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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: your favourite Chinese expression?
straighforward question.
I'll start off with an amusing one. i don't know the exact pinyin of it, but it sounds like:
"Nan ren, ke yi."
the translation is "Of course, here you are."
Chinese customer service staff would do well to get rid of "Mei you" and replace it with this.
It took me over 3 years in China to learn this expression, and then only as translation of an English sentence in class.
And nan ren, I had great fun "mishearing" the expression, pretending to think it meant "Men can."
"Oh? Nv ren bu ke yi ma?"
this is pretty drawn out, so it takes a while to get it out...
Nǐ shì fēngle, wǒ fēngle
zhè shì suǒyǒu de fèihuà.Ràng wǒmen yǒu yīgè píjiǔ
you are crazy, I am crazy and it is all bullshit.let's have a beer
"Laoban!!....kai feng shan"
Switch the fan on. I dont know the word for aircon, but this works most of the time. It gets a giggle. Same as "wu yow nio nio... chu nalia "
SwedKiwi1:
If the laoban has an air conditioner you can say:
kai kong tiao
Didn't know how to say turn on the fan until recently myself.
this is pretty drawn out, so it takes a while to get it out...
Nǐ shì fēngle, wǒ fēngle
zhè shì suǒyǒu de fèihuà.Ràng wǒmen yǒu yīgè píjiǔ
you are crazy, I am crazy and it is all bullshit.let's have a beer
At home, we are overusing a recent catchphrase "ni shi zhu ma ??!!", when behaves a bit like a pig.
'Nie shi laowai' aimed as Q at Chinese, when they don't understand my English.
coineineagh:
i do a similar one when kids call me waiguoren. "wo bu shi waiguoren. wo laizi wo de guojia. ni shi waiguoren." similar to your reply, but with extra handholding so they understand i'm not just talking nonsense when i call them foreigner.
icnif77:
I do it in the Supermarkets, when they attempt to push things. I tell them '.......laowai? with the facial expression (my eyes open as much as I can). They always reply with laugh.
With kids, one must be more sensitive, and ready for defeat.
I lower my eye lash with forefinger, and stare back toward the starer. All adults embarrassed walk away immediately, buTT.....one kid in Fujian imitated me and looked back at me.
My favorite is:
".... ge pi" - whatever they say it is full of shit. So if someone says... shi hen jin or "it's very close", can you say "hen jin ge pi" which means "bullshit it's very close!"
Robk:
Not the same thing. "ge" is a classifer like "yi ge ren"
pi is the same... so if someone says like hen hao...
you can say "hen hao ge pi" - like saying "very good, bull shit!"
Chinese say this all the time to bring down what each other say.