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Hey guys, thank you soooo much for recommending the show! I'm watching it now (currently on ep4 and loving it). Yes some Chinese lines are more comprehensible with the context, I also noticed that they didn't just use Chinese to swear, some short phrases like 什么(what)/懂吗(understand?)/谢谢(thank you)/再来一杯(one more) can be found in the show here and there like a treasure hunt. Anyways, it's a good show like what you guys said, too bad it didn't last long. My favorite characters are the Captain and Kaylee so far 😉
The full length movie is also quite good. It's named "Serenity"
Also, we would love your version of a traditional "KZheadr Reacts" series of videos for Firefly (a video per episode) and Serenity now that you've got a better understanding of why Chinese was used in this show. Pleeease! 🤞
Glad you liked it. Browncoats unite!
this show is like space sweepers.. but they are space cowboys... the reason they speak chinese is because of the numbers of the chinese speakers all over the galaxy... almost all the planet they set foot speak chinese thats why they speak it..
I live in Canada. We get a LOT of accents here. My one room mate can't understand my Australian room mate. And the Newfoundland accent other Canadians have a hard time with. Not to mention Quebec French and Acadian French are also very different. So don't feel bad. Also the actors were basically given phonetic pronunciation lines. I use a phone app to speak to my Chinese room mate.
The Chinese in this show was basically a way to avoid censorship. Almost all the cursing was in chinese.
True. This gorram show be speaking them ruttin words. Best bet Fox ain't know of them or we be humped!
Good theory. I was following it in Canada, it was all in plain english.
@@The0ldg0at Whedon said this in a behind the scenes. Ps. Screw Joss whedon.
The pronunciation was intended to be partially hard to understand, as if they are repeating phrases they have heard, but do not have proper knowledge of the language.
@@The0ldg0at what? I'm in Canada, and I've only see this with the characters swearing in Chinese
Laughing was exactly the correct response. The characters often use Chinese to express frustration. Also, it was a way to get around American censorship for rude words. The two major colonial powers in the Firefly universe are China and the USA. A war of unification combined the empires and formerly independent planets into a into a colonel duopoly, where the Chinese and American aristocracy ruled the combined empire. The western characters are supposed to be speaking Chinese regularly, but poorly.
That fits in a sense: Pretty often when a character in nearly any TV show speaks supposedly german, I (as a german native speaker) have often a hard time figuring out what the heck they were supposedly saying. My guess is that's pretty much the problem of Jesse here.
Came to the comments section say the same thing
Very well put. I'm not going to try to write an explanation now.
Also, it's 500 years in the future. That's a fair amount of time for language to drift, especially across an interstellar empire.
@@16randomcharacters And not just natural drift, we get the result of 2 very different languages mixing with each other. The only reason we don't hear the same effect on the English that's spoken is because of it is the "narration language", meaning everything said in it is translated perfectly into our language for the purpose of filmmaking.
The cast of Firefly would not be upset if you laugh at them. They're all very nice people with a good sense of humor.
When she said "Only one season", I felt that.
and a movie :(
and not even all 13 episodes
@@annarboriter Still too long. 🧐
Right in the feels.
Me too :( what pissed me off more though...the game that was supposed to come out, was almost done and they got a gag order from fox.....wtf?
The idea in this show is that English and Chinese were the remaining dominant languages after people travelled to space so many people supposedly know both. Since they need to keep the normal dialogue in English for the viewers, they basically just used Chinese to swear to they could get around the censors. So any standard American viewer just knew "Chinese = Swearing/Yelling/etc" and the scene would just work.
Additionally, since it is set in the future, pronunciation might drift over time, so the production wasn't strict on pronunciation. Some actors didn't even learn their Chinese lines.
And yet they seemed to avoid having any Chinese characters. Probably my one complaint of this series.
Yet there are no Chinese characters in supporting or main roles. I call cultural appropriation on this. This makes Firefly ever more Nazi than it's already Neoconfederate bull.
@@CosmoShidan BS... they looked at the future and projected that 2 dominant languages would be used. it was not appropriation but recognizing that a huge portion of human population on Earth is Chinese, so in space it would also be the same. would you be this angsty if Whedon chose Indian language instead?
@@IcyTorment That's actually a scientific term used in cultural anthropology to denote a form of cultural domination of a minoritized peoples by a more dominant culture, which uses and steals a cultural article of clothing, song, or work of art out of their original context, for the sake of profit or gratification. In the case of North America for example, that would be white supremacism. Since the white majority in North American has so much power and influence in cultural, social and political affairs and matters, they thus use it to take what they see from a minoritized group with no real power. E.g. taking the image of black folk so they can create Micky Mouse or tassles from Native Americans on jackets.
One of the actors talked about trying to learn the Chinese phrases for the show and said it was a challenge to get the pronunciation and intonation right. He said that after a while, the language coach would just say "Good enough" and they'd move on
I took three years of Chinese in high school, and originally watched firefly with the child of Chinese immigrants. She and I laughed so much at what they were saying. I didn't understand all of it, but I knew enough to pick out certain phrases, and that was often enough for me to get an idea of what they were talking about.
Jessie I appreciate how humble you are in regards to thanking people when they correct your English...HOWEVER...please know that you speak English more clearly and correctly than quite a few people I come across each week. Not a single person on this earth speaks perfect English - that's why we are always making mistakes! Always learning, too. Its awesome that you are always seeking to improve but do take satisfaction in how far you have already come. Your English would be understood ANYWHERE in North America. And I will definitely be doing your 30 Chinese stories for $1!
One could argue that the Queen speaks perfect Queens English.
@@praising_aint_easy9703 One could argue anything.
@@praising_aint_easy9703 Or one could argue that what the Queen speaks is _not_ perfect OED English, because the Windsors are actually German.
Given that English is an unregulated language (unlike French), one could argue that it is impossible to speak perfect English because there is no such thing.
@@tarmaque Technically the Angles (the actual source of the language) were invaders of Britannia who originated near modern day Bavaria. It's a mutt language that has incorporated tonnes of words from virtually every language, but its oldest forms come from what is now Germany. So the Windsor's ancestry arguably makes them more suited to the language than not. OED be damned.
As a bilingual myself (English/Finnish), I can totally relate with the "minion language" confusion. When the speaker - like an actor - is replicating a line in a language they don't speak, it's often worse than just having a hard-to-understand accent. The sentence spoken by a non-speaker might, for example, botch the rythm of the sentence, making it sound like syllables connect to wrong structures in the sentence. Example: "I was thinking buying a new lounger for the patio" might turn into "I was thing king by Yin gun oo lung surfer the patio".
Prosody is hard to get right and not taught in grammar lessons. Likewise, a tonal language like Mandarin is much harder for non-tonal language speakers to learn, at least it's not Cantonese. These considerations argue in favor of language acquisition through immersion in the pop-culture of the target language.
I'm second generation polish and i get this alot when speaking to 3rd generation polish immigrants who remember a few phrases from thier grandparents. a thick accent and the wrong rythym can make it uninteligable.
@@ValdemarCamilo my dad told a story of a coworker who visited Sweden and picked up a hitchhiker. As they spoke in Swedish for a while the hitchhiker asked him to switch to English. It was hard to understand, because "You talk like my grandfather."
This is an excellent and hilarious example!
This is very true about Japanese as well. A common complaint by foreign speakers of Japanese is that "nobody understands me even though I'm speaking Japanese clear as day!" ... but as another foreign speaker of Japanese, it's very obvious that their Japanese intonation and rhythm is being "filtered" through the system of their native language. Japanese is a deceptively easy language to pronounce, but if you try to speak it as if it's English (or another language) with deep vowels, heavy consonants, vocal fry, etc., especially outside of the natural rhythm of the language, then monolingual native speakers will REALLY struggle to figure out what you're trying to say even if there's nothing "wrong" with your spot pronunciation.
It was fun watching you realize that they were all swearing. And nice to know that they were actually trying to speak Chinese. Mispronounced words in English can usually still be understood in context.
The smile and bop you do when you say "I got one" is absolutely adorable. You're very sweet and it was very funny to hear you go through so many insults and rude words XD
Reminds me of K-dramas when they write a character as having studied in America or being really fluent in English and I can’t understand or have difficulty understanding anything that character says in English.
Ah, yes! American Johnny!
You get that often in japanese anime. the voice actors speak english, but have such strong accents it's hard to understand them.
I remember listening to J-music and then looking up the lyrics only to find out the song was in English... That was a serious wake up call for young me, that people would produce and sell products with thick accents. I always thought they had the money and perseverance to get it "right."
The best one was when Korean-American English speaker Krystal had to say a line in English that no English speaker would say in Dream High. I wonder if she just didn't bother to correct the script, or if she tried but they didn't listen.
Firefly is probably using a Chinese creole with a load of linguistic drift thrown in. It is what happens when a Chinese and an American colony ship settled in the same star system a long time ago.
They are just terrible at it, but that would be a good way of explaining it. It's 500 years in the future, so it's likely the language would be changed. Kind of like the Belter Creole in The Expanse
Which would make sense except theyre speaking perfect contempory English with no linguistic drift. Real answer is theyre just bad at Chinese
@@realscottsummers It's called "narration language". The language that is substituted with our language for the purpose of us being able to understand it.
@@realscottsummers Of course that's the real answer.
@@HenryLoenwind Correct. Best example of that would be a scene in the Hunt for Red October when a character switches from Russian to English mid sentence. Suddendly the whole Russian submarine speaks English. It is understood that's only the narration language, they actually speak Russian, and might even justify Connery's accent, since "he's not Russian, he's Lithuanian by birth". So the character's accent in Russian is represented by the actor's accent in English. When some of the crew are supposed to actually speak English, the actors put on a (fake) Russian accent (as you'd expect). 500 years from now Mal could be speaking a barely understandable English, and a barely understandable Chinese. Movie (or in this case, TV) magic makes us hear the English part as contemporary English.
Her shock at all the cursing is so funny and cute! It's totally ok that you laughed.
Yeah it is a comedic show lol and far into the future where language has evolved or devolved lol.
@@mary-janereallynotsarah684 Roger that!
THAT was so fun! Firefly characters typically use Chinese to say rude, offensive, & even obscene things that are effectively not understood too clearly by the audience. This way, neither studio execs of the viewing public are likely to complain about what's being said! Good job Jessie; new belated subber!
I loved this show. I’m an ABC, Cantonese speaker and I found the mandarin speaking parts painfully hilarious 🤣🤣🤣.
Same here, ABC as well but a Mandarin speaker and while my Mandarin is pretty rusty, I can usually understand it. But with Firefly most of the time all I could tell is that they were supposed to be speaking Mandarin and that's about it.
It was supposed to be bad it was a space western they were saying naughty things. It got it past the American censors the children they are. We don't want to offend anyone now do we?
It's supposed to be funny. Also, the English they use is not coming from the Oxford Dictionary. In a way the degeneration of society is reflected in the language.
Whats an ABC? 👀
I'm not a Mandarin speaker (anymore) but I lived in Chengdu for a year and got used to hearing it. What was painfully hilarious (cringey, really) that it seemed they didn't even attempt to use the correct tones. That would throw off native and just learning Mandarin speakers!
In Firefly, when people left Earth that was the two main world powers were America and China and that’s why they spoke Chinese. In the show Chinese was used to get around censorship so most of it was swear words. The cast has talked about the difficulty they had with the Chinese lines and have apologized for butchering the language. The show is worth watching.
Compared to so many others, I can tell they tried their best. Considering theres so many lines, I hope they learned something at least... Or have an interest...
@@silveryfeather208 most of the asian languages seem hard to translate to english and vice versa .. you can write it off in the show because accents change over time especially when integrated into another culture and its so far into the future
You speak extremely well for someone who has never had a native English teacher. You actually speak better than people who have lived in the U.S. for years. You're doing great.
I believe a large reason Mandarin was attempted on the show was to authentically get swearing past the Fox censors so the show could air on US television. I love this show and appreciate how patient you were in your analysis.
"Shiny" is Future slang for: Great, Terrific, Brilliant. I think.
Correct! It can be used for any equivalent of Great/Awesome/Fantastic etc...
It is.
Scandinavian languages - at least Danish and Swedish - use that (or rather, "radiant") for just that. I'm not completely sure but I think it's also used in German. So don't have to go to the future to find that :)
"Shiny" is also used colloquially to mean a distraction (a sexy person, a new toy, something that is the "latest and greatest" iteration of the same thing [Apple products], etc etc...) that will take the full attention in the moment, but will be quickly abandoned as the newness fades.
@@thgeremilrivera-thorsen9556 can confirm that in finnish it applies too, ”loistaava” can be great but it literally means ”shiny”
I remember watching this on DVD back in the day. I watched it with english subtitles because I'm not a native english speaker, so subtitles help a bit to catch words when people speak fast. Whenever they spoke chinese it only said "Speaks galactic language", which I found hilarious. I really like your videos Jessie. Funny and eduactional at the same time.
1:01 "This is my town... It's a small town". Shows a city many times the size of my sleepy little rural town. (we have a population of just under 7,000) Your English is fantastic! You should be proud of mastering such a difficult language!
It's bigger than the city I live in XD
This was exactly my thoughts when I seen her show her “so called small town” it looks like a a small city to me.
I got that was well. Small towns in America don't have high rise buildings in them.
I was thinking the same thing. That is definitely a big town.
Small towns in china have like 3 million people lol
From Alan Tudyk's imdb page: According to the rest of the Firefly (2002) cast, he was consistently the worst speaker of Chinese on the show. He attributes this to having to learn long and complicated phrases such as "Mother of God and all her wacky nephews" in Mandarin. According to the "War Stories" (1x09) episode commentary, when he couldn't remember the Chinese dialogue for Firefly (2002), he would just make it up and hope no one noticed.
He did seem to get longer lines than the rest of them XD
And yet Tudik is the one who's Mandrin is recognizable to the Chinese speaker.
His character has a flair for language so i get how that would effect his Chinese expletives. "....and all her wacky nephews"? Lol
@@williamhogge5549. Now i'm just wondering, if tudyk was the worst, who has proved themselves as best amoung them?
Don't worry about laughing. There are interviews with the actors where they admitted they tried to say the Chinese as quickly as possible so that it wouldn't be noticed that they weren't saying it correctly. I really do like the concept though of mixing two languages together. Nice video it would be great if you watch the show.
If you haven't watched Firefly I would strongly recommend you to do so. You are missing out on a great show. It is like a western set in the far future on far away planets. The Alliance is the governing body in this universe which is a chinese/american organisation. As somebody that don't understand chinese, I'm convinced most of the chinese is put in to get around american censorship.
Jessie doesn't mention that there isn't one chinese language, even today China is huuuuuuge and there are some regions that don't understand other regions Many english natives don't understand some english dialects, in yorkshire, or scotland, for example It's a myth that jessie and other random chinese folk would automatically understand the chinese from every chinese region
Hahah, you definitely have a different perspective on a "small town" than I do... :D
I was gonna say lol I come from the American Midwest where a small town has like a gas station, a stoplight, maybe a McDonald's, and a few houses.
The population density in urban China is much higher than what you see in a small town in the Midwest US. Comparing any urban area with a rural area gives a wrong impression.
I lived in China for 10 years. From that short clip of her town, I can see why you would think that, because it looks pretty urban and vertical, but I would guess that the size of it is deceptively small despite the number of high rise apartments. That's just how they have to live because of the sheer number of people. It looked a lot like a satellite village adjacent to the city I lived in. Enough tall buildings for that many people to live in, but few businesses, no malls. Just a Walmart, a Hospital, and enough restaurants and convenience stores to make do.
@@BuuTube Were you a teacher? Or were you doing something else?
@@gilian2587 yes. English. It was a good experience
ok, this actually helps me out a lot. Because I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Firefly, and my wife is Chinese (native-born and raised), so when I showed her the show I expected to finally get the translations of those mandarin lines, and after each one, I would turn to her and she would just look at me and shrug, and say 'that's not Chinese".....I thought she was nuts, but I guess it's not just her.
lol, she is nuts? u place too much trust in firefly over ur wife, which is understandable.
The creator of this show, Joss Whedon, is really fond of Mandarin Chinese, that's why he incorporated it into the show. The reason why there is so much foul language is because the characters will only start speaking it is when they are angry or upset at something or someone, which is literally in every episode. Also, there are no subtitles during those scenes, it was left out on purpose so that the non-Mandarin speaking audience could try to guess what was said, whereas native speakers like yourself will understand it, but have a hard time as well.
Exactly. Also at time in order to air on TV at the time slot they wanted + get the budgets they needed they couldn't use swear words, so to circumvent that they had all the swear words in Mandarin. In the universe the show is set in (far future) the idea is that American and Chinese culture have become universal, so everyone knows English and Mandarin.
at 7:17 She tried so hard to not laugh or try to understand she almost cried... Gotta give some credit for that xD
Guy loves mandarin so much he didn't bother forcing Jayce to even attempt a proper pronunciation more than once or twice? Yeah. Not biting.
@@user-ul8ot3vd7m People who don't naturally speak tonal languages have the hardest time just trying to phonetically memorize it. Take my native language for example, it has 9 tones, 12 tones, if you count the slangs. I've met people who've studied and learned my language for more than 20+ years, and they still get a lot of it wrong, making me think they are speaking gibberish at times.
@@user-ul8ot3vd7m Yeah, they're on an 8 day shooting schedule (i.e. 1 episode every 8 days), the cast doesn't really have time to master a foreign language they've never spoken before. If this were a feature, with months of pre-production and then months more of actual shooting, then maybe yes.
of course the main issue is the actors were usually given these snippets of Mandarin without much time to practice them phonetically, and for the most part, the Mandarin was used to get around "bad words" rules on American TV. You can't say "Fuck you" on American broadcast TV, but you can say it in Mandarin. One can make up an excuse that in this future, 500 years from now, the two superpowers, US, and China, merged and colonized space, and the merging of English and Mandarin produced a bastardized dialect of Mandarin with Americanized pronunciation. :) The show would have been better if they had sent the cast to basic dialect training, say, 2 months of Mandarin class to get the basic pronunciation rules, but I think they never fully committed to the 'cultural merge' bit, they used it as set dressing to color the universe, but they could have dived much deaper. First, by having an Chinese member of the cast. Secondly, besides throwing around random Chinese characters and phrases, they could have had the characters actually adopting some Chinese culture, like show them eating Baozi or something, or when the characters have a wedding, show them doing a mixed Chinese/Western wedding, etc. But Firefly is a *great* show and the Chinese aspect of it isn't that central to it.
I distinctly remember baozi being in one episode lol. I think it was the first one with Saffron in it.
Its also that some of the actors simply didn't give enough of a shit.
The fact that the show didn’t have a single Chinese or Chinese American actor as part of the crew speaks volumes on their whole commitment to the blended culture aspect.
@@DD-pi1ks Culture and individuals are two separate things. You don't have to be Chinese to partake in Chinese culture.
@@kjhuang that’s true but if society has become so integrated to the point that everyone speaks Chinese and English as its stated in the show the absence of actual Chinese people is strange, exclusionary, and appropriative. Whedon wanted the language and aspects of the culture as set dressing but invited zero Asian faces to be present on screen. I still love the show but it’s inexcusable that there were zero asian cast members in my option.
Bless you for attempting to translate for us, and I'm so glad that you're watching the show now. Enjoy!
I noticed the phrases she understands best are the ones where there is no background noise. Also, the show tends to use Chinese only when the characters are swearing or surprised by something, which is why there are so many" bad words".
"Context is King" is a phrase we say that talks a bout the importance of understanding the entire situation, not just a snippet of it. The contextual “how” we communicate and what form that experience takes has become as important as the actual content being delivered. To that effect, context is everything. "Contextually" it would be easier to imply what they say if you saw the entire scene. Maybe you should watch one episode. Most of the "swear" words are in the "galactic" language. The language in turn becomes a "prop" on the show. So do not worry about your confusion. Love your channel. Keep at it.
Wow, this is the first time watching one of your videos and I'm pausing a minute and twenty seconds in to say that, as a native English speaker, it sounds to me like you've lived in an English-speaking country for years. Your English is really good. Honestly, it sounds like you could have been born in America to non-English speaking parents.
Her English is a lot better than my non-existent Chinese, that is for sure.
@@jennifermccrary1570 I visited China once, and learned to say "Hello", "Yes" and "No". And probably butchered the pronunciation completely. Thankfully, in Beijing and Shanghai most of the people I met knew enough English that we could communicate. It was a fascinating and wonderful trip, and one of my fondest memories.
2yrs late but I'm glad I found this video. Thank you so much for taking the time to try to translate some of the show. This was very informative and I thoroughly enjoyed your reactions. I think that if the show would have continued, the cast would have gotten more proficient at pronouncing the lines. Anyway, thanks again.
Thank you so much for this video! I love Firefly and I was intrigued to learn what the "Chinese" was. I appreciate all the transactions you could provide! 😊
For the record, the official translation of the older black gentleman (a priest) swearing at the napkin is “filthy fornicators of cattle!” He is seeing a comrade’s earlobe which was sliced off by a crime boss.
07:20 Shiny! it is used as slang in the show. In that case, consider it a sarcastic expression.
Especially at the end, they do a lot of what I call Chenglese, where they frame Chinese words or phrases in an English sentence. We speak this way a lot in my home since my wife and I are fluent in both. We'll often say things like "I wanna 锻炼 after dinner," or "昨天我跟孩子说了 do you wanna eat 糖饼 or 炸酱面?" And we usually curse in Chinese and follow it with English sentences like in Firefly. But in the video they were mumbling and the clips were edited together so fast, it really was super hard to follow. I did understand that guy say something to the effect of 再见我的屁股 or "Kiss my ass good bye." It helps if you know how foreigners commonly mispronounce Chinese and then you can guess some of it.
I thought that sentence was something very dirty 😅
@@HiCy2012. Well as I read many comments here, turns out it's not only for world building purposes, but to get around network censorship by saying some Really dirty words!
This was absolutely fascinating to see a native Chinese speaker break this down
It was Joss Whedon's way of getting around censorship, since the foul language censor for US TV only accounts English and some Spanish swear words. so the characters could swear all they want but it has to be in Mandarin.
NO! NO No No. Joss wanted to show people coming together in the future. A blending of cultures... The censors was just a bonus. Jesus man, did you even see the show?
no, it was not, lol.
Fun video! I loved how seriously you tried to interpret these clips. Like most people have already commented, the actors probably didn't have much (if any) time to practice these mandarin lines so it's not surprising they were almost unrecognizable to a native chinese speaker like yourself. It's a very good show though, worth checking out if you have time. Especially if you're interested in the Western (think "cowboys") American dialect and word choices. It's basically a Sci-fi Western with minor chinese/japanese motifs thrown in there. Side note - your English was just about perfect in this video, so keep up the great work Jessie! Us native English speakers would be happy to help if you have any good English swear words you'd like to learn since you were kind enough to give us some great Chinese ones. 🤣🤣
I loved this video and your English is amazing! The actors in the show were given recordings in Chinese that they were supposed to memorize but most of them didn't. They were faking it.
I loved this so much. Thank you for lending your ear to Firefly. You're wonderful.
Firefly is such a great show, so many interesting characters, brilliant world building and just the right amount of suspense and terror. You should check it out.
And it has Jewel Staite, a reason to watch it in itself.
I always felt the Chinese in Firefly was how they thought it might sound in 500 years, kind of like it might be hard for someone 500 years ago to completely understand Chinese today.
Yep, especially if it's sharing "airtime", so to speak, with English. Think of it sort of like a less extreme version of what happened with the Anglo Saxon language when England got taken over by the Normans. The language didn't disappear in favor of Norman French, but it instead sort of blended with it to become Norman English. The nobility and royal family spoke Norman French, but I'm talking in general. Like I said though, the universe of Firefly has a less extreme version, where both languages are spoken equally, but the sound of the language kind of shifted to fit more comfortably in a native English speaker's mouth. Another example in history is what happened to Native American words when the westward expansion happened. Many states are actually given NA words for names, but pronounced in a way that English speaking Americans were more comfortable with.
Indeed. I would imagine that after 500 years both American English and Mandarin Chinese would be unrecognizable, especially if through a political union there would be more than a few loanwords and idioms passing back and forth from both languages into each other's vocabulary, as well as changes in vowels, intonation, and meanings. I understand that Chinese is a tonal language, in which words that are spelled the same in Roman alphabet will have different meanings because of either a rise or fall in the pitch and emphasis on sound values. It would appear, based on that theory (and somewhat poor pronunciation by the actors), a Chinese language of a distant future may have possibly lost some of that. You could liken it to the difference between Anglo-Saxon (Old English, ca 800 CE) and Modern English (since 1550).
No. I doubt it's how they think Chinese will sound in 500 years. It's more a matter of what english does to words and phrases it borrows from other languages.
I don't mind if a language has a tones or emphasize on certain sylabils of words. But I think it's a bug if tone or emphasize encodes actual information. It's basically homonym. And each homonym in any language is also a bug. This is not a way to have efficient communication.
@@TremereTT Language isn't always about efficient communicaiton.
Thank you for covering this show! Love your videos!!
The "Chinese" in firefly was a way they used to get around US swearing restrictions in TV at the time.
I didn't read all 300 comments, but the poor, suffering young woman who made this video should know: the cast has readily proclaimed they had the WORST time remembering and saying the Chinese lines - and yes: most of the clips she watched contained swearing, because the writers wanted a way to by-pass the TV censors. Many of the actors publicly apologized for the way they 'butchered' the Chinese. Thanks for doing this video! I have literally wondered, since the show first aired, whether they were actually speaking Chinese, or just trying to speak "Chinese-ish".
Wow! You fixed your pronunciation...great job! At 9:25 he said 闭嘴. These are the first words I learned in Mandarin. I asked my friend (from Beijing) at work what to say in Chinese when someone sneezes and she taught me to say Bi Zui. Hahaha, eventually someone got mad at me and told me it means "Shut Up!".
You've been punked! 😂
The show happens in future, when English and Chinese are the only languages left, and everyone knows both. They use chinese especially when swearing. It's always only a few words between English dialog and it's not translated. You are meant to get a general idea what they mean without knowing any Chinese. Firefly is really good, but it takes a while to figure it out.
Damn i can no longer ignore people who comment who have really finnish names cause the urge to just yell ”SUOMALAINEN NÄHTY TORILLA TAVATAAN” is too strong xd
1:37 Aw, I wish you'd watch the actual show, and reacted on a clip by clip basis there. The show is *amazing*. ^^ (Yes, I'm definitively a browncoat)
"they rapping with a nice flow" lol Also it's an awesome show, please watch it :) browncoats 4ever
When I was an English teacher in China, my ex-pat American friends and I would watch this together and make fun of their pronunciation. My Mandarin was/is pretty basic, but all my other friends studied and spoke mandarin with different levels of fluency (one of them teaches Mandarin in US high school now). Other than the Chinese, we all loved this show, though it was unfortunately short-lived. Also, I love how relative the term "small town" is. In the US a small town is considered less than 5,000 residents.? Which would be considered a tiny village in China.
I absolutely ADORE your reactions to these. All great! Thanks!! I was always curious! So, during interviews, the actors stated they were taught these statements on the fly. The training was not formal, just "repeat this". So, I figured a lot would be lost on their inability to perceive/understand different vocal inflections (I know I had some difficulty when learning Hangul from the South Korean locals, and I'm sure there are similar issues when learning any language). Thanks!!! What a fun video!
Wow, Jessie. What a fun video. I just stumbled upon it in my YT feed because my feed knows I love Firefly, so of course I loved your video for that reason alone. But ohmygod, your English is soooo good. On any scale of English that can be used for people who've learned it as a foreign language (second language, too, but learning it as a foreigner while never having had a native English teacher or tutor - well, that is far more impressive than learning it while living in Canada or America.) Really, your gift for English blows me completely away, and I say that as a former teacher of non-native English students. You, in fact, remind me of several of my favorite Korean students who were also amazing. So, again, it was delightful to watch your video today. Unfortunately, I probably won't check into your teaching Chinese videos, and it's for a silly but also a little bit real reason. I've learned two languages beyond my own (one well, the other spotily) that didn't use the English alphabet, and after the last I swore to myself if I picked up another, I wouldn't have to learn another whole character set. And, well, as you surely know, your language has something like the Lord God King of character sets. (Okay, I might watch some, assuming I get to hear some more of your wonderful English.)
Because the show set in the year 2517 in a different universe I think it’s supposed to be a alternate/futuristic form of Chinese.
Exactly. How many English speakers would 100% understand the language of Chaucer or even Shakespeare?
More like a bastardised version of chinese. When words are borrowed from another language they are often mispronounced and when that word becomes popular, that mispronounciation can become the new norm or a new word.
Shiny is supposed to be like the word 'cool' in the future. The makers predicted that most people will use both languages interchangeably in that future setting. The actors tried very hard to get it right.
This was their way of avoiding censorship, by cursing in Chinese. But they do occasionally say little expressions as well
This was such a fun watch. Thank you so much for going through this. I really enjoyed your genuine laughter at the show and I'd love if you'd do a video about how they could have said what they wanted better. Or better suggestions that they could have said.
Hi Jessie! To start, I would like to say, your English is absolutely excellent! I would love to see another video like this breaking down what they are trying to say in the show. I studied Mandarin for a few years in college so I can catch one or two little things, but I am far, far, far from being fluent. I was really amused that you laughed or said "What?" in many of the same places I did when watching it. (I couldn't never convince my friends that the scenes weren't working because their tones and pronunciation are completely off, which didn't really play well in trying to depict them speaking Chinese. I will give the actors all the credit in the world however; as none of them had studied Chinese, they were given very strange sentences to try and say, and had to try to show the proper emotions while speaking words they didn't understand. It takes very talented actors to make that work, and for the most part, they did.)
_firefly_ has many admirable qualities and a lot of diehard fans, but its chinese is not one of its strongpoints lol.
Not true. The show is set in the far distant future. It is only natural then that we should expect the show's language to have evolved beyond its modern dialect. The fact everyone speaks both English and Mandarin as if they were a single, unified language demonstrates this fact. What we discover from listening to the characters speak is that the English they use is of an older, mid 19th century dialect. Therefore, the Mandarin should also reflect this, which it does. If you speak Mandarin with a modern dialect, then you have to keep in mind the show is not trying to use your dialect. It is trying to use a much older one.
@@rofyle you're either trying too hard, or not trying hard enough. if you're gonna obsess over the show to the degree that you feel compelled to defend it at all costs, you should go all the way, and try to figure out the exact nuances of how the language purportedly changed from the present day to the time of the show. if that was a real thing, it would be reflected in every character's speech, instead of the different actors all making different mistakes and generally acting like they were given the lines on short notice and never had the opportunity to actually learn how to say any of it properly.
@@sirmoonslosthismind Ah, but if they all came from different cities, nay, different planets, it's only natural that they would all have their own, distinctive, separate pronounciation, _dong ma?_ 😁 But no, seriously... it's *OBVIOUSLY* due to the actors not being proficient in the language (and the lack of a Mandarin coach), however I don't see why we can't use the "500 years in the future, the language has evolved" in-universe explanation, given how *IT MAKES MORE SENSE* than the English remaining exactly the same (except for "shiny" and a couple of other expressions).
I don't know why anyone would be impressed by even accurate use of any language to get around TV censorship.
@@TearDownGenesis why not? its inventive, it actively allows them to swear in a serious manner without the sillyness of made up words like 'fracking' that often get used instead, its also helps to set the cultural theme for the show, what amuses me is that we have no idea what they are saying but it still makes sense
Firefly was a future human race where cultures and languages had merged and overlapped. But really It was a way for the writers of the show to let the characters Swear on camera.
Great, honest reaction video. You really took it to heard and did your best. Plus, I’ve always wanted to actually understand what they are supposed to be saying in their broken Chinese. Thank you!
Hilarious reaction video! Well done! Created by Joss Whedon, Firefly was a short-lived series (which also had a follow-up theatrical film) set as you mentioned about 500 years in the future. The premise is very similar to Cowboy Bebop. It’s a space western involving a group of smugglers trying to survive among a system of human space colonies. Joss Whedon came up with the idea of peppering the dialog with Chinese, 1) to show the marriage of the two cultures, but 2) use Chinese phrases as a way to get around American TV censorship of swearing. You can’t say f-k on TV, so they throw in a Chinese swear word instead. The result of course is you have American actors who don’t speak Chinese trying to speak Chinese-to I’m sure hilarious results. As you said, it’s 500 years in the future and languages do change a lot over time. Great video!
Just to boost your confidence, I can say that in many cases (especialy when a TV show has a limited buget but brilliant ideas) they have to kind of do their best with what they've got. The actors were probably given lines with chinese phrases written in English with no instructions on how to read those. And considering that Chinese is a tonal language it's super easy to buther any word in it if you use the wrong tone. Hollywood has showed Russians as the villains for ages now and this show also had someone with harsh "eastern-european" accent. And what I can tell you for sure is that for all these years they have been failing to imitate Russian even a little bit. This has been the common practice until they've aired the show "Daredevil" in whish for my huge surprise they were speaking pretty decent Russian. Yet the rest of the movies are just a joke for the viewer. We hear them "speak Russian" and we do need subtitles to understand what they've just murmured. There's a scene in one of the Mission Impossible movies where Simon Pegg and Tom Cruize impersonate russian army generals inside the very hart of Moscow - the Kremlin. Once they were stopped by one of the low ranked officers to answer some questions. At that moment if I'm not mistaken it was Tom Cruize who said something like "how dare you ask a general for his papers?" or something similar. And the low-ranked officer figuratively peed his pants and stepped back. That's what the intention was. That's what most of the audience saw. But for any Russian watching this movie this part was were the movie was supposed to end. Tom Cruize butchered his phrase so badly that it would be impossible to even consider him as even a relative of someone who knows a Russian person. It was super bad and in reality he would be shot dead immediately as a spy and an army general impersonator.
Really fun a bit informative and absolutely adorable to watch. Thank you!
I have been wanting to know for YEARS what these guys were saying and if it was authentic! Thank you so much!
Recommendation: Watch the entire series, not just the bits with Chinese. :-D
In the show the Chinese and US flag are together in one. Everyone knows both English and Chinese but usually they speak Chinese when they're stressed and it was a good way for them to swear without being censored. And for early 2000's it's amazing they even tried. In most every episode there was apparently really bad Chinese.
I think this perfectly describes how my brain functions, normal tasks in English, swearing at stuff in Chinese, Chinese (canto) swearing is so much more colourful.
I'd imagine the Chinese people in this world would use a form English to curse
Great breakdown I learned a lot, very nice to watch and see your reactions to the script! And also to go back and understand such crazy pronunciations.
Thank you! for this and for the Chinese translations in Futurama. I have been a fan of both these shows for a long time and always wondered what the Chinese phrases were. I think that in Firefly, the actors/actresses only had a short time to learn the Chinese phrases and so they couldn't pronounce them well. It's pretty cool that the Chinese was at least supposed to be authentic, instead of all just being completely made-up. Ah and now I see your pinned comment about how you watched the Firefly show... it is so good! welcome to the club.
Laughing is absolutely appropriate, your reaction is hilarious. You should try to get ahold of some scripts to tell us what they were TRYING to say 😂
The Firefly series had a person on staff who was Chinese and was responsible for the Chinese dialogue. But the writers and directors kept wanting Chinese swear words, which she didn't know. In an interview she said how she would call or text her friends to ask about swear words. The other problem the show has is that none of the actors knew how to speak Chinese. They were trying to learn it phonetically (memorize the sound and repeat it) so they probably messed it up quite a bit. By the way, pronunciation does have an 'o' in it. In Canada, it is pronounced "pro-none-see-a-shun". That's a long 'a'. Also, your small town looks a lot bigger than the city I live in! Which is London, Ontario, Canada, population about 380,000 people.
These are the kinds of reaction videos that I like, when the person brings new insight to the table.
This was so much fun. Thank you!
Your assessment that it wasn't really supposed to be Chinese was spot on. Others have stated the back story and the practical reasons for doing it, so I will just add that mixing languages isn't uncommon in the US. In California, Miami, and New York you will see people mix Spanish and English quite a bit (some people call it Spanglish). It happens in Puerto Rico too (my first language is English, and my Spanish is, um, not great. I mixed them to be understood when I didn't know the Spanish word I needed, and the native Spanish speakers there did the same thing back. When both people only speak a little of the other's language it increases the likelihood they understand each other). The US has such a large immigrant population that a lot of kids learn English plus something else at the same time and will mix and match, but usually with the English grammar.
I know this is a two-year-old comment but like... this. The Chinese, itself, may not be very authentic, but I agree that the way they switch languages for certain phrases is absolutely an authentic bilingual way of speaking. Even though mostly it's for swear words, it's clear that some Chinese words are being borrowed into their English by themselves. And when they fully codeswitch mid-sentence, they do so at clause boundaries which is where most bilingual speakers who have two native languages usually do it.
They used mandarin to swear. Subscribed!
Really enjoyed watching your video, I am a huge Firefly fan and this was very interesting to see from a native Chinese speaker's point of view!
My copy has translations for the Chinese, and I remember 3:25 is "This is a nice development ...." meant sarcastically, 9:27 is "Everyone shut up!" and at 10:45 he's saying "This is "a knot that indulges insanity", but I don't have time to unwind it!"
You did great! As you learned, this was a short-lived and terribly beloved series. We fans often referred to ourselves as Browncoats. The Chinese was thematic, but as many have pointed out, mainly a way to throw cursing in without getting into trouble. I imagine the cast's pronunciation was mostly, if not entirely, devoid of tones, so it must be hard to understand.
I got one! Your clip at 9:26-ish he said (to shut up) “闭嘴” (bi4 zui3). 😂 …but yea, this episode was hard to understand.
if i remember correctly the crew of the firefly would mainly speak "Chinese" is when they are swearing, in order to keep with the rating of the show.
I'm glad you're watching it all and not just the bits of Chinese. It's such a great show.
thank you for reviewing their attempts to speak Mandarin- however badly. as others have already posted0- it was mainly to bypass the television censors, and yet 'get across' the idea of the bad intent. if you get some time, DL the Firefly series and the Serenity movie- about 14 hours total. you may get a better understanding of the intent by watching the whole episode, rather than clips of just the Mandarin. thank you for sharing this wqith us :)
LOL I Love your reaction to this. Apparently there were being taught the lines phonetically so a lot of it is really bad... I don't speak Chinese but I've heard enough of various dialects to know the sounds were often if not nearly always kinda off. I also know that when learning Arabic initially sounds that sounded the same to me were very different to native speakers. (which is why I understand more arabic than I speak) English speakers often don't realize they aren't saying things right. You were really great about it here though.
Watched Firefly so many times and knew the Chinese was basically swearing but nice to know that it was authentic and in context. Your English is extremely good
I have seen every episode and it is the BEST series I have seen. They did not speak straight chinese, just what seemed like one word at a time. This show was way ahead of its time and needs to be brought back.
The problem is largely their accents, which is why it was so much easier to understand the boy, since children are better at picking up language nuances. If it helps, try to think of it more as Pidgin Chinese. Or, to make a semi-appropriate play on words, Pidgin Pinyin. 😉 Edit: it might also help if you had the context of the scenes to go by. This video is just throwing the clips at you with no sense of what's going on.
This was a fun video. Need a good job of explaining some of the more difficult to understand words that were presented in this crazy dialog. I'm also glad that the viewers are helping you to improve your English pronunciation. The fact that you were taught to speak English by a non English teacher teacher is incredible.. Because your English accent is very very good. John from life Academy
Thank you very much Jessie. As a fan of Firefly I enjoyed very much your analysis. Your laughter was not misplaced as the characters are actually irreverent rogues and swear A LOT. You helped me appreciate the story much more.
The actors commented that they had such a hard time speaking Chinese. Since it was so difficult they went with the best possible take, because they all said they were so bad at it.
I love your channel and need to know where you’re getting your beautiful qipao from!
This one is tailored from Taobao 😊
Hi Jessie, how are things in China for you, Ive heard there are power outages and other issues at the moment. hope you are well
This was great; you're great, instant sub!
Thank you!!!!!!! was very curious about firefly's pronunciation, came here to find out more about the show!
It sounds like they used Chinese to swear when they could not in English on the show.
Aside from the Chinese in the show is a Mandarin-Cantonese Hybrid, you must also remember that firefly takes place in the future in a different solar system in a future govt called The Alliance with is a merger of the US and China in that future, and in Firefly we see a culture that is also a American and Chinese hybrid, and even look at the flag of the Alliance as well. Accents change over time in every culture, as do terms, etc. So we can chalk up any accent issues in their Chinese as how the language has evolved in the future as part of that American Chinese hybrid, as well as the two Chinese dialects used. (though Chinese was mostly used for swearing to get around censors)
I completely understand that you wanted this video to be informative , instructive but for me it is one of your best entertaining videos. Don't ever apologize for laughing cuz it was funny. You are so authentic in you're reactions that it's impossible to not enjoy them. I really enjoy watching you work though each unexpected scenario. You're critiquing with a logical mindset when the situation calls for a more of an understanding that there's nothing logical about it. It's entertainment not a documentary. A better understanding that Futurama and The Simpsons are by nature one big gag or joke. Trying to make logical sense out of them is futile. You're the best. ❤❤❤❤❤
I love this vid so much. I just keep watching it over and over...