I heard this joke referenced on yesterday’s Commute for Me (臺通) podcast. The host didn’t actually tell the whole joke, but just the punchline:
「有兩個人一起生活 一個名叫詠蘭，另一個名叫貢九 詠蘭負責打獵，貢九則是負責在家煮飯做事 有一天，家裡發生大火，有人就趕快去通知在外打獵的詠蘭，要詠蘭快去叫貢九逃。 詠蘭叫貢九逃 用懶叫打石頭(台語)」 (I found the original joke on Dcard here).
(“There were once two people who lived together, one was called Yonglan (詠蘭) and the other was called Gongjiu (貢九). Yonglan took responsibility for hunting, while Gongjiu cooked at home and did the chores. One day there was a big fire in the house, so someone quickly went to find Yonglan, who was out hunting, to tell Gongjiu to flee. Yonglan told Gongjiu to flee.”)
Haha, right? (*smile, nod and no-one will notice you didn’t get it*). Yes, the joke doesn’t work in English because it plays on the differences between Mandarin and Taiwanese. So the phrase 「詠蘭叫貢九逃」(yǒnglán jiào gòngjiǔ táo / “Yonglan tells Gongjiu to flee”) in Mandarin, sounds like the Taiwanese 用 lān鳥 摃 石頭 iōnglān-chiáukòngchio̍h-thâu (“Using your penis to hit rocks”). Brings back the heady whiff of teenage angst and high school locker rooms, right?
You can listen to one of the hosts telling this joke on the podcast below from the 9:38 point:
(“I’ve forgotten the ins and outs of the story, but, there’s a sentence at the end. Yonglan is one of the characters, and her aunt is Gongjiu. And so, YongLan tells Gongjiu to flee. Which sounds like “Using your penis to hit rocks” in Taiwanese.
「菜鳥」cai4niao3 for “rookie” or “beginner” is quite a common term in the Chinese-speaking world although it reportedly has its roots in the Taiwanese term 「菜鳥仔」 chhài-chiáu-á (the pronunciation is slightly better here). It can also be used as an adjective, i.e. 「很菜鳥」, but this is often abbreviated to 「菜」. This is helpful when you want to crush the hopes and dreams of new and enthusiastic colleagues, by sucking your teeth and whispering 「他很菜ㄟ」 (**smirks** Such a noob, eh?) in the boss’ ear when one of them gives a constructive solution to a problem.
You can hear the guys at 台通 (Commute For Me) discussing how the job of ordering bento boxes for work always tends to fall on the shoulders of the noobs from 14:12 below:
-而且我覺得通常接到訂便當工作這個人 -都比較菜 -都很菜 (-And I feel like that the person who has to order the bento boxes -Is always quite new to the office -Yeah, very new to the office
Another joke today from ‘A Boy Name Flora A‘ this one of the blue variety (or yellow as they say in Chinese).
The translator has tried to compensate for not being able to translate the joke fully by creating a different joke in English with the same material. It’s quite artfully done although the joke doesn’t make as much sense with reference to the character and is a tad less graphic.
First the kid is reading the words written on the van “Donated by Rui An Temple Commisioner Zheng Shuang” out loud to the older guy, but he mistakenly reads 「爽」(Shuang) as 「夾」 (jiā), as part of the name Zheng Shuang. When not used in names “夾” (jiā) means “to pinch” and “爽” (shuǎng) means joy or pleasure, generally with a heavy sexual connotation.
The older guy then replies “夾你的屁股啦” / “‘Pinch’, my arse!”, which is also funny, because it can be read as “Pinch my arse!”. He then points out the differences between the character 「夾」 (jiā) and the character “爽” (shuǎng), by describing 「夾」 (jiā) as a person radical (大) with two 叉 (乂) parts, even though the actual form is 「人」. Then he describes the character “爽” (shuǎng) as a person radical (大) with four 叉 (乂) parts. As 「叉」(chā) which represents this shape 「乂」 in the character is a homonym for 「插」(chā) meaning to insert in Mandarin, the sentence can be interpreted another way: “If you insert (插) four (implication is penises) in one person, that’s real pleasure (「爽」shuǎng). Although the last 「爽」(shuǎng) he pronounces using its Taiwanese pronunciation sóng.
The translator has tried to compensate in the English with a joke about exes:
-“Donated by Chairman of Rui An Temple Jia Zheng” -That’s not “Jia,” dumbass. It’s “Shuang.” -It looks like a man in the middle with four “Xs.” This character is called “Shuang.” One man with four exes. That’d be fun.
I think that this is a decent attempt to try and conserve the humor of the situation, as it can be read as sarcasm, but the English audience don’t know the relation between fun and shuang unfortunately.
Recently I’ve been getting into a Netflix adaptation of 《花甲男孩》, a book written by Yang Fu-min (楊富閔). The author was in the younger year of my graduate institute while I was studying at NTU and I previously interviewed him (awkwardness all round) here. The series is called ‘A Boy Name Flora A’ in English (not quite sure how that got past the editors). I’ve just started, but so far it’s quite funny. As a lot of the humor in the show involves wordplay, however, I have to wonder how much of it comes across in English.
One example is in the first episode, where you can see the difficulty in trying to translate a dad joke:
液 is normally pronounced yì in Mandarin in Taiwan, although elsewhere you’ll find it listed as yè
-Oi, do you understand the Book of Changes? – I only know who the Book of Changes mother is – Who? – An LCD screen (homophone for “the mother of the Book of Changes” in Taiwanese)
So in, Taiwanese, “inbú” means 「他媽」 or 「他母」. The in is sometimes written using the following character (a combination of 亻 and 因):
Alternatively 怹 can be used.
The translation on the Netflix series, understandably maybe, gives up on trying to show where the humour is: – Hey, do you know what I-Ching is? – I only know its mother. – Who is it? – It’s I-Ching as in an LCD screen.
It brought me back to my days hanging around with a crowd from Pingtung where all the punchlines of the jokes were in Taiwanese – and just didn’t sound funny when they “explained the joke” in Mandarin after the fact.
I imagine those translating it also struggled to make a distinction between the “feel” of the Taiwanese and the Chinese in the English translation.
Anyway – lunch-break is almost over, so I’ll leave you with another bit of slang the show taught me today:
「蛇」(snake) here is short for 「魯蛇」 which is a transliteration of “loser”:
「我一生下來也沒有這麼蛇啊」 (I didn’t start out a loser.)
I’d never heard 蛇 used independently of the 「魯」 in this way before.
Podcasts have really taken off over the last couple of years but Chinese-language podcasts from Taiwan have been rather limited, with most just being radio segments repackaged for podcast platforms. However, recently more have taken off, so I thought I’d feature them here and you can feel free to share more in the comments section! I’ve focused on Chinese-language podcasts here, although there are also an increasing amount of English-language podcasts too.
大麻煩不煩 (In the Weeds with Lawyer Zoe Lee): This is a great intro into Taiwan’s weed landscape, informing people of their rights in terms of getting stopped and searched by police, what to do if you’re arrested, and the progress of efforts to legalize weed in Taiwan for medical or other uses. (Links to different platforms listed on site) 5/5 Recommended
來自五星的你 (5 Star Nation) (Nov 2021 update): This is a newish Chinese-language podcast from Ghost Island Media. With interviews of Chinese young people who have studied in Taiwan and Taiwanese people who have lived in China. The Chinese name (來自五星的你) is a riff on the Korean drama My Love from the Stars (來自星星的你). Really recommend this one! 5/5
股癌 GooAye Although this is nominally a podcast about stocks and shares, and does get into investing quite a lot, there’s also a quite a lot of cultural commentary running through it. As the host is married to a foreigner, he often talks about exchange across cultures too. Although, he was kind of making pro-Trump noises during the election. 5/5 Recommended Spotify Apple Podcast YouTube
Firstory Lab 最偏激的Podcast Tried one episode which consisted of a group of guys making fun of the way a female host spoke. Maybe it gets better if you listen from the start?
(UPDATE March 24, 2022) 博音 Brian: The king of awkward stand-up comedy and all-around heart-throb Brian Tseng hosts this funny podcast, with special guests. The episode I’ve listened to is Brian reflecting on his time at the Brian Night Night Show with Jim. Would really recommend this one!
(UPDATE April 1, 2022) 調教診聊事 Kenta Playroom: Explore the gay BDSM scene in Taiwan with Kenta. This podcast is a surprisingly intimate and thoughtful take on the BDSM world and attempts to counter the mainstream stigmatization of BDSM.
(UPDATE September 1, 2022) 羅密歐與豬八戒 Romeo and Piggy: Full disclosure, this podcast was launched by a friend of mine, but he is hilarious. Both presenters (one guy one girl) are ex-soldiers from Taiwan, so lots of funny stories about their military careers come up in conversation. Definitely worth checking out!
If you have any recommendations, let me know in the comments section below!
Readers Recommend (Update):
WetBoys 潤男的Room recommended by Erik K. (NSFW mens issues): I’ve listened to quite a few episodes of this one and recommend it to LGBT+ folks. As well as some rather adult themes and flirting, there is quite a lot of cultural commentary and book reviews.
My note-writing neighbour (you can see their doctoral thesis here) has been at it again, although, to be fair, this doesn’t rank up there with their more passive-aggressive notes (although I would have appreciated a 「請」 thrown in there somewhere). I almost identified with them on this note, as it represents a phenomenon I often encounter when learning other languages, the tendency to assume that a specific usage of a multipurpose verb in your language can apply to all the usages of the verb in your target language, illustrated brilliantly below:
壞了，一直在閃、很危險、不要開。 Don’t drive.
Broken, it keeps flashing, it’s dangerous, don’t turn it on.
「開」 in Chinese means “to start” or “to turn on”, in conjunction with 「車」 it can also mean “to drive”. So I’m guessing they googled “不要開” and got “Don’t drive.” I guess the solution is to always search for the terms you Google translate to see if it matches the idea you were going for and is used commonly in the target language. The only example I can think of going the other way is the tendency of foreigners to use 「是」 for adjectival phrases in Chinese, 「我是熱」, for example, as an overly literal translation of “I am hot.” Can you think of any examples that fit the brief more accurately?
My neighbour clearly hasn’t been taking notes since I corrected their previous note which was either on door closures or dog euthanasia:
Recently I’ve started to hear the term 「佛系……法」 a lot. The term plays with the Buddhist concept of noninterference, essentially suggesting that instead of trying to follow your boss’ direction/ study in school/encourage internet users to Like your page/earn money etc., you should just resign yourself to the fact that things are beyond your control and that if what you want is meant to be, it will happen without any effort from you. In one sense it can be used as an attack on the perceived lack of a work ethic among millennials, suggesting that they think they deserve to get their dreams served to them on a plate, while millennials themselves have adopted it to counter this narrative, as an expression of their cynicism at how much of a difference they can make by following the rules. Different verbs or job titles can be inserted into the blank depending on what the author is describing.
The first time I saw it was when a friend sent a meme featuring a familiar cartoon character, Bobby Hill from King of the Hill. Although my friend had no idea who Bobby Hill was, the meme featuring him meditating while incense burns in the foreground seems to have caught the Taiwanese imagination. I’ve put some examples of the use of the meme I found on the internet below. There was one example I saw of an English use of this meme, but it doesn’t seem to have caught the imagination of the English-speaking world quite so much:
There is a great columnist in Taiwan, Chou Wei-hang, who goes under the nickname 「人渣文本」 (Scum Text), often featured in magazines in Taiwan. Always a column to look out for. I was reading a particularly scathing article (unfortunately no longer available) he wrote ripping into Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), when I came across this cool pun, which harkens back to one of my previous posts 「無魚，蝦也好」:
Ho Nuan-hsuan fired one of the union air hostesses for damaging China Airlines’ image. Does the New Tide faction (within the DPP) think that he did a good job? Does Tuan Yi-kang (DPP Legislator) think he did a good job? Does Cheng Wen-Tsan (Taoyuan Mayor for DPP) think he did a good job? Cheng Yun-Peng (DPP Legislator), you highly recommended Ho Nuan-hsuan (as chairperson of China Airlines), why don’t you evaluate his performance after taking the job? A small blemish doesn’t spoil jade? Shrimp doesn’t spoil fish? It’s both foolish and blind?
The author takes the common idiom 「瑕不掩瑜？」 (xia2bu4yan3yu2), meaning literally that “one blemish doesn’t spoil the jade” and figuratively that just because there are disadvantages to something, doesn’t mean that they aren’t great overall. He then substitutes the 「瑕」(xia2) meaning “flaw” for 「蝦」(xia1) meaning “shrimp/prawn”, and 「瑜」 (yu2) meaning the “lustre of jade” for “魚” (yu2) meaning “fish”.
Now the phrase reads, “shrimp cannot spoil the fish”, and this is a nod to the Taiwanese phrase 「無魚，蝦也好」 (bô hî, hê mā ho):
Although this phrase was originally used to indicate “Something is better than nothing”, here it is used to mock the idea that you can replace something good with something lesser and still claim to be great overall. Here it particularly refers to the way politicians and others step down from their campaign promises with less appetizing versions of policies. This is a similar usage to the one I pointed out in Li Ang’s novel chronicling the breakdown of idealism and misogyny of the opposition activists that eventually formed the DPP:
As no normal women [Lin Hui-shu is the product of a mixed marriage between a mainland soldier and an aboriginal woman] dared to be associated with Chen Ying-jun, he really didn’t have much choice, and as, Lin Hui-shu was really quite attractive, the two quickly entered into a relationship.
雖然偶有政治犯同學戲稱他無魚蝦也好，但多半是羨慕又帶嫉妒。
Although some of his political prisoner comrades joked with him that he was really scraping the bottom of the barrel, most admired him with a little bit of jealousy mixed in.
Riffing again on the “yu2” and “xia1” sounds, he adds the phrase 「又愚又瞎」, where 「愚」 (yu2), meaning “foolish”, is a homophone of 「魚」 (and 「瑜」) and 「瞎」(xia1) is a homophone of 「蝦」 (and a near homophone of 「瑕」xia2).
Saw a cute variant of 「胡同」 (hutongs – traditional Beijing alleys) in a news article that caught my eye:
「北京衚衕太土了，一群老外花4年爆改了麻辣燙、肉鋪、棋牌室…結果666」
The headline translates to:
“Beijing Hutongs are too rustic, a group of foreigners spent four years pimping out a spicy soup shop, a butcher’s and a traditional board games room… the results were amazing”
I thought the use of 「爆改」(bao4gai3) as an equivalent to “pimp” as in “pimp my ride” was interesting, as well as the use of the slang term 「666」(liu4liu4liu4), used to stand in for 「溜溜溜」(liu1liu1liu1). Although 「溜」 is conventionally used for “skating” or “slippy”, here it’s used as slang for “with great and practiced skill”.
The news article has pictures of the designs here if you’re interested.
When browsing a few of the Chinese-language posts that come up on my Facebook feed, I saw the following (public) post from China Times journalist Feng Kuang-yuan:
(1)
Yesterday I was discussing something with my daughter
This was whether or not we should plan out a menu for our house
That way, if guests visit
We can offer them a choice of dishes
We both thought this was a good idea
So we started to think of different sections for the menu
I was thinking of things like a range of hamburgers, of omelettes, of pasta
But the first range she mentioned was
a range of leftovers
I found an article in the ET Today from 2014 which helped explain the meaning of the Taiwanese word 「ㄆㄨㄣ」 (pun/phun). It explains that Chinese character (本字) associated with the term is the popular surname 「潘」 (Pān in Mandarin), which originally meant “the water leftover after washing rice”. The term can now be used to refer to leftover foods or kitchen waste that is normally used to feed pigs, so another translation might be “swill” or 「餿水 sou1shui3」(food waste) in Mandarin.
The character is pronounced “phun” (Click through to hear).
The ET Today article came out in the midst of the gutter oil scandals and apparently kids surnamed 「潘」 were teased at the time, being called 「ㄆㄨㄣ小孩」. Kids can be so cruel. A Taiwanese teacher cited in the article, suggested that an alternative character be invented to represent the word to avoid embarrassment for all the Mr and Miss Swills out there. He advocated the combination of the food radical 「食」 alongside 「賁」 (bēn in Mandarin). Although the latter means “energetic” on its own, he suggested it because it makes up the right part of the character 「噴」 (pēn in Mandarin), which means “to spray or spurt”:
Afternote (Nov. 16, 2017): 饙 fēn (to steam rice) is in fact already a character, so in this case the Taiwanese teacher cited in the ET Today article is suggesting borrowing this character for a new purpose, rather than creating a new character.
