The YU cafeteria is one of the best audio links to Old Beijing. Over the clink of dishes and the munching of radish tucked inside your bǐng (饼 = pan bread) you can listen idly to the deals that the city used to offer.
[Transcript linked to audio available on this page -- click on the asterisks at the left of each line to start the audio at that point.]
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| 1 | YU | Guòqù Běijīng a, jiù jiùshi nèige, jiùshi, wǒ, wǒ shì mài luóbo de, | 过去北京呀，就就是那个，就是，我，我是卖萝卜的 | In the past in Beijing, uh, well, I, if I was a radish seller, |
| 2 | YU | mài luóbo de ne, wǒ dāngshí wǒ jiù zài nèr xiāo, màide shíhòu(r), nǐ lái mǎi luóbo, dāngshí wǒ jiù gěi nǐ xiāo hǎo le. | 卖萝卜的呢，我当时我就在那儿削，卖的时候，你来买萝卜，当时我就给你削好了。 | well, a radish seller, right at the time I’d, I’d peel it right there, right when I’m selling — you come to buy a radish, I peel it for you right there on the spot. |
| 3 | SYZ | A, shì ma? | 哦，是吗？ | Oh really? |
| 4 | YU | Xiāo hǎo le yǐhòu dōu gěi nǐ qiē chéng nèi yītiáo(r) yītiáo(r) de, nǐ ná zhe ne, bāi yī bǎir jiù kěyǐ chī. | 削好了以后都给你切成那一条一条的，你拿着呢，掰一掰儿就可以吃。 | After it’s peeled they cut it up into strips for you, then you take it, break off a piece and eat it. |
| 5 | YU | Běijīng guòqù yǒu zhèiyàng mài luóbo de. | 北京过去有这样卖萝卜的。 | Beijing used to have this kind of radish seller. |
| 6 | YU | Suǒyǐ tā nèr jiù yǒu nèige xiāo xiàlai de luóbor pí. | 所有他那儿就有那个削下来的萝卜儿皮 | So they have right there that radish peel that they just peeled off. |
| 7 | SYZ | Nà, nà, zěnme, zěnme chī? | 那那怎么怎么吃？ | Then, then, how — how do they eat it? |
| 8 | YU | Jiù zhème chī, zhèi zhǒng luóbo jiùshi kěyǐ shēng chīde … a. | 就这么吃，这种萝卜就是可以生吃的。。嗯 | Just like that, this kind of radish can be eaten raw, really. |
| 9 | SYZ | Shì ma? | 是吗？ | Really? [mouth stuffed with bǐng] |
| 10 | SYZ | Bù là? | 不辣？ | It’s not spicy? |
| 11 | YU | Bù là. Ránhòu nèige … | 不辣，然后那个。。 | It’s not spicy. Then, uh … |
| 12 | YU | Tā … pángbiānr jiù kěyǐ xiāo xiàlái yī dà duī luóbo pí, mài de tèbié piányi. | 他。。旁边就可以削下来一大堆萝卜皮，卖得特别便宜 | They … to the side there’s this big pile of radish peel they sell really cheap. |
| 13 | YU | Guāng mài nèi pí. Yīnwèi tā luóbo, qíshí mài luóbo de shíhòu dōu yǐjīng bǎ nèi pí de qián yě dōu mài chū qù le. Ránhòu tā zhèi tóur tā tā tèbié piányi, ránhòu jiù … | 光卖那皮。因为他萝卜，其实卖萝卜的时候都已经把那皮的钱也都卖出去了。然后他这头儿他他特别便宜，然后就。。。 | They sell up the skin, because their radish, actually when they sold the radish they already got the value for the skin anyway. So this is how it’s really cheap, then, well, … |
| 14 | YU | Yǒu de shíhòu pèngshang le, jiù kěyǐ mǎi zhèige guāng yān zhèige luóbo pí, tèbié hǎo chī. | 有的时候碰上了，就可以买这个，光腌这个萝卜皮，特别好吃。 | Sometimes you run into this and you can buy just this salted radish peel. Really delicious. |
| 15 | YU | (xiào shēng) yòu piányi yòu hǎochī. Āiyou… | （笑声）又便宜又好吃。哎呀。。。 | (laughing) Cheap AND delicious. Ahhh… |
| 16 | YU | yòu piányi yòu hǎochī. | 又便宜又好吃。。。 | [reminiscing] Cheap AND delicious. |
Keep in mind, though, that the lessons don’t stop at the cafeteria door. First, there’s the reminder of what it means (phonologically and lexically) to be a native Beijinger (from the BJS Longtime Beijinger Checklist):
In everyday speech, a Beijinger…
| Characteristic | Analysis |
| has Pirateshipfuls of érhuàyīn (儿化音 = rhoticization / Beijing-R) | Check out the fleeting Rs all over the place, although I have to say I’m surprised at only one instance of full-on luóbor (萝卜儿), in line 6. |
| pronounces 那 as nèi or nè (not the “standard” nà) unless it is functioning as a noun | Absolutely flawless. |
| often elides consonants in the middle of words | Line 6: xiāo xiàlai Line 14: pèngshang and probably a few instance of jiùshi |
Old hat, right? But what if we threw in…
Beijing-R 201
Beijing-R 201 is more properly known as Érhuàyīn 201. And actually you’ve been enrolled for years without being entirely aware of it. The subtitle is “Words that are hard to look up in dictionaries cuz the rhoticization muddies everything.”
The good news for today’s Zhonglish speakers is that, thanks to romanization, dictionaries make it pretty easy to look up a word you heard. (Try that with your beloved Hanzi!) Just learn some Pinyin, listen to a word, and off you go.
Still, there are tricks of the trade, and érhuàyīn (儿化音, i.e. rhoticization / “adding an R flavor” / the Beijing-R) plays some of the dirtiest tricks in the phonemic book: a rhoticized word, especially one where you only half-caught the tone or leading consonant, can be damn hard to look up in a standard dictionary.
In this snippet you get bāi yī bǎir, in line 4. That’s what the transcription team came up with in line 4: 掰一掰儿. Sure, it seems okay, but what if you had that bǎir in isolation, with the tone questionable and the final half of the syllable a muddle — would you be able to look it up?
It made me think of the following list, which is by no means complete and may not even offer the best examples; it’s just some flotsam plucked out from Beijing-R 201. Have more? Send your words this way and we’ll add them to the pile. After all, in Beijing a good rhotic syllable is like a good radish peel used to be: cheap AND delicious.
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| Rough pronunciation | “Proper” Pinyin | Characters | Gloss / usage |
| kuàr | kuàir | 块儿 | a piece |
| hǔr, hw̌r? | huǐr | 会儿 | 一会儿，待会儿 |
| húr, hẃr? | huór | 活儿 | 干活儿 |
| gùr, gẁr? | gùnr | 棍儿 | stick |
| kǒu zhàr | kǒuzhàor | 口罩儿 | face mask |
| xífr | xífur | 媳妇儿 | wife |
| jiǎnlr̀ | jiǎnlòur | 捡漏儿 | find a deal (see this post for a tougher pronunciation than YU gives here) |
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.
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Comments 12
I love the table at the end, but I’d like to be able to follow it straight down and have it show a direct transcript of the audio. Oh wait! The far right column does that…sometimes. Oh…well…ok.
Also, I know that jiu4shi4 就是 here means “if,” but, how do I say this…why? I mean, I basically NEVER listen for “jiu4shi4″ to mean “if.” If you hadn’t already known that YU did used to sell radishes, how would you have known that was a jia3ru2 假如 and not just a story?
Posted 23 Dec 2009 at 9:42 pm ¶First the table: you’re right, that’s a sorry mess. I’ll try to fix it up tomorrow.
The Line 1 setup you refer to, on the other hand… I’d say that jiùshi isn’t “if” at all. It’s just filler, or a false start or something. The situation is that YU never sold radishes (she was a doctor, in fact, and so probably wouldn’t take well to the implication that she was a radish seller, but we’ll keep her feelings out of this). Maybe you understood that and intended to say that above? Or maybe I got lost in the negatives. Anyway, you point out something I was puzzled by too: there’s no “if”. Nothing at all, so far as I can figure out. Yet it is indeed an imaginary situation. I think YR Chao had something to say about this construction. I’ll try to look it up (but again, tomorrow — I just felt the need to throw sand into the wind before going to sleep tonight).
Posted 23 Dec 2009 at 9:56 pm ¶Line 16 sounds almost mournful.
Posted 24 Dec 2009 at 10:53 am ¶“Really? [mouth stuffed with bǐng]”
Your attention to detail is much appreciated.
Posted 29 Dec 2009 at 7:38 am ¶I was wondering about the last entry in the table and the bottom of this post. I’m not familiar with the word “捡漏”, what does it mean? Could the same rhotization be done for other words like 简陋?
Also, I notice a definite difference between (一)会儿 and 活儿, the former being a little more like “hwer” and the latter being somewhat like “hwohr” instead of both being hur or hwr. Any thoughts?
Posted 02 Jan 2010 at 6:01 am ¶Syz – This is the first time I have checked out your website and I’m really impressed. Thanks so much for your hard work and sharing – it is really useful for a blonde haired Mandarin speaker like myself! I look forward to checking it out daily and hopefully being able to comment and introduce myself further.
Posted 11 Jan 2010 at 11:52 am ¶This is my first post to this site, which I want to say initially is very informative and entertaining. Re “if I was a radish seller,” might luobo actually be translated as turnip? Years ago in Taiwan, luobobing (something like a congyoubing) definitely contained turnips and not radishes. And now in at least one SF restaurant, the menu translation for luobogao is “turnip cake”–again it’s a turnip I’m eating not something else. Anyway, what is the Beijing usage and how is the distinction made between turnips and radishes?
Posted 12 Jan 2010 at 1:56 am ¶@Albert: as you’ve probably seen, now there’s a whole post dedicated to your answer! Verbosity knows no bounds at the Beijing Sounds studios.
@Josh: this is really an embarrassingly slow response. Feel free to discuss a subscription refund with accounting. Sorry. At any rate, first, 检漏: that might be a one-off. It’s a Beijing slang word for “find a great deal / something for free.” A taxi driver told me about it and the first time he said it (go listen to the original post) I really didn’t understand him at all. But that might not have been an erhuayin issue. Probably safe to ignore it for now. I’m not sure if 简陋 would work the same way.
Regarding (一)会儿 and 活儿, I agree that the recording above gives the latter a little bit of rounding so it’s more O sounding. But keep in mind this is a reproduction and she’s being careful with her speech. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it wouldn’t happen in the wild. What we really need is a huor/huir pair, same tone, that we could put into a sentence where either one is plausible. Then we could record that and take it around to Beijingers and see if they thought the distinction was clear. Got any candidate words?
@Hassall: glad you found us. I’m afraid your plans of checking it out “daily” will be met with disappointment. Blame the lazy production team. Biweekly perhaps
Posted 13 Jan 2010 at 5:53 am ¶@Chris Waugh: mournful, exactly! BTW: I wouldn’t have been able to imagine that there was ANYthing in Beijing too cheap to have commerce around it, yet radish peel might be an exception. I’ve never seen a vendor and apparently YU hasn’t seen one for years.
@Kellen: you can hear the chewing of the bǐng cud, right?
@Alan: your comment almost got caught up in the spam filter — sorry so slow to appear. The turnip/radish distinction is probably my ignorance and not any formal distinction that I know of. Also, vegetable naming is notoriously regional. What she’s referring to are those long white roots like these. Where I grew up in Washington state, these would have been neither radishes nor turnips because no one grew them. For me, a turnip is wide and stubby, almost onion-shaped but with a point on the bottom. Conversely, YU was not familiar with the small, red-skinned things we call radishes until she lived with us in the States. She also called those xiǎo luóbo.
So I’m not really sure what to do. If you know anywhere in the native English-speaking world that has a set name for the items in the pic, I’d be happy to go with it.
Posted 13 Jan 2010 at 6:10 am ¶As a follow up re my luobo translation question, I believe the long white roots (see the picture provided by the link in syz’s reply) is commonly known as “daikon” or “white east Asian radish.” All the years I have been eating this, always in cooked form, I thought it was turnip. Thanks for the help in clarifying this. Beijing Sounds is really multi-dimensional: keep up the good work.
Posted 13 Jan 2010 at 10:32 am ¶Maybe it’s because I’m in Taiwan, but for the life of me, line 6 sounds like “所有他那儿就有那个削＊的那个＊萝卜儿皮”. Do you know for sure about this part of your transcription? (maybe you have access to a better sounding recording than us?)
Posted 04 Feb 2010 at 2:42 pm ¶Lon, oh, if only I had access to some magically higher quality recording!
That’s a pretty tough section, I agree, but I’m pretty stuck on 削下来的 because that’s how folks here hear it. The devil seems to be in the ‘x’ of xià, which is pretty well elided, to my ears. That makes it incredibly tough to get clear words out of.
BTW, sorry for taking so long to respond. Somehow WP never notified me of your comment and it languished there until just now.
Posted 10 Feb 2010 at 5:24 pm ¶Post a Comment