"Don't give me a $h!+" ?_?

[momo]

What does "You don't give me a ****" mean?
I sometimes hear people saying this and it stucked in my head.
Could anyone explain that slang to me?
What does a **** mean in this sentence?? something bad?

Thanks!!!

[jeisan]

"you don't give a ****" means "you don't care"
"you don't give me ****" is like you're telling someone not to give you a hard time or "you dont give me anything" depending on the context.

i've never heard the the sentance in your example before.

[TwistedMac]

*agrees with jeisan*
those two work, but the one in the example doesn't mean anything.. either it's non-english speakers picking up on a mistake and then using it or it's just isolated cases of people not saying a phrase right...

[Uncle Frank]

next store (CAMBODIAN) grow up & learn english. I remember all 5 little ones marching up & down the driveway saying the "F" word very loudly! Some nice person had taught them it ment hello, I like you.
Now 4 out of 5 are in college, all have been honor students! A great family and good neighbors!

Frank

[Elizabeth]

What context did you hear this momo? I can easily imagine it as a slang phrase in black English or some other dialect. Maybe without the "you," though. Or shortened from "**** load" ?

[kirei_na_me]

It could be said like, "you don't give a ****", if someone was meaning you didn't care about something, or "I don't give a ****" meaning that whoever said it would mean they, themselves, didn't care about something. I've never heard "you don't give me a ****" before. The "me" would be omitted.

[Elizabeth]

If it is "you don't give me a ****" the you would most likely be the person being addressed : Hey you, "don't give a **** now" or something -- like don't mess with me (i e don't give me your ****). I don't know.....but it comes up often enough on Google to make you wonder.

[kirei_na_me]

That's why we need to know the context. I can't imagine someone saying exactly this: "you don't give me a ****".

[momo]

Thank you so much for helping me out!!
Wow, you explained it soooooo well.

To come to think of it...I guess I heard this sentence only from other international students. I'm sorry if I made you confused.
Well, I'm gonna tell them if I hear it again.

So, the following sentences are correct, right? :
"Don't give a ****." = Don't care about anything./ Don't mess with me.
"I don't give a ****." = I don't care about anything.

btw, are these bad to use?
I can say them to friends? maybe not to teachers, right?

[jeisan]

"I/You don't give a ****." = I/You don't care about anything.
"Don't give me (any) ****." = Don't mess with me.
"You don't give me ****." = You don't give me anything

and no they prolly arent anything youd wanna say to your teachers. probably only people who you have a casual relationship with or someone who's messing with you

[Elizabeth]

Maybe if you let us know exactly what you're looking for in Japanese, momo, there may be something more appropriate for teachers and classmates or casual friends.

[lexico]

Most of the combinations have been covered here, but maybe I can add some other examples you might come accross. The expressions on the right are the more formal ones you would want to use with your teachers.
It's a little hard to read into the four asterisks, so I'll use hyphenation.

S-h-i-t refers to the following, a lot of times meaning different things depending on the context.

1. (literally) droppings, feces, (slang) crap
e.g I need to take ~=go to the bathroom/washroom/toilet for the biggie.

2. (metaphorically) difficulty, hard time, hassle;
e.g. Don't give me that s-h-i-t. can mean
Don't give me a hard time.
e.g. I don't need that s-h-i-t from you. can mean
I am very tired, so let's talk about it some time later.

3. (slang) lie, exaggeration, moral lecture; often in the form "bull s-h-i-t"
e.g. Don't give me that s-h-i-t. can mean
Don't lie to me. Don't lecture on me. Don't make me feel guilty.

4. (slang) something very small and insignificant; often in the form "jack s-h-i-t" or "diddly s-h-i-t" btw "diddly squats" is an interesting sysnonym.
e.g. You don't give me s-h-i-t. can mean
You don't pay me enough, (Boss!). You're not helping me as you should.

5. (slang) joke
e.g. No s-h-i-t! can mean No kidding! I'm surprised to hear that. Really? Seriously?

6. (taboo) something sacred, maybe changed from Jesus > Geese, Geesh, Gee > S-h-i-t
e.g. Holy S-h-i-t! can mean "I'm surprised!" or "I'm shocked!" It can also express strong dissappointment.

I probably missed some, but these are the ones I've come accross, from an ESL student's point of view.

BTW the adjective form of this is "s-h-i-t-t-y." Since the Japanese language and writing does not distinguish the sounds /shiti/ and /city/ (all covergeing to /shiti/) please be careful when you say "city hall." You don't want to sound like saying "s-h-i-t-t-y hall." They'll probably understand, but sometimes you might want to avoid the awkwardness, especially in formal settings. Good luck, with your English slangs, quite vaired, and fun to collect!

[Pox]

Originally Posted by lexico

BTW the adjective form of this is "s-h-i-t-t-y." Since the Japanese language and writing does not distinguish the sounds /shiti/ and /city/ (all covergeing to /shiti/) please be careful when you say "city hall." You don't want to sound like saying "s-h-i-t-t-y hall." They'll probably understand, but sometimes you might want to avoid the awkwardness, especially in formal settings. Good luck, with your English slangs, quite vaired, and fun to collect!

For me and most of the Japanese(maybe), "sh*t" and "sit" are also hard to pronounce differently(separately?).
I cant pronounce the following sentences differently.

"He is sitting there."
"He is sh*tting there."

maybe my ears have a serious problem.

[lexico]

Originally Posted by Pox

For me and most of the Japanese(maybe), "sh*t" and "sit" are also hard to pronounce differently(separately?).
I cant pronounce the following sentences differently.

"He is sitting there."
"He is sh*tting there."

maybe my ears have a serious problem.

Yes, the sample sentence (2nd) would be very funny!
But don't blame yourself, Pox-san.
AFAIK, most Koreans and Mandarin speaking Chinese have exactly the same problem. For the speakers of these three languages, including Japanese, there is no fundamental difference between a /si/ and /shi/. They are one phoneme "s", and the actual pronunciation is determined by the following vowel. If it is an /i/ vowel, the /s/ automatically changes into /sh/.

If I may draw a cross section of the mouth and tongue with the face facing left; <=front/lips, back/throat=>

pictorial signs
_ : ceiling of the mouth
\ : tongue, rising straight to the ceiling
ㄱ: front part of the tongue bent like a cobra

/sa/ will look like this
_
\

/sha/ which is written しや /shi-ya/ will look like this
_
ㄱ

In this example, CJK speakers equally have no problem. However in the next example, most CJK speakers will have a problem like you just mentioned because /si/ from English will be heard like /shi/ to CJK speakers.

English /si:/, as in "see" or "sea," looks like this
_
\ : (air flows freer and faster because of the greater breathing space, sound is crisper and louder.)

whereas the CJK /shi/ looks like this
_
ㄱ : (air flow is hindered and slower because of the narrow air path, hence more turbulance, and smaller sound volume.)

For the \ "s" sound, try to make a hissing sound that is crisp, and loud.

For the ㄱ "sh" sound, which you already know, the sound is turbulent, and weak.

I think you are doing great already because you are aware of the difference. There's nothing wrong with your ear. The muscles are only used to the smaller combinations in CJK speech sounds. BTW "pronounced differently" is perfectly understood. But we can "discuss" or "study" or "analyze" the two sounds /s/ and /sh/ "separately."

[lexico]

I don't know if this is related, but it might be.

"I don't give a d-a-m-n!" is from a John Wayne movie? I don't know which one.

I think it means "I couldn't care less!" "I really don't care." Probably there is a (thought) omitted after the "d-a-m-n" word, or from (d-a-m-n-e-d thought).

[CorDarei]

Originally Posted by lexico

I don't know if this is related, but it might be.

"I don't give a d-a-m-n!" is from a John Wayne movie? I don't know which one.

I think it means "I couldn't care less!" "I really don't care." Probably there is a (thought) omitted after the "d-a-m-n" word, or from (d-a-m-n-e-d thought).

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

[kirei_na_me]

That was from Gone with the Wind. Clark Gable.

[epigene]

Originally Posted by lexico

But don't blame yourself, Pox-san. AFAIK, most Koreans and Mandarin speaking Chinese have exactly the same problem.

Very interesting!! I didn't know Korean and Mandarin speakers had the same problem!

I always have trouble trying to stop myself from laughing, when I hear old Japanese ladies trying to make their dogs sit down. You see, dog obedience schools in Japan today teach dogowners to use English when issuing orders to their pets.

[Damicci]

It's funny reading this as I just was having a similar convo with a friend. He is japanese and had a hard time distinguishing the pronounciation of a few words such as:

Winds and Wings
Run and Lung
Six and Sixth

and once i explained how to his tounge needs to be placed in order for him to pronounce word properly he nailed it. Winds and Wings was different he would pronounce wings like winds and for me it sounded the same i couldn't tell what he was saying.

So I think Lexico brings up a good point about tounge positioning, it's hard to get your mouth to move in matters which are (pardon the pun) "foreign" to your native speaking. Interesting stuff.

[lexico]

Originally Posted by Damicci

It's funny reading this as I just was having a similar convo with a friend. He is japanese and had a hard time distinguishing the pronounciation of a few words such as:

Winds and Wings
Run and Lung
Six and Sixth

and once i explained how to his tounge needs to be placed in order for him to pronounce word properly he nailed it. Winds and Wings was different he would pronounce wings like winds and for me it sounded the same i couldn't tell what he was saying.

So I think Lexico brings up a good point about tounge positioning, it's hard to get your mouth to move in matters which are (pardon the pun) "foreign" to your native speaking. Interesting stuff.

The examples you gave are really interesting which makes my fingers itch! There are several topics that arise from your examples;

1. the nasal sounds of /-m/, /-n/, and /-ng/ in the final position in a syllable
2. the liquid sounds of /r-/ and /l-/ in the initial position
3. the consonant clusters of /-ks/ and /-ksth/ in the final position

All distinguishable in English, some are not in some Asian languages. Within my limited knowledge, let me just talk a little on 1.

Language history has many examples when a language had once words ending in /-m/, /-n/, and /-ng/ all distinguised, but later losing the distinction. The general pattern of these nasals sounds in the final positon of the syllable is something like this.

Stage I: -m, -n, -ng: all different >
Stage II: (-m, -n): merged, but -ng: different >
Stage III: (-m, -n, -ng): all merged

Languages still at stage I: English, Cantonese, Korean, German
Languages at stage II: Mandarin
Languages at stage III: Japanese, Shangainese, French

I've noticed that many speakers of Mandarin Chinese are pronouncing 行李 'luggage' as /shingli/ (standard) ~/shinli/ (colloquiall). But /shinli/ is also the pronunciation of 心裏 'in one's heart, inside'. So one could safely say that spoken Mandarin is already experiencing a shift towards stage III. I think this is called "lexical diffusion" meaning that changes in speech sound habits do not happen all at the same time across all words, but begin with only several words, competing with contrasting speech habits. Gradually the new speech habit takes foothold, and eventually takes over all words in the category. This was btw the contribution of the Chinese-American scholar William S. Y. Wang 王士元 to historical phonolgy.

I wonder if modern Japanese (or any dialect of it) has any odd examples or exceptions that are still resisting the merging of the -m, -n, -ng sounds. Also interesting is whether there are any records of historical Japanese when it still ditinguished these nasal endings. Any thoughts for or against these arguments ? Any interesting examples or counterexamples ?

[epigene]

Hello, lexico!

Your post reminded me of a discussion of nasal sounds in Japan, specifically the presence of "n" in the が gyou (that is, が、ぎ、ぐ、げ、ご) when other words precedes the sound. This does not happen when ga, gi, etc., occurs at the head of the sentence.

Although this is becoming a non-issue in modern Japanese, people were fussy about pronouncing the 'n" before "ga," "gi," "gu," etc., until a couple of decades ago. (I have heard that when Empress Michiko was interviewed by the Japanese press at her engagement, she was unable to pronounce the "n" in her statements and was thrashed by Japanese linguists. Several months later, she began to speak with the perfect "n.")

Example:　あなたがすき。 (This was/is to be pronounced "A na ta nga su ki.) The "n" is very delicate and not equivalent to the "n" pronounced in English.

This style of pronunciation appears retained in the dialects of northeastern Japan (Tohoku region), although I don't know whether it is still pronounced by the young people there. Personally, I don't pronounce the "n" myself. (My parents are from western Japan and I grew up in the Tokyo area.) I have also heard that this non-issue is not mentioned to Japanese language learners to avoid confusion.

Just for your information!

[CorDarei]

Originally Posted by epigene

Hello, lexico!

Your post reminded me of a discussion of nasal sounds in Japan, specifically the presence of "n" in the が gyou (that is, が、ぎ、ぐ、げ、ご) when other words precedes the sound. This does not happen when ga, gi, etc., occurs at the head of the sentence.

Although this is becoming a non-issue in modern Japanese, people were fussy about pronouncing the 'n" before "ga," "gi," "gu," etc., until a couple of decades ago. (I have heard that when Empress Michiko was interviewed by the Japanese press at her engagement, she was unable to pronounce the "n" in her statements and was thrashed by Japanese linguists. Several months later, she began to speak with the perfect "n.")

Example:　あなたがすき。 (This was/is to be pronounced "A na ta nga su ki.) The "n" is very delicate and not equivalent to the "n" pronounced in English.

This style of pronunciation appears retained in the dialects of northeastern Japan (Tohoku region), although I don't know whether it is still pronounced by the young people there. Personally, I don't pronounce the "n" myself. (My parents are from western Japan and I grew up in the Tokyo area.) I have also heard that this non-issue is not mentioned to Japanese language learners to avoid confusion.

Just for your information!

Yes, at least in my experience, they don't mention the nasalization of 'g' at all. I learned about it from reading sci.lang.japan (a very good newsgroup on the Japanese language), and I have heard it pronounced like that in a few different places. I don't really pay much attention to it though, so I can't really tell how common it is.

[edit] I'm listening to the Shoujo Kakumei Utena OST5, and when they have a few seconds of dialogue, everyone seems to be nasalizing their 'g's pretty strictly. Of course, this is a few years old.

[lexico]

Thank you for sharing this rare piece of evidence, Epigene, CorDarei. I would not have noticed this interesting phenomenon on my own. Since my understanding is rather shallow in this area, I will simply quote a major portion of section 8.3.4 from Masayoshi Shibatani, The Languages of Japan, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp.171-173, so as to give close attention to the subject. Although interspersed with linguistics jargon, it is an exciting read in that it has captured two snapshots of a major change in one particular Japanese speech habit. Please read in full, skipping over unfamiliar words if any, and add any omissions or questions that might deserve due attention. Some parts do appear to be in conflict from within, possibly due to my misunderstanding. I would appreciate your feedback.

Part 2 The Japanese Language
Ch. 8 Phonology
8.3.4 [g]~[ng] (The Alternation between [g] and [ng])

In the Tokyo dialect, the velar stop [g] and its nasal counterpart [ng] were once in complementary distribution, [g] occurring word initially and [ng] word internally. Despite the fact that the internal [ng] was encouraged by educators and voice trainers for singers and broadcasters, for the internal [ng] was felt to be "correct" and more "beautiful" than [g], the use of this phone has been declining. Kindaichi, H. (1942. Ga-gyo bionron. Reprinted in Kindaichi, 1967; Kokugo on'in-ron. Tokyo: Tokyodo) documented the beginning of the decline of the internal [ng]. In the study Kindaichi examined the pronunciation of such words as /kago/ 駕~籠 'basket', /hagaki/ 葉書き 'post card', and /kagami/ 鏡 'mirror' among seventy Tokyoite high school students aged fifteen or sixteen. His findings indicated that 30 % of the students did not use [ng] at all, while 26 % used [ng] exclusively. The rest showed use of both [ng] and [g]. This contrasted sharply with the fact that at that time exclusive use of [g] was quite rare among people over thirty years old.

Kindaichi's study, conducted in 1941 in Tokyo, is remarkable in a number of respects. For one thing, it made a specific prediction about the future of the internal [ng], which could be easily tested at a later time. For another, it had already paid careful attention to those variables that are now considered essential in sociolinguistic research concerned especially with the documentation of linguistic change in progress......it has engendered a number of studies among Japanese sociolinguistics.

Kindaichi recognized both language internal and sociolinguistic variables with regard to the change of the internal [ng] to [g]. First with regard to the morpheme class, Sino-Japanese words e.g. /tyuugi/ 忠義 'loyalty', /kaigun/ 海軍 'navy', as opposed to native Japanese words, tend to be pronounced with [g]. Also the following vowel affects the pronunciation of the preceding velar. /g/ before high vowels, /i/ and /u/ e.g. /kaigun/ 海軍 'navy', is less frequently nasalized than before mid and low vowels e.g. /kagami/ 'mirror'. For example among 70 elicitations of the word /kagami/, 42 (60%) were pronounced with [ng], whereas in the same number of elicitations for /uwagi/ 上着 'coat', the instances of the [ng] pronunciation were 34 (48.6%).

Thirdly a morphological consideration must be taken into account. Certain /g/-containing forms are morphophonemic involving no internal boundaries e.g. /kagami/ 鏡 'mirror', while certain others involve internal boundaries of different kinds of - word boundary, morpheme boundary - e.g. /kai+gun/ (sea-military) 海+軍 'navy'. Though there is a correlation between the boundary types and the identifiability of the constituent morphemes, perhaps more important is whether members of compound forms are recognized as those that occur independently with the initial [g]. Thus the independently used word /gakkoo/ 學校 'school' with the initial [g] is easily recognized in the compound forms such as /tyuu-gakkoo/ 中學校 (middle school) 'junior high school'. When such association is easily recognized, the velar tends to be pronounced with [g]. A well-known contrast showing this effect is seen in /zyuu+go/ 十五 (ten-five) 'fifteen' and /zyuu+go+ja/ 十五夜 (ten-five-night) 'full moon night'. In the former where the morpheme /go/ 五 'five' is more readily recognizable as the word for five, the velar tends to be pronounced as [g], whereas in the highly lexicalized latter form, /+go+/ is pronounced more commonly with [ng].

Finally those /g/'s that are produced by sequential voicing from the underlying /k/'s tend to be pronounced as [ng] more than the underlying [g]. Thus some speakers show contrast between /oo+garasu/ [oogarasu] 大硝子 'big (sheet) of glass' and /oo+karasu/ [oongarasu] 大烏~大鴉 'big raven', and between /oo-gama/ [oogama] 大蝦蟆 'big toad' and /oo-kama/ [oongama] 大釜 'big kettle'.

Because of the contrast seen in these examples, certain phonologists posit an independent phoneme [ng]. But in view of the fact that the contrast is very marginal, an independent phoneme is really not called for. Positing /ng/ for Japanese would be like positing /ae~/ as an English phoneme because of a marginal contrast in the forms [kaet] 'cat' and [kae~t] 'can't'. Indeed Kindaichi considered the low functional load of the [g]-[ng] contrast in Japanese to be one of the principal causes for the change of the internal [ng] to /g/.

...the first social variable to which Kindaichi attaches a particular interest is age which provides a basis for predicting the direction of a change. In 1941 the people in Tokyo over 30 yrs of age rarely had the internal [g]. In sharp contrast, among Kindaichi's teenaged subjects, those who did not have the internal [g] amounted to a mere 28%, indicating a drastic shift in the use of the internal [g]. Kindaichi also observes that female students are more progressive with regard to this change.

Finally with respect to social class and the geographic are, Kindaichi's findings indicate that the change was initiated in the upper- and middle-class area known as Yamanote. On the other hand, the parents' birth place had little influence on the student's pronunciation.

Kindaichi's findings have been largely corroborated and his prediction regarding the fate of the internal [g] has been born out by recent studies on the same topic. Thus both Kato, M. (1983: Tokyo ni okeru nenreibetsu onsei chosa. in Inoue, F. (ed) A Sociolinguistic Study of New Dialect and Language Deterioration, Report of the 1982 Research Project) and Hibiya, J. (1988: A Quantitative Study of Tokyo Dialect. Ph.D. dissertation. Univ. of Pennsylvania) show that the internal [ng] has been almost completely replaced by [g] by the speakers younger than 30 yrs old.

Kato's findings also indicate that female speakers are several yrs ahead in this change, corroborating Kindaichi's earlier observation.

Hibiya's findings, on the other hand, indicate that among the three social classes of middle class, lower-middle class, and working class, the percentage of [g] speakers is greatest among the speakers of the lower-middle class. Also those who have contact with the upper- and middle-class Yamanote area show a higher percentage of the [g] pronunciation than those who do not have such contact. Finally both Kato's and Hibiya's investigations show that the reading of word lists, as opposed to the reading of sentences containing the relevant forms and natural conversation, is correlated with a higher rate of [g]. All these findings indicate that the internal [g] is recognized as a prestige speech trait with the upper- and middle-class Yamanote district. (end of quote with minor deletion of sociolinguistic comment)

[epigene]

Lexico,

Yes, Kindaichi Haruhiko was the preeminent authority on Japanese dialects and pronunciation. I respected his views and was saddened by his recent death.

Added trivia: His father Kindaichi Kyousuke was an authority on the Ainu (indigenous people of Hokkaido) dialect and is known to have been a friend and supporter of the famed poet Ishikawa Takuboku. Haruhiko's son (forgot his name) is also a linguist studying the evolution of the Japanese language, specifically, the new speech used by young people of today.

[Mycernius]

Once again English proves how varied it is with words. The best one is the F-word. It can be used in so many Differnet ways.
Incidently in areas of England, usually the north in broad yorkshire accent, it can pronouced as shyte spelt S H I T E.
Don't know if the forum will astrisk SHITE. Here's one way to find out