Chinese gold-farmer phrasebook for English-speaking gamers

A group of English-speaking gamers have compiled a phrasebook for chatting online with Chinese gold farmers, including phrases like "Would you like to join my group?" and "please do not steal my mobs."

jia you - GO GO GO! (Use as a cheer)
ni kan! - look!
Pao! - Run!
Deng yi xia. - Wait a moment.
Ni xian zou. - You go first.
bu yao sha ta - dont kill him/her/it
bu yao sha wo - don't kill me

Farmer Speak (Thanks, Nick!)

• [AwesomeRobot]

  They should include a Pinyin pronunciation guide in there. 

  • [Khordas Salamander]

     Less critical when typed out, fortunately.

    • [Just_Ok]

      Yi ding

  • [Just_Ok]

    Ni xian zou.

• [bcsizemo]

  Please tell me “Leeroy Jenkins” translates…

  • [Andrew Singleton]

    I could see that actually as a universal ‘I’m about to do something really stupid’/Attack Battle Cry

• [Sirkowski]

  What’s U MAD in Chinese?

• [Nadreck]

  Don’t see how you can use this transliteration.  There’re no intonation marks.  ”Pao” probably means four different unrelated things depending on how it gets intoned.

  • [Herbert Ip]

    i’m chinese, and though yes it could mean a ton of things, at the same time it’s all about context. there’s a ton of words with the same exact pronunciations, but we still understand each other

• [Ashen Victor]

  “Shi – Yes”
  Wtf?!
  No no no, Shì means “to be”, there is not an universal “yes” in Chinese mandarin.  

  • [KWillets]

    Shi de (是的) is common, meaning “it is”.  

    Some of the usage seems odd, although it could be my poor recollection.  Do people say “ni kan” instead of “kan” or “qing kan”?

    • [James Clark]

      Yeah, Shi by itself is fine I think; although generally I guess it’d be better to give them “好不好？“　hao3 bu4 hao3, lit. “Good not good?” . I love that little construction in Chinese, it works for everything – and you can just respond with the same word. “走不走？“ zou3 bu4 zou3　(go not go) or “走吧” zou3 ba (go [suggestion], let’s go?)－　“走！“  go!

      oh, and I find “看这个“，　kan4 zhe4ge, lit. “look this”, to be most frequent, though I think “kan” or “看了“ “kan le” is fine too.

      • [Herbert Ip]

         don’t even need to. just say hǎo mā?
        zou ba is more lets go without the ? so zou le ba would be more a suggestion.

        and kan le is a bit too cryptic, cuz it’s also past tense if you don’t add a ? to it.
        kān yí kān works too, literally means look one look.

    • [Herbert Ip]

       kan, ni kan are very similar, one means look, the other means you look.

      qing kan is please look.

  • [Herbert Ip]

     shi does mean yes.

    and at the same time there is not a universal “yes” in the english language. there’s affirmative, confirmed, agreed, true, etc etc i can go forever.

    shi works perfectly fine if someone asks you a yes or no question.

• [Anton Dyudin]

  “Ni hen que de! – You are a f****t! (Lit: You lack any sense of class whatsoever.)”
  Foreign insults are the best.

  • [Jens Reuterberg]

    Yes foreign insults are fantastic – nothing beats hearing a 15 yo american calling my mother a prostitute, yet again, in english.

• [nachoproblem]

  But you know this is obsolete now. They don’t farm for gold anymore, they just hack accounts. Far more time-efficient.

  (Another reason to quit playing WoW, or not to start.)

• [neelu sree]

  I am not native english speaker.I am learning english with videos like this one http://youtu.be/s6Ris80-QdY

• [pizzicato]

  wo ke yi cheezburger?

• [Nagurski]

  無 用.

• [Guest]

  Nǐ yǒu yīgè xiǎoqū tíngchē xǔkě zhèng, gāi hángmǔ ma? – Do you have a residential parking permit for that aircraft carrier?

  • [Herbert Ip]

    terrible grammar. i would have no clue what “gāi hángmǔ” means if you didn’t translate it in english. should be 航空母艦 or háng kōng mǔ jian4 (dunno how to do a down dash :S)full sentence qing wen ni de hang kong mu jian you mei you yi ge xiao gu ting che xu ke zheng?

    • [Guest]

      Wǒ bù huì shuō zhōngguó huà. Gǔgē fānyì duì wǒ lái shuō.