What you’ve always wanted to mutter as you watch yet another eyes-glazed new driver white-knuckle his way through an intersection, oblivious to the little girl he almost knocked off her grandfather’s bicycle and clueless to the chaos he’s created from having just stopped in the middle of the intersection while he got his bearings and decided to take a left from the right-turn lane.
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Nále běnzi dànshì, yǒu zhízhào dànshì kāichē jìshù bùxíng. Běijīnghuà guǎn zhèi xiē rén jiào “mǎlù shāshǒu.”
拿了本子但是，有执照但是开车技术不行。北京话管这些人叫“马路杀手”
They’ve gotten their license but, they’ve got the license but their driving skill’s no good. In Beijing dialect they call these people “Road Killers” [mǎlù is "road" and shāshǒu is "hitman/killer"]
Extra BJS bucks, as usual, to the reader who supplies a more pungent translation.
[Update: fixed the mid-draft transcript -- not sure how that happened.]
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Comments 6
I think it’s even a little funnier if you put the words together: roadkillers.
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 7:10 pm ¶What are they called when you’re in the car with them? Learning that the driver of the car I’m in has only recently been licensed has been one of my least favourite recurring surprises in China.
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 10:00 pm ¶How about highway hitmen?
Posted 25 Oct 2009 at 12:45 pm ¶Derek: nice. I’m a sucker for alliteration, so highway hitmen gets my vote.
Kellen: but at least it gives you the “oh so that explains it” moment
Posted 25 Oct 2009 at 2:48 pm ¶Wow! I live in Chongqing and I can understand most of Chongqinghua but that is hard! Beijing… Every place they can put the “R” sound they do! Wow. Chongqing isn’t as harsh but they do say things like Mingtianr with an are but that is just ridiculous.
Posted 20 Jun 2010 at 12:15 am ¶Matt: Mingtianr?! I’d venture to say that’s an erhuayin you never hear in Beijing.
Connecting to your “every place they can put the R sound they do” statement, just to be picky (and I’m sure you know this): it’s not at all the case. Sure, Beijingers do a lot of R-ing, but it’s a system with prohibitions and strong rules and so on.
Maybe we should come up with a list of R-izations you can hear outside Beijing that you’d never hear as part of the vernacular here. Mingtianr could be first on the list!
Posted 20 Jun 2010 at 9:56 am ¶