languages - How accurate is the Chinese spoken in Firefly?

In the Firefly-verse, Western and Eastern cultures are mixed and many people inject Chinese into their speaking habits, usually to swear (a la frakking and frelling).

Can anyone with knowledge of Chinese speak to the accuracy? Are the actors basically cussing in Mandarin or is it a case of them making sounds that are simply a close facsimile?

Answer

Your mileage may vary. For the most part the words themselves are used correctly but the pronunciation by certain characters (especially Malcolm Reynolds and Jayne) can be very choppy. By comparison, whenever Mandarin is used by Inara it's usually quite well executed.

Also, several of the phrases are more "compound" sentences rather than something that would actually make sense in contemporary Chinese.

This would be a perfect example; Jayne says 'Wǒ de mā' which (literally) means "mother of god". Although the wording is broadly correct, his pronunciation would be far more consistent with "what the hell?" which means that it's a total mismatch.

You can find an extensive list of Chinese phrases used in Firefly, their meanings and the competence of their pronunciations here

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