For those of you new to Talk Like a Pirate Day, it was first declared a Beijing Sounds staff holiday in 2008 when, reminded by Pinyin.info, a post was created to celebrate the R-ful Mandarin of the most rhotic city in Asia [feel free to quote that last phrase to your friends]. This year the holiday once again nearly went by unmarked, as the studio director is wont to “forget” staff holidays and the workers themselves were busy killing the four pests and cleaning up in preparation for the Guóqìng (国庆 = National Day) holiday on October 1. Fortunately, Literal-Minded saved the day by posting an advance warning, a shot over the bow of the good ship BJS — thus resuscitating the holiday for yet another year (and thus the day-early posting to avoid paying overtime on the holiday).
But inside the city, the specter of adulteration is as palpable among upholders of Pirate traditions as it was within the Palace of Heavenly Purity. In the following preview of the upcoming (over budget and behind schedule) blockbuster, The Polyglot Coachman, you will hear the star foment on how the tongues of even (oh, say it ain’t so!) his fellow Beijing cab drivers are encroaching on the pristine language of his forefathers.
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[This page has the EXMARaLDA version of the transcript with text synced to audio]
Ay, maties, have we a real Běijīngrénr (北京人儿 = Beijinger) here? Let us hearken back to the ever-expanding BJSLBC™. To summarize, it now reads like this:
In everyday speech, a Beijinger…
| Characteristic | Score |
| has Pirateshipfuls of érhuàyīn (儿化音 = rhoticization / Beijing-R) | Pass — There’s plenty of cabbies that have it thicker, but the last line, with its wèir wèir wèir, hints that he could put it on as thick as Beijing smog if he wanted to. For the record, we’ll add wèir to the list of words hypothesized to be érhuàyīn-obligatory in Beijing dialect. |
| pronounces 那 as nèi or nè (not the “standard” nà) unless it is functioning as a noun | N/A |
| often elides consonants in the middle of words | Pass — examples of elided sh in “Wǒ shì” and “dōu shì” |
No doubt a Beijinger, and a territorial one at that. You couldn’t ask for a better pirate representative to tap a bunghole and tip back a mug of grog with you this September 19th.
————
*The literal translation here is “oh, from inside the city.” But, as noted last week, I’m thinking this habit — the repeating of a small phrase that someone just said — is much more a speech act dedicated to the task of leading the primary speaker know that the listener is paying attention and is involved in the conversation. In English, this speech act would get instantiated as something like the rhetorical question “oh, yeah?” or as “uh-huh”, etc.
**This sounds stupid and probably was, but the taxi driver got the idea of what I was going to say: that taxi drivers in Beijing are all from Beijing, without exception that I’ve come across. It’s controlled by regulation stipulating local residency. But his point is that Beijing means Greater Beijing, which is a pretty big swath of land and includes a lot of “Beijingers” that the true city slickers still think of as rural farmers.
***BONUS CONTEST! For the culturally savvy soul who is able to elucidate what’s going on in line 7, BJS will offer a free pre-screening of the upcoming sure-to-be megahit starring SJ. Here at the studios, even the native speaker research staff (thanks again, QPH!) were mystified. The whole apple thing is intriguing…
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Comments 6
Another shot in the dark here…
For *** perhaps SJ is talking about 平果 county in Guangxi? [by way of searching píngguǒ in a dictionary]
I could imagine him having relatives down there and assuming you do too (or at least have been there). I guess it would be akin to me saying “Oh, yeah, people in Hennepin [Minnesota] are so much different from the Finger Lakes area [New York].” I just offhandedly assume you know the geography/culture/whathaveyou just as well as I do.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 8:23 pm ¶I think 正經 should be 正宗 – authentic, real, true, etc.
The 蘋果 he is speaking of is is most likely referring to 平谷區 Pinggu district, where an extremely large amount of cab drivers live, come from, etc. Of course he could be referring to the infamous 蘋果園 Apple Orchard listed on the Red line, but he’s not. Don’t you have a native speaking staff that can handle this? It seems pretty rough and you’ve got a long way to go to fix both scripts (english and chinese).
Posted 19 Sep 2009 at 12:59 am ¶Agreed on 平谷区 (or is it still a 县?), though I would add that multitudes of taxi drivers come from 通州，密云，延庆 and probably other outlying districts as well. Which mix of drivers you see depends on which parts of the city you frequent- the Yanqing drivers seem to be concentrated around Haidian, which is the closest downtown district to home for them.
Your first 不清楚 sounds to my ears something like a slightly slurred and garbled 那些出租车的, but not sure on the 那些.
His comments on accents seem surprisingly ignorant. I have yet to meet a Beijinger who does not know Yanqing has its own distinct accent, and my impression is the other more far-flung districts do too. Of course, education has done a lot to flatten out accents in the younger generation, but I would suspect that when they go home they slip back into the old accent. It’s better to speak standard putonghua in Beijing, but your family might think you’re putting on airs if you speak standard Putonghua to them. At least, that’s my experience based on my hugely scientific, statistically kick-arsely significant sample of my wife and her family.
Posted 19 Sep 2009 at 10:27 am ¶For line 7, “对不对？ [不清楚] 什么苹果的，他说话这味儿跟我们味儿不一样”, I hear the [不清楚] as “那电影”, i.e. “that movie, uh, ‘Lost in Beijing’…”.
Full disclosure: I have spent no more than two weeks in Beijing in my entire life, and am probably influenced by lots of time in Shanghai and Taipei.
Posted 20 Sep 2009 at 3:01 am ¶@pc: yeah, the situation you’re describing seems right — that he is referring to some place that I should know.
Posted 21 Sep 2009 at 8:46 am ¶@hsknotes: maybe you’re right about it being 平谷区. I know nothing about this. And do divulge: what’s the infamy of 苹果园? since I’ve never been anywhere close to that either. And, finally, “you’ve got a long way to go to fix both scripts”?! Jeez, you’re starting to sound like the director himself. The touchy research staff responded to your comment by grumbling about how pirates are a bunch of slobs anyway…
@chriswaugh: I always support sample sizes of one!
@Kaiwen: intriguing possibility — the offhand controversial movie reference. I just now read enough of the plot summary to see your point, that the main characters were certainly immigrants to Beijing with accents. Maybe I will try to resample that part when I eventually get around to transcribing the full recording. The sound quality is really hideous.
If you take cabs in Beijing, you will get well acquainted with the neighboring “suburbs” quite quickly, and if you’re really lucky be able to start guessing their accent correctly, to their surpise, which will afford you the opportunity to learn some of their 方言 for use in those places or with cab drivers from those places.
The infamy of the apple orchard lies not only in the fact that it a stop listed on the Subway, but that it is an apple orchard in the capital city. You have to go there to really understand the power of it. Note, you will be disappointed.
My comments were quite incendiary, for that I retract the excessive parts. The work is not easy, for you or the staff, and I understand that. I hear the wages are 1 煎餅 for 100 words transcribed. Something like the wages found in the equally infamous “Lost in Beijing”.
Posted 21 Sep 2009 at 12:30 pm ¶Post a Comment