Comments on: Learning (or not learning) Chinese slang

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 05:48:06 +0000

In reply to Nicky. Yes, that's a good point! Understanding slang is considerably more important than learning to use it actively. However, I think my point is that the same argument you just made about 卷、摸鱼、牛马 can be made about any words in the language. It's hard to know which words would be suitable to compare with as that depends on your level, but for most learners (I'm explicitly not saying "you" because I don't know anything about your learning situation) there are certainly other wrods that they don't understand either and that are much more commonly used.

By: Nicky

Nicky — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 18:29:00 +0000

Personally I love Chinese slang.
And even though sometimes you might not be able to use it yourself, I still find it useful to understand it. Otherwise everyone will be talking about 卷、摸鱼、牛马 and you’ll be completely clueless.

By: Ashleigh

Ashleigh — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 02:59:20 +0000

I think people wanna learn slang to sound lax and not so “formally trained”
And especially on the internet there is a crazy amount of slang used all over the world. I believe prc internet users use slang to fly under the radar of censor bots. So if one finds themselves on a Chinese server they might be super confused? But that’s kind of a special case I guess.

Maybe if one had a gaggle of Chinese friends and their friend says something they don’t quite get. People don’t like to constantly have to explain what they meant.

I once had a foreign professor who’s English was pretty good but us students had to be particularly careful not to throw around any slang terms he wouldn’t get (I exclaimed “THATS SICK” when one of my peers showed me a picture I thought was cool. And was met with an extremely furrowed brow and interrogation of what the heck I was talking about ) this is in the Midwest mind you so many slangness all around. It’s in our blood.
Dunno where I was going with that////

Slang/ swears are usually just cooler to say also, like more fun. I dunno, people think they’re cool when they say something bad in a different language.

I do agree that slang changes too often to really be useful. But when I think of slang, I mostly think of idioms and short hand words (like ain’t) that many people use in everyday speech that are not just fad terms.

Also people just like to know when others are talkin shiet :p

ALLSOO the person who says gunna and wanna are only regional? I.. can’t imagine an American to have never said those two. I’m honestly shocked and my whole world is crumbling around me.

We need a slang word for slang I’ve used it too much.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 15:07:54 +0000

I would put slang and chengyu in adjacent, though not identical, categories. The sentence from the article “This doesn’t mean that you should never learn slang, it just means that you’re usually better off focusing on other things first” could apply to chengyu equally as well. The most significant difference would be that chengyu tend to last longer than slang, although it is conceivable that some of today’s slang could be considered chengyu in the future, such as 不明觉厉 or 十感然拒。

By: Harland

Harland — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 02:04:34 +0000

A lot of why Americans learn a second language is to be ‘cool’. Not because it’s actually useful. They don’t want the boring essentials, they want the flashy parts. Thus, they can show off their insider knowledge. It’s intoxicating to a certain kind of person who isn’t learning the language for reasons of dull practicality. Being able to sling around slang is a mark that you’re not like those other sheeple. Even today people talk about old and busted memes like grass-mud-horse like it’s some kind of secret society handshake.

By: HaveFunLearnChinese

HaveFunLearnChinese — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 22:29:02 +0000

I always try to learn the most common slang and obscene words in a foreign language so that to avoid unintentionally offending people of making them feel uncomfortable. One can easily pick up a new word from a movie or on the street and re-use it without ever realizing that it could be very offensive. Maybe this is not a big problem if you mainly use the language for informal communication, but if you use it for business then not knowing what not to say can be a disaster, in my experience.

By: Fearchar

Fearchar — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 20:54:41 +0000

I would definitely agree that slang is of little use for temporal and geographical reasons. Some language learners seem to be fascinated by slang that is either uninteresting or so regionally restricted as to be of little practical use. In Mandarin, it seems that some people regard PRC slang as the only “real” Mandarin, much as one hears (or even reads!) English learners’ use of US regiinalisms like “wanna” or “gonna” as if they were standard everywhere, instead of the restricted regionalisms they really are. Use 幹兒 inTaiwan, for example, and watch people fall about laughing. ?