No shitting here

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Sign outside an apartment in Taipei:

Posted on imgur by Jverne

The Chinese says:

Sài lín liáng, bùyào luàn diū gǒu dàbiàn 賽林涼, 不要亂丟狗大便
("contest grove cool, don't toss your dog poop here")

The first three characters make no sense in Mandarin.  You have to read them in Taiwanese, and they don't mean "please".

saílíniâ 賽林涼
("shit your mother" — one of the most insulting phrases in Taiwanese)

[h.t. Michael Carr; thanks to Michael Cannings, Grace Wu, Melvin Lee, Sophie Wei, and Chia-hui Lu]



7 Comments

  1. maidhc said,

    September 11, 2015 @ 4:32 am

    "contest grove cool" sounds like a great band name.

    The rest of the notice seems fairly clear.

    "Hella your family" maybe another band name.

  2. Adrian Morgan said,

    September 11, 2015 @ 9:41 am

    The title of the post reminds me of this Twitter discussion (about shitting and how to indicate an absence of it). I'm still rather pleased with my contribution, which academics are welcome to make use of.

  3. Chris C. said,

    September 11, 2015 @ 3:05 pm

    I assume this notice is not intended for the general public so much as perhaps a particular person? It seems odd to insult everyone as a way of ensuring compliance.

  4. K Chang said,

    September 13, 2015 @ 12:00 am

    Well, if you don't have a dog pooping about, your mom should have nothing to worry about!

    Which then, has the obligatory dog and poop picture (don't worry, no poop is shown)

    http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/file/6891_interpretation%20varies.jpg

  5. Graeme said,

    September 13, 2015 @ 8:09 am

    Why is the sign bi-lingual? Must be directed at a wide audience.

  6. flow said,

    September 14, 2015 @ 11:32 am

    I don't think the curse is directed at anyone in particular; as @Graeme said, the bilingual setup would speak against that. I guess the insult is used as an expletive, as in "for heaven's sake!", or German "Verdammt!", E. "damn". I've often heard "Gan ni nia" in the sense of "(holy) shit!".

  7. Terence said,

    September 21, 2015 @ 4:37 pm

    I'm pretty sure the sai in sai li nia is actually 駛, which is the Taiwanese for to drive (駛車), although a lot of young people use 開 now I think especially because it sounds the same as "shit".

    It actually means "fuck your mother". I read once this is where the 哇塞 (我駛) as used across China and Taiwan comes from. Funny to think all the kids in China are actually saying "I fuck".

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