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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book as a gift for a friend studying Chinese and we both found it exceedingly amusing. The words themselves are where the real hilarity lies not least because they haven't held back on the obscenity. At all. I'm not sure whether I can share the expressions here but suffice to say that the title of the book itself has a very interesting meaning and etymology! Without speaking the language I have no idea how common these expressions are and what would happen if a foreigner in China used them. It might have been fun to have included some example dialogues so that people like me could mangle the language even more.
Format:Paperback
As a very humble learner of this wonderul language, this little book is a nice addition to my collection of books on Mandarin Chinese. Standard text books for learning foreing languages tend to be bland, boring and full of silly texts, detached from everyday conversation, modes, idioms and colloquial language and expression, so this book is a must if you want to improve a little bit by learning street language, internet slang and other idioms which will, if you don't know them, put you at a loss to interpret them. It is nice that there is nothing held back in terms of language and obscenity or profanity, so delicate stomachs maybe should abstain. Otherwise it is sometimes a good laugh. A culture's own profanity and preferred insults is always also an insight of the culture itself, specially it reveals things about the culture's specific way of thinking, what things it values more, (and therefore are the subject of most hurting abuse), how it deals with censorship online, and so on. Not that I will be using all of this everyday, and some of it can get you GBH in a Beijing alley, but it is good to know, specially internet slang which you can easily find when browsing and dirty words which could be harder to find sources for.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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23 reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Fun
3 Mar 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I speak Chinese pretty well and wanted to shore up my slang, plus it's just kind of fun to know how to cuss people out. This book was a help in that regard. It's a pretty exhaustive list, it's well categorized, and there's good notes explaining when each slang is used. I've learned a lot of new words, and more importantly, I found out that I was sometimes using an uncommon or scientific word, instead of the proper slang.
So mostly I'm positive about this book, and I recommend it highly. But I'll concentrate on the negatives, just because it's difficult to judge a slang book, and to let other buyers know what they're getting into. My first complaint is that while the book is largely accurate, it isn't entirely. Maybe a couple percent of them are off. I don't think it's just the vagaries of slang or regional differences, because I asked several people here in Shanghai about them, and they all told me "no way." Anyway, it's worth double checking favorite terms.
Secondly, this is (for the most part) Beijing slang. OK a lot of the vocabulary is universal, and that's particularly true to the (really excellent) Internet slang section. On the other hand, there's a lot of words that I don't think most people would say in Shanghai. For a non-native speaker to use many of these words would be bizarre. I wonder, do people in Beijing swear a lot more? Even though she addresses the issue in the introduction, I think the author drastically overestimates how often and how deeply people swear. And a whole lot of the insults would instantly lead to a fight. Oh yeah, and the book is missing common Mandarin slang words that are used in Shanghai.
Third, it's CRAZY that this book has pronunciation guides for people who don't even know pinyin. If you don't speak Chinese pretty well already, don't try this book. You'll just get in trouble. Maybe it can be read for the cultural notes, but personally I found the cultural notes could sometimes get a little cartoony, particularly in the introduction, about the marijuana smoking pro-democracy rock singers...
Finally, I wish the book had better notes or division about which slangs were common, and which ones weren't. The most common words are often pointed out, but not always. And there's a whole lot of pages given to slangs that are hopelessly obscure. There is a "top 25" list at the end of the book, it could have used a similar section at the end of every chapter.
So mostly I'm positive about this book, and I recommend it highly. But I'll concentrate on the negatives, just because it's difficult to judge a slang book, and to let other buyers know what they're getting into. My first complaint is that while the book is largely accurate, it isn't entirely. Maybe a couple percent of them are off. I don't think it's just the vagaries of slang or regional differences, because I asked several people here in Shanghai about them, and they all told me "no way." Anyway, it's worth double checking favorite terms.
Secondly, this is (for the most part) Beijing slang. OK a lot of the vocabulary is universal, and that's particularly true to the (really excellent) Internet slang section. On the other hand, there's a lot of words that I don't think most people would say in Shanghai. For a non-native speaker to use many of these words would be bizarre. I wonder, do people in Beijing swear a lot more? Even though she addresses the issue in the introduction, I think the author drastically overestimates how often and how deeply people swear. And a whole lot of the insults would instantly lead to a fight. Oh yeah, and the book is missing common Mandarin slang words that are used in Shanghai.
Third, it's CRAZY that this book has pronunciation guides for people who don't even know pinyin. If you don't speak Chinese pretty well already, don't try this book. You'll just get in trouble. Maybe it can be read for the cultural notes, but personally I found the cultural notes could sometimes get a little cartoony, particularly in the introduction, about the marijuana smoking pro-democracy rock singers...
Finally, I wish the book had better notes or division about which slangs were common, and which ones weren't. The most common words are often pointed out, but not always. And there's a whole lot of pages given to slangs that are hopelessly obscure. There is a "top 25" list at the end of the book, it could have used a similar section at the end of every chapter.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Accurate and applicable
16 Feb 2010
Format:Paperback
After having spent a lot of time in China and picked up a lot of the vocab in the book already, I can vouch for its accuracy. The book is full of juicy vocab and sophisticated euphemisms that you are bound to hear if you ever go to China, but that your teacher won't teach you and CCTV doesn't dare to put on the screen. The vocab is not only accurate, but also up-to-date - incredibly so. Take the section on internet slang for example. The "jiong'" phenomenon is only a couple of years old still has its own entry. The same goes for a lot of the chapter, like '''"cao ni ma"s and the other "shi da shenshou"''''''. The only problem with this might be that internet trends change quickly, and therefore some of the language in this section could quickly become outdated. (Although, I could be wrong. 1337-speak is a pretty old phenomenon and is still going strong.)
Evelin has done great research into etymologies and ventured into subcultures that you might not even know exist. The book is therefore a gem for both those who are interested in the language as it is spoken in modern day China and those who are interested in seeing facets of Chinese culture that are hard to discover from the outside.
* (After having read the book cover to cover, I've seen a couple of minor errors here and there with translations and pinyin transcriptions. They are few and far between. For example, sa3jiao1 on p. 58 should be sa1jiao1.)
Evelin has done great research into etymologies and ventured into subcultures that you might not even know exist. The book is therefore a gem for both those who are interested in the language as it is spoken in modern day China and those who are interested in seeing facets of Chinese culture that are hard to discover from the outside.
* (After having read the book cover to cover, I've seen a couple of minor errors here and there with translations and pinyin transcriptions. They are few and far between. For example, sa3jiao1 on p. 58 should be sa1jiao1.)
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Great Chinese language resource
20 Jan 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ms. Chao has written a great book that functions as not only a cultural anthropology tool about the Chinese language but also as a practical language instruction guide. All the words or expressions described in the book have the Chinese characters, the pinyin with tone marks, a pronunciation guide and an explanation of what the word literally means, how it is used and where the expression came from. The words and expressions are well-organized into sections - she even has a section on computer and internet expressions and slang.
I've already used some of the milder expressions from the book to great effect. If you are studying Chinese at any level or visiting China this book is an invaluable resource covering material that simply isn't available anywhere else. Her explanations are insightful and add significant depth to the book. I can't wait for her next book.
I've already used some of the milder expressions from the book to great effect. If you are studying Chinese at any level or visiting China this book is an invaluable resource covering material that simply isn't available anywhere else. Her explanations are insightful and add significant depth to the book. I can't wait for her next book.
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