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 😉

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.

The Chinese in this show was basically a way to avoid censorship. Almost all the cursing was in chinese.

When she said "Only one season", I felt that.

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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I loved this show. I’m an ABC, Cantonese speaker and I found the mandarin speaking parts painfully hilarious 🤣🤣🤣.

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".

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!

Her shock at all the cursing is so funny and cute! It's totally ok that you laughed.

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.

"Shiny" is Future slang for: Great, Terrific, Brilliant. I think.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hahah, you definitely have a different perspective on a "small town" than I do... :D

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.

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.

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.

These are the kinds of reaction videos that I like, when the person brings new insight to the table.

This was absolutely fascinating to see a native Chinese speaker break this down

"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.

Love it! Jessie is so authentic with her reaction to the show. And loved how she handled the curse words. Very entertaining video.

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.

Bless you for attempting to translate for us, and I'm so glad that you're watching the show now. Enjoy!

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. 🤣🤣

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! 😊

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".

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!".

07:20 Shiny! it is used as slang in the show. In that case, consider it a sarcastic expression.

I loved this so much. Thank you for lending your ear to Firefly. You're wonderful.

Thank you for covering this show! Love your videos!!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.)

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!

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.

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.)

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.

"they rapping with a nice flow" lol Also it's an awesome show, please watch it :) browncoats 4ever

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)

Really fun a bit informative and absolutely adorable to watch. Thank you!

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.

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 😂

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.

This was so much fun. Thank you!

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.

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.

Thank you!!!!!!! was very curious about firefly's pronunciation, came here to find out more about the show!

I have been wanting to know for YEARS what these guys were saying and if it was authentic! Thank you so much!

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.

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.

LOVE seeing your reactions to one of my favorite shows of all time. Your English speaking is AMAZING. It was interesting comparing the actors' pronunciation to yours. It is obvious that the actors were not extensively trained in Mandarin, and they butchered the Chinese language badly. But at least they were good enough that you were actually able to understand a lot of their lines. It is absolutely appropriate that you laughed at a lot of the lines, because the show was meant to have a lot of humor. Thank you for this video, it was a lot of fun.

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!

_firefly_ has many admirable qualities and a lot of diehard fans, but its chinese is not one of its strongpoints lol.

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'm glad you're watching it all and not just the bits of Chinese. It's such a great show.

I love this vid so much. I just keep watching it over and over...

Recommendation: Watch the entire series, not just the bits with Chinese. :-D

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.

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.

This was great; you're great, instant sub!

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 :)

They used mandarin to swear. Subscribed!

The "Chinese" in firefly was a way they used to get around US swearing restrictions in TV at the time.

Your reactions are honest and given the clips were fast. I enjoyed. 😀

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.

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 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.

I really like your attitude and perspective. The world needs more positive minded people like yourself. Keep it up.

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.

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

"It seems like all the words I can understand are the swear words." Yes, you have done everything right, then. I think it was really interesting to see someone who speaks Chinese react to that, I love the show, but always wondered how accurate the Chinese was. Also, my sympathies for reaction to a video, about translating swearing from Chinese to English, without getting banned on youtube. Great job. :D

I love your laughing through out this. You are very funny without trying to be. That's what makes this worth the watch.

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.

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".

thank you! I love that show and always wanted to know more about the Chinese spoken parts. There is also a movie, Serenity. Thanks again this video was great!

great job! your the first Chinese i know who could make out more than one word of what they were saying.

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

I love your channel and need to know where you’re getting your beautiful qipao from!

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. ❤❤❤❤❤

so beautiful UwU love your reactions/explanation