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Niubi!: The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught In School (2009)

by Eveline Chao(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0452295564 (ISBN13: 9780452295568)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Plume

review 1: This is a great, funny, and comprehensive overview on cursing in Mandarin Chinese. Almost all of the curses that I heard during my time in Taiwan are featured in here, so if you memorise all of these you will never be short of a good retort (in real life OR online)! The assessments on the "severity" and tone of each phrase is spot on (at least according to my own my experience), and the explanations are both entertaining and enlightening.The division into themes is useful and clear, and makes it easier to use as a reference work. The book is mostly aimed at people who already have a basic understanding of Mandarin (if you have lived in Mandarin-speaking areas for an extended time, you will probably be familiar with most of these curses though); but the literal translations... more, explanations, and the English pronunciation hints make it accessible even to the complete layman (I think? This is hard to judge as a non-layman xD... But at least those pronunciation prompts are surprisingly not awful!).There were some editing mistakes here and there, such as typos or wrong pinyin/tone marks, and the addition of some form of index in the back would have been nice, but these were only very minor gripes for an otherwise lovely little book.
review 2: As an ABC, I found this to be extremely informative, especially since my parents were never the type to use these words and my exposure to "real" Mandarin has been limited. This book is basically a list of words to say for every occasion that requires cussing or slang. It does assume that you already know at the very least the basics of Mandarin, but one could have gathered that from the title. Definitely a fun read with words worth memorizing and using. less

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