Taiwan Slang
maxiewawa
October 15, 2007, 09:11 AM posted in General DiscussionA friend recently came to SHanghai to visit and brought with him 4 Taiwanese friends. He's from Taiwan originally too, so I got well and truly exposed to their jumping accents.
We were all amazed at how little I understood of their slangy words. Within 5 minutes they were throwing things at me that I didn't know what to do with. Some were quite funny. If you're interested, these are the ones I remember:
钓妹 : 钓 is the verb 'to fish' and 妹 is short for 妹妹 or 'girl'. One of the guys explained it like this: 有个男人,没女朋友。他就去酒吧,想。。。um... '钓妹'。。。I winked knowingly.
金主 is a child who has inherited a lot of money and likes spending it. It combines 金 (gold) with 主 (master). As I understood it, it's usually used for a grown up son/daughter, not a 'kid'.
Anyway, it was interesting learning these new words.
It has been a long time since I've learned a Chinese word whose explanation doesn't begin with "我们有个成语,叫做。。。" or “中国古老时。。。” It occurred to me that this group of Chinese speakers had an entirely different relationship to their language than anyone I've spoken with before. I've never heard anyone use a cute phrase like that (钓妹) or use a word that seems made up (金主). It was the first time a Chinese person my age has explained a word that seemed to be slangy, or something an older person might not understand.
Is this kind of jargon unique to Taiwan? Or am I just not "down" with mainland lingo?
John
October 16, 2007, 01:44 AMThere is TONS of mainland slang, but in my experience, Chinese people often "shield" you from it to some degree. If you could secretly listen in on some college students talking, you'd hear plenty of new vocab, I'm sure.
pulosm
October 16, 2007, 03:01 PMJohn, as an insider, it is your duty to provide us with a list of such slang.
pulosm
October 15, 2007, 01:32 PMOf course there is TONS of words that you don't learn in textbooks or are unique to certain regions. Off the top of my head, these are things I remember and I thought were interesting (maybe slightly off topic?): (1) tong2 zhi4 (literally "comrade") = gay (2) bu4 xiao3 de2 = I don't know (Taiwan) (3) da4 ge1 da4 = cell phone (Taiwan) (4) mm ai4 gei4 (actually Taiwanese, but used often) = bu2 yao4 zhuang1 (don't put on an act, or act cooler than you are) (5) ta1 bu2 hui4 xiang3 = "he doesn't know how to think" (used to say someone is an idiot) (6) bu1bu1che1 = scooter, moped (ubiquitous in Taiwan)