memory.

Ahh… swear words, a true test of how much you really know about a language.
Maybe I can shed some light on this?

Some of you wonder why 幹 has come to be the swear word in Taiwan. After all, it literally means “work” or “do.” Well this is all caused by Min-Nan Hua (so-called Taiwanese). Here is the reason:

The true character is 姦, meaning precisely to “copulate with,” pronounced “jian1” in Mandarin, but “gan” in Min-Nan Hua. In general, there is a subset of Mandarin initials in the class j* that correspond to southen dialect g*.

So when it sounds like 幹你娘, you are really hearing 姦恁娘 said in Min-Nan Hua. 幹 has become a euphemism. This is much like how 操 came to stand for 肏 (cao4) and several more examples which I cannot recall off the top of my head. Phonetic substitution of dirty words is a pretty common phenomenon around the world.

PS. With regard to dirty looking characters, there are several more than 姦 and 肏. There is 嬲 (niao3), for instance, meaning to “flirt” or “harass.” Of course, 屌 (diao3) and 屄 (bi1) are respectively the male and female genitalia. LittleB mentioned the former as a slang, but it is really not slang at all! I mean just look at the characters. 屌 ends up in the Cantonese version of “fuck your mother” (屌你老母), pronounced “diu” there, and 屄 makes its way into insults about intelligence such as 傻屄 (=dumbass), and 牛屄, a word meaning approximately “bullshit.”

PPS. Tetsu’s example “我操” is literally “I’ll fuck.” It’s just that in English, the subject is ellided when you say “fuck” or “fuck it.” It’s definitely not “fuck me.”

PPPS. Somebody asked about “fuck you” in Shanghai. Well, we must realize that people like to swear in their mother tongue, so this would be said in the local dialect. My sources inform me that in the Shanghai dialect, the phrase is “tse? na,” which is “fuck yours.” The first character “tse?” is most likely 肏 but nobody really knows.

PPPPS. Three characters, 乾 (gan1, dry, 豆腐乾), 幹 (gan4, do, 幹活), 干 (gan1, having to do with, 相干) all get mapped to 干 in Simplified Chinese.

22

I would definitely consider 屌 (diao3) to be slang. In more “refined” literature, it wouldn’t be used that way. In Ming-Qing literature, the only places I’ve seen it used have been in very crude/lewd contexts. The word has now taken on another meaning in Taiwan, thanks to Jay Chou. The examples you cite are also definitely slang … I would consider most swear words to be considered “slang” (doesn’t mean they’re not used often).

As for 牛屄, that’s definitely a mainland usage (i.e. 吹牛屄). I’ve never heard it in Taiwan, but I did hear it in the mainland. However, 屄 itself is commonly used among young people in Taiwan, but sounds very vulgar. For those of you with xiao jie’s, I wouldn’t recommend using that word around them.

Anyway, very interesting insights, zeugmite. I learned quite a bit! Thanks for posting!

23

Well… hmm. Good point, but only maybe. I guess it is slang by the old definition of “The special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type” in OED, but even the OED indicates this meaning has now merged into:

Personally I had always thought “slang” was exactly as the Merriam-Webster defines it

So I don’t think those are slang because, for example, using 屌 to mean the male genitalia is going by the intrinsic meaning of the character. They may be archaic, vulgar, or low-class, however. On the other hand, Jay Chou’s usage of 屌 should be called slang, as should 操、幹、逼, which are used not for their usual and original meanings in those cruder contexts. Even 傻屄 and 牛屄 are slang because of non-literal meanings. I think to be slang, the slang meaning has to be non-literal (including non-semantically constructed words that have “no” literal meaning like “jive”). As you can see, I am operating on the assumption that the creation of a character for what before could have been purely verbal slang endows a certain legitimacy on the meaning, since character creation is no easy task… certainly not as easy as spelling out slang in English.

24

I have found that if I yell it loudly and accompany the yell with appropriate hand and facial movements it seems to be understood.

Just my contribution to the accadaemic hand-job this thread has devolved into.

25

bu hao yi si(不好意思) is the most common way to say F.U.

26

Not to flaunt my ignorance too much, but who’s Jay Chou and how has he contributed to the evolution of Chinese swears?

27

Jay Chou 周杰倫 is one of the most popular Taiwanese singers. He uses the word 屌 (diao3) to describe his personal “style.” I guess it could be very roughly translated to mean “cool,” although according to his explanation, it’s much more complicated than that. If you do a search on him on Google, I think there are some articles in English where he goes into what “diao” means to him.

28

Jay Chou is a dick, but he believes being a dick makes him “the shit.” So, there you go, to Jay Chou, 屌 means “the shit.”

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[quote]The true character is 姦, meaning precisely to “copulate with,” pronounced “jian1” in Mandarin, but “gan” in Min-Nan Hua. In general, there is a subset of Mandarin initials in the class j* that correspond to southen dialect g*.

So when it sounds like 幹你娘, you are really hearing 姦恁娘 said in Min-Nan Hua. [/quote]

Hear what 幹你娘 sounds like, and that it is truly in dialect, in this video clip of a press conference, where several Taiwan reporters have an argument about head blocking cameras. It goes like this:

Reporter A: 大哥，你那個頭，燈都擋到了，好不好，第一排的？你沒看到遮，坐著太高了…真的啦
Bro, that head of yours, my flash is covered by it, would you mind, in the first row? Do you see? You are too high up,… for real.

Reporter B: 不會移位置啦。
I ain’t movin’.

Reporter A: (in Min-Nan Hua) 姦恁娘。
F*** your mom.

Reporter B: (in Min-Nan Hua) 講啥講喲，(in Mandarin) 了不起啊？
What you wanna say? Showing off?

Reporter A: (in Min-Nan Hua) 汝嗆啥屌？
What the f*** are you yellin’ at?

then on the stage, actress 夏褘 (Xia Yi) gets up and begins to speak, but the reporters start swearing at each other again

Reporter A: (in Min-Nan Hua) 哭爸啊？哭啥屌？
You moaning about your dad? What the f*** you moaning about?

Reporter B: …(some stuff) (in Min-Nan Hua) 姦恁娘…哭啥屌啊，姦汝啦！
F*** your mom…what the f*** are you moaning for, f*** you!

Reporter A: (in Min-Nan Hua) 哭爸啥屌啊？
What the f*** are you crying and moaning about your dad for?

Reporter B: …(some more yelling)

Reporter A: (in Mandarin) 他媽的，…(inaudible)…你先來的咧。
F***, etc.

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Sounds like Elton John’s appraisal of the Taiwanese press was right on the mark … :unamused:

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Sounds like Elton John’s appraisal of the Taiwanese press was right on the mark … :unamused:[/quote]

Did you watch the video clip? It is HILARIOUS!

32

I always found the expression “ta ma de” a bit strange, when you want to curse someone in most languages (including Taiwanese) you use the second person directly, but the Mandarin expression “ta ma de” is actually cursing someone else’s mother instead of the person to whom you are directing your attack, try translating it in English, go up to someone you are very angry with and say “His Mother!”

33

My students in Harbin seemed to think “cao ni” pretty adequate for “fuck you.”

34

I was told by a Taiwanese friend Tamade was borrowed from the Japanese. I’ve made kids stand in the corner for cursing at me in Japanese. I don’t know how to romanise it but the phrase is often shortened to "bugger’ which should be Ok by me due to NZ’s Toyota’s advertising campaign however…

35

I don’t see the Japanese connection for “Ta ma de”, although my Japanese is pretty rusty these days. The Japanese you’re thinking of for the other part is “baka” or “bakayarou”, and it’s hardly a curse. Insult, yes, but not a curse. Baka just means “idiot” and bakayarou is along the lines of “you idiot” or “goddamnit”

36

Thanks. I knew that but couldn’t remember. Still, it’s hardly becoming from children as the reason they use it is the foreign idiot doesn’t understand. I remember it made news in Asia when a Japanese baseball coach used it during a game and was translated as “You, idiot” which a friend who speaks fluent Japanese said was a poor translation.

37

True, I suppose something along the lines of “What the hell/fuck do you call that?” might be a better translation in that situation.

38

Gan Ni Ma?

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[quote=“zeugmite”]
Did you watch the video clip? It is HILARIOUS![/quote]

…I tried to watch this but I can’t seem to get the file to load. I’m assuming I’m not the only one who’s had this problem? What format is this in?

40

is this one valid?