Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #5: Mom Gets Mad
March 2nd, 2009 | View Comments
It’s the Teen Angst edition of Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook! Or if you prefer, the Family Dysfunction Edition! This week’s “travel” phrase might come in handy if you’re taking a family vacation and you manage to escape family drama to the bar.
“Mom just blew up at me.”
媽媽剛剛對我大發脾氣.
Ma1 ma3 gang1 gang1 dui4 wo3 da4 fa1 pi2 qi4.
さっきお母さんが私を怒ったんだ。
Sakki okāsan ga watashi wo okottanda.
Before I get to the translation, I want to mark a milestone in my Chinese language study. In the last couple of days, I’ve managed to read enough of a Chinese e-mail and a couple of Chinese forum posts to get the gist of the message without having to crack a dictionary. While I’m still a long way away from adult-level literacy, two months ago I could have maybe picked out one word in ten or twenty. The work is starting to pay off! Woo!
Unlike last week’s bizarro translations, this week it’s pretty straightforward.
Chinese: 媽媽 = mother, 剛剛 = just now, 對我 = towards me, 大 = big, 發脾氣 = throw a temper tantrum.
Japanese: さっき = a little while ago, お母さん = mother, が = subject marker, 私 = I or me, を = object marker, 怒ったんだ = got angry.
As usual, the Japanese are a little more polite than the rest of us.
Like in “Don’t stand on the desk!” the Kanji in the Japanese sentence aren’t the same as the characters used in the Chinese sentence.
母 (mu3) does mean “mother” in Chinese, but colloquially people usually say 媽媽 (ma1 ma3). 母 does appear in compounds like 父母 (fu4 mu3)—parents, literally “father mother”.
私 (si1) means something closer to “personal” or “private” in Chinese; 我 is used for I/me.
怒 (nu4) does mean “anger”, though it’s not a word I’ve ever heard used before. But I think if you substituted 發怒氣 for 發脾氣 in today’s phrase you’d get pretty much the same thing.
Yvonne posted this on March 2nd, 2009 @ 12:00pm in Chinese, Grandma's Crazy Phrasebook, Japanese | Permalink to "Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook #5: Mom Gets Mad"
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American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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