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Soundbites: bucks or dollarrrs

Zhonglish speakers learn pretty quick that you hardly ever hear yuán (元 = RMB, Chinese unit of money) in casual contexts; kuài (块) is the unit of choice, more common than “bucks” in the US.

But what about yuánr? This was a first for the BJS studios, from a discussion with a driver about taxi economics:

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Yīnwèi tā háiyào gěi zhèige jiāo èrbǎi lái yuánr zheige, jiùshi měitiān yǒu èrbǎi lái kuài qián de chē fènr qián.
因为他还要给这个交二百来元儿这个，就是每天有二百来块钱的车分儿车份儿钱。
…because he still has to pay 200 dollars [rmb], every day there’s 200 bucks of car lease money.

Comments 5

  1. Randy Alexander wrote:

    Nice find.

    Up here in dongbei, I hear 钱儿 (qiánr) a lot too. For non-dongbeiren, this was made famous by 赵本山*’s “不差钱儿”** in the 2009 CCTV New Year’s Gala 小品 (xiǎopǐn, skit) “contest”.

    *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Benshan
    **(búchàqiánr, money is no object)

    Posted 18 Oct 2009 at 8:26 am
  2. Sima wrote:

    车份儿?
    Perhaps, unduly picky.

    Posted 18 Oct 2009 at 8:48 am
  3. syz wrote:

    @Randy: I shoulda asked where this guy was from — didn’t realize it was a dongbei thing. Definitely doesn’t sound to me like Beijing, but then again, the city is big…

    @Sima, duly changed, much obliged

    Posted 25 Oct 2009 at 10:19 am
  4. Adam Cathcart wrote:

    Don’t you need a “jiu” (as in “jiu shi ta” / it is really him) before “mei tian”? (Apologies, working on a dunce machine with amazing sound quality but no Hanzi.)

    Quite a sentence in any case.

    Great stuff!

    Posted 27 Oct 2009 at 7:11 am
  5. syz wrote:

    Great catch, Cathcart. Indeed on re-listen I do believe that’s a jiùshì with the /sh/ completely elided. Will amend now.

    Posted 27 Oct 2009 at 8:20 am