LukeWrites.com

Fun with Chinese slang

by Luke on 11 December, 2008

Several months ago I posted a video to YouTube of people throwing their seat cushions at a Changchun YaTai (长春亚泰) soccer match:

(No, that isn’t me shouting “Camera!”)

Someone left the comment

沙发,长春牛逼!!

which translated literally means

Sofa, Changchun [is] cow vagina!

牛逼 (niúbī, lit. cow vagina but used here as “awesome”) is a word much like chingón in Spanish…it’s not polite and is used to describe something as having traits that are really good or really bad.
沙发 (shāfā or “sofa”) is netspeak for the first person to reply to a post–like English speakers respond with “FIRST!”. Why? According to chinaSMACK’s cool glossary of slang,

the topic starter or original poster [is] the “owner of the house.” The first person entering the “house” and replying gets the “sofa.” So “sofa” means the first replier/reply.

Saying “SOFA!” in a thread is the same as an English speaker in a parking lot yelling “SHOTGUN!” to claim the front seat of the car–she was there first, so she gets the best seat.

Related posts:

  1. Chinese Pera-Kun for Firefox 3
  2. How To Read Anything In Chinese
  3. Regarding the Dangers of Chinese Toothpaste
  4. Chinese internet outage: no news would be great news

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

A-gu December 11, 2008 at 2:27 am

Informative post. I did not know either of these Chinese slang terms

Reply

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