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cici liang
what does mean 'you are 250" in chinese??do you know?
中文里 :你真是个二百五!! 翻译成英文怎么样说比较好!!而且怎么跟外国人解释二百五的由来??
Jun 2, 2009 5:11 AM
Answers · 6
2
As I understand it, "you are 250" means that you are a simpleton. From a little research, it comes from the fact that Chinese coins used to have a hole in the middle so that they could be strung together in amounts of 1000 (called a diao (吊). The term ban diao zi (半吊子), or half a diao, was used to mean someone not having full knowledge. It was used to describe oneself in a humble manner and not necessarily negative.
However, half of a half diao - 250, or er bai wu (二百五) was half of a half wit - definitely an insult. The equivalent English slang term would be "not playing with a full deck (of cards)".
June 2, 2009
idiot haha
June 5, 2009
i like fdmaxey's answer and chinese has a lot of these idioms that are hard to remember if you don't use them in a everyday basis. but here, maxey and cheer are saying 205, unless it is a colloquial form as it is understood that after hundreds comes tens, but i am not sure it works automatically that way. i used to be familiar with chinese 25 years ago, but now i almost forgot everything.
June 3, 2009
Hello Cappuci ,
"er bai wu" ,it is sort of an insult :
you are 250 = you are foolish.
June 2, 2009
no idea
June 2, 2009
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cici liang
Language Skills
Chinese (Mandarin), Czech, English, Spanish
Learning Language
Czech, English, Spanish
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