What's the most pointless thing you know how to say? (In Chinese)

[DachZanz]

This past weekend, I did Halloween as Harry Potter.  My Chinese girlfriend wanted to be Harry and Cho Chang, his Chinese girlfriend from book 5... And it's no fun if you can't say the spells in Chinese!

 

Here's what I learned for anybody who's interested.

阿瓦达索命咒 Avada Kedavra (ā wǎ dá suǒ mìng zhòu)

除你武器 Expeliarmus (chú nǐ wǔ qì)

神护卫 Expecto Patronum (shén hù wèi)

锋无影 Sectumsentra (fēng wú yǐng)

钻心咒 Crucio (zuàn xīn zhòu)

夺魂咒 Imperio (duó hún zhòu)

飞来咒 Accio (fēi lái zhòu)

荧光闪炼 Lumos (yíng guāng shǎn liàn)

 

How about yourself? What nonsense have you crammed in your brain?

 

Edit: Nooo I misspelled Chinese in the title!

[imron]

Edit: Nooo I misspelled Chinese in the title!

Reparo!

[DachZanz]

WOW!  That's for the 瑞蓓娜 ! (ruì bèi nà)

[wushucrab20]

Those are pretty much all in my head now. I probably know those spells better than many other Chinese words that I should know. I read the whole series in Chinese so the spell names came up over and over again

[Lu]

荷兰的一千多个用英语授课的国际课程。 I can say it really fast and really fluent, too. Years ago I was flower girl/Dutch education promotion person at an education fair in Taipei. Apart from tulips I got to hand out cd's with information on said more than 1000 courses and so I had someone at the fair teach me this sentence (the tulips were much more popular). What it did teach me was how to learn to say complicated phrases fluenty.

[Xiao Kui]

Years ago I worked at a Chinese friend's sweet skin duck stand in Chengdu for a few days and had to ask everyone if they wanted the duck's butt or not. I think I just asked 要不要qiar qiar? no idea what character

[eion_padraig]

劳驾

[vellocet]

I always try to avoid this.  For some reason, the most useless crap seems to stick in my mind while actual useful vocabulary escapes me no matter how many times I review.  The names of foreign soccer teams always stay, while I can't remember which version of "soon" I should use in a sentence. 

[daofeishi]

Some of the more obscure or useless words I know just stick because they make so much sense in Chinese. Like, those of you who have ever tried to prepare old Scandinavian pancake recipes might know that Norwegians don't have the common decency to use baking soda, and put what I refer to as powdered urine, or "baker's ammonia" I guess is what the gourmands call it, in anything that needs a spongy texture. In Chinese it's simply 臭粉. 

[Luxi]

I'm addicted to Chinese TV historical dramas and am learning to subtitle them. One of the very first words I learnt and remember from my hobby is 寡人 (gua3ren2) - the "I" pronoun, used by an emperor or king to refer to himself. Useless on 2 accounts, unless I do a Wu Zetian, but sometimes I have to stop it jumping out of my mouth when speaking modern Chinese,

[geraldc]

清摻磨較叉燒包老鼠唔食豆沙包

Quite useful when decision making with children. It's the preliminary statement before rock, paper, scissors

[somethingfunny]

Luxi, you should come to the Classical Chinese subforum.  I was reading some instances of 寡人 just today.

 

And Vellocet, I find things like soccer team names really useful for everyday conversations.  After all, you don't want to be having a conversation with someone where they keep saying stuff like "Oh no, I like that other team, they're spanish, it's the capital city, they play in white..."  Really kills a conversation.

[skylee]

Re #10, 寡人 emphasises that there is only one such person. You can still use it in the term 孤家寡人

[Luxi]

Uh! Thank you, Skylee, that's very useful to know! 

 

Somethingfunny, the Classical Chinese subforum is very much in my sight, but need to catch up with the modern stuff a bit more and keep up with 3 MOOCs first.

[skylee]

Re #6， I think it is 翹（兒）翹（兒）. See definitions 5 and 5 of the link below.

http://tw.m.18dao.net/%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E7%BF%B9

This is when you might find it useful to know the meaning of characters, not just words.

[ouyangjun]

That would most likely be all my vices... The coffees I like to drink, the beers and wines, even cigars... It would probably be better if I did not know these