The phrase “melter” in Belfast slang refers to someone who prattles on endlessly without seemingly ever saying anything that means anything, hence the phrase, “I’m going to go over there now, you’re melting my head!” Taiwanese has a similar sentiment manifested in the phrase “有的沒的”, meaning “Something and nothing/nonsense/trivialities” which can be used in both Mandarin (you3de5mei2de5) and Taiwanese (ū ê bô ê – audio available here).

The handy thing about this phrase is that you can use the Taiwanese in Mandarin and in Taiwanese, or you can just use the Mandarin if you can’t recall the Taiwanese.

It can be used as a noun or an adjective and I’ve included an example below:

你不要在那邊講那些[有的沒的/ū ê bô ê], 無聊死了！

I wish you’d stop going on about all this crap, it’s so dull!

The ū ê bô ê in question can either be something trivial, or in some contexts gossip, but expresses the speaker’s opinion that they are above gossip.

These are various examples I’ve found on the internet:

看看一堆有的沒的是非問題

有的沒的聊了幾句便睡 *Note – in this phrase 有的沒的 is used as an adverb with the 地 omitted.

Feel free to contact me with any cool Taiwanese words or phrases you hear and want featured on the blog.