Top Tier Taobao Trick or Treat T-shirt
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Let's see how many LL readers get this one.
(The writing in red is the Japanese transcription of a vulgar Chinese expression, of which the small words at the bottom are a tame English translation.)
Selected readings
- "Ta Mother Noodle" (8/10/23)
- "Blindly busy" (8/26/18)
- "Carrie Lam's mother" (1/30/22)
- "The sound of swearing" (12/2/22)
- "TMD and LPM: a tale of five 'mothers'" (6/25/22)
- "mother-bleeping X’s" (Pinyin News, 12/8/06)
- "Deplorable words" (Language Hat, 8/2/04)
- "Tamade" (Language Hat, 7/23/05)
- For an annotated translation of Lu Xun's (1881-1936) celebrated essay on TMD (tamade) by Huichieh Loy in "From a Singapore Angle", see here.
[thanks to Francis and Jin]
Jonathan Smith said,
October 31, 2025 @ 4:18 pm
riposte — "再怎么着やびにたま强点儿ば“
Andrew McCarthy said,
October 31, 2025 @ 5:23 pm
For those like myself who speak neither Chinese nor Japanese, it would be nice to have the actual translation of the shirt's upper text, rather than just the bowdlerized version…
Viseguy said,
October 31, 2025 @ 7:16 pm
@Andrew McCarthy:
I don't know those languages either, but I'm guessing "You don't know shit from shinola".
Jonathan Smith said,
October 31, 2025 @ 8:55 pm
For the curious, Google Translate does admirably with the Mandarin syllable string "ni ta ma dong ge ji ba".
James in NZ said,
November 1, 2025 @ 2:11 am
@Andrew McCarthy et al
I speak Mandarin and some Japanese, so I make it out to be a roundabout way of saying “你他妈懂个鸡巴“ (ni3 ta1ma1 dong3ge ji1ba), which is a vulgar way of saying "you don’t know shit”.
Chris Button said,
November 1, 2025 @ 6:48 am
I'm not sure this even qualifies as a transcription. Someone who doesn't speak Japanese speaker clearly just plugged some toneless pinyin into a hiragana table.
Chris Button said,
November 1, 2025 @ 6:49 am
* someone who doesn't speak Japanese clearly just …
Chris Button said,
November 1, 2025 @ 7:36 am
For example, Xi Jinping becomes シー・チンピン. In addition to the use of katakana (not hiragana), note the long vowel sign ー in シー "shii" for "xi" and the choice of チ "chi" instead of ヂ "ji" (notably also equivalent to hiragana ぢ "ji" rather than hiragana じ "ji" on the t-shirt) for "ji".
Chris Button said,
November 1, 2025 @ 7:42 am
* … for "ji" in "jin"
He Zhang said,
November 2, 2025 @ 4:23 pm
My mother never allowed me and my brother to say such vulgar words. Anyway, this is kind of culture I know a little to share.
The sentence on the T-shirt in Chinese would be:
你他妈懂个鸡巴 you mother fucker know only penis (or Dick)
The more popular one is:
你他妈懂个球 you mother fucker known only the balls (or Dick)
It means you do not know anything.
贾平凹，famous writer from 陕西, is well-known for writing down the vulgar words in his books.
Chas Belov said,
November 9, 2025 @ 1:56 am
That's an interesting given name, 平凹. ¿Flat concave? ¿Peaceful concave?
I was aware jiba meant penis but didn't realize they used the character for chicken.