Amy Wong's curse words: real?

I just caught Into The Wild Green Yonder on broadcast television (most of it anyway; I’m not finding these Futurama movies all that watchable).

I heard Leo Wong, Amy’s dad, using the same set of Chinese curse words that Amy has used in the past. It sounds like “DAH SAH naaaaay . . .”

  1. Is this real Chinese cursing?
  2. If so, what does it mean?

I like the way it sounds. I might put it on my curse word list.

It’s Cantonese. Means roughly “hope you get beaten up” , or “wish you were dead”, or really both. Doesn’t quite have the sting once translated into English.

I had it explained to me by a Chinese friend in 6th form that it translates literally to something like ‘go trip over and die’, but basically paraphrases something like ‘get fucked’.

I was just listening to the DVD commentary today and they said that whenever the script calls for Amy to curse, Lauren Tom says something in Cantonese (I believe the same phrase was used in the series, too). And for this one, she taught the phrase to Billy West, who voices Leo Wong.

–Cliffy

P.S. I found the other Futurama movies of uneven quality, but I thought this one was hilarious.

Yeah, the problem is that in each “movie” had to be written is such a way that it could be edited into 4 distinct episodes.

you’re idiots. it means
SLAP YOU TO DEATH

Typing that in big red type means that you aren’t an idiot, right?

How did I know what grenadine’s join date would be before I looked?

wow I didn’t know we could type big and in colors. this is really gonna expand my posting style

To save you from idiocy ;), ‘fall down’ is a different phrase, 仆街, pronounced pok gai. It literally means “fall [in the] street”, originally meaning you will rot where you die - but the implication is indeed ‘go trip over and die’ - and its sense when used as a verb is ‘fuck off’ and as a noun is ‘you arsehole’.

i’ve not seen the shows but from this it sounds like “beat you to death”.

this refers to “pok gai”, and it is vulgar.

i must add that most Chinese i hear on American TV sounds horribly garbled, even by those who looks Chinese. it is terribly embarrassing.

eta: sey pok gai, bei gor guai lou qiong xin! :wink:

And British TV too. In episode 2 of the new BBC Sherlock Holmes the Chinese people were supposedly from Dalian, but were speaking Cantonese to each other.

As an aside, one of the Teletubbies is from Hong Kong. And thus some of the Teletubbies nonsense babble is actually Cantonese. For example, you’ll hear the Teletubbie slowly count in drawn out Cantonese yao, yi, sam, sei. It’s a little bizarre when you catch it.

Minor nitpick: yat, yi etc. I did not know that - will look out for it.

Amusing aside: the same “dah” in Amy’s insult is used in the phrase dah fei gei. Word-for-word this means “hit flying machine”, its implication being “beating the airplane”. And its sense is “choking the chicken”. :smiley:

You’re not allowed to insult other users in this forum. Don’t do it again.

a stretch. my guess is that this “dah” means “big”

big is “dai”, jjimm is correct.

Indeed, far too few posts are written in purple.

Thanks. My canto, while never good, is really slipping now that I don’t go to honky town every month or two any more.