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How does 王将用語 (used at 餃子の王将) sound like to Chinese speakers? Are they completely incomprehensible, stupid , funny, etc? How difficult is it for Chinese speakers to learn them?

イーガーコーテル ソーハンイー コーテルリャンナーホー
Origin: 一個鍋貼兒 焼飯一 鍋貼兒二拿回
'one dish of fried dumpling and a fried rice for here and two dishes of fried dumpling to go'.

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Personally, I never have liked the English equivalent of the word 餃子 being "fried dumpling". I wish English would adopt the Japanese word, so we can call them "Gyoza" in English too. –  Jesse Good Jun 3 '12 at 20:32
@Jesse Good: +1 I usually ignore it and call it "gyoza" in English anyway. –  Chris Harris Jun 3 '12 at 20:41
Voting to close as "too localized" (knowing how Chinese speakers feel about the 用語 used at 餃子の王将 will be of no use for future readers). –  Jesse Good Jun 3 '12 at 22:45
How is this a question about Japanese? –  Tsuyoshi Ito Jun 5 '12 at 11:31
@Andrew Grimm: This is a nitpicking, but it is incorrect to refer to イーガーコーテル… as “kango.” Kango (漢語) means a Japanese word which has Chinese origin (or sometimes a Japanese word which looks as if it has Chinese origin). –  Tsuyoshi Ito Jun 5 '12 at 22:05
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closed as off topic by Tsuyoshi Ito, Jesse Good, Flaw, atlantiza, istrasci Jun 7 '12 at 2:53


1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I am a student of (roughly intermediate) Mandarin Chinese, so not the proper Chinese speaker you're looking for, but I might just know enough of the original vocab here to offer an opinion.

With the aid of the English translation you gave, I was able to guess (although not confidently enough to post at the time) something like 一個鍋貼...飯一鍋貼...二拿 before you updated the question with the origin, but it wasn't easy and I wouldn't have understood if I'd just heard it spoken in real life. The in 鍋貼兒 that presumably led to コーテル instead of コーティエ was confusing for me as I studied in Taiwan where (giving an "er" sound) is commonly omitted in cases like this.

I'm baffled in particular by the pronunciation of and . I guess "hui" isn't easy to convert to the Japanese syllabary, but my 電子辞書 at least gives ホイ as a guide, which seems slightly clearer.

Other things that stood out were 個 -> ガー, where would seem more appropriate given the tonelessness of the character, and 鍋貼兒 -> コーテル, where a better conversion might be グオーティアル. The numbers イー and リャン were by far the most recognisable.

So incomprehensible? When spoken in real life, probably. When written down, maybe just about decipherable for someone with a working knowledge of Chinese and the Japanese syllabary and a lot of patience. Stupid/funny? I have no idea.

In terms of learning them, I wonder if it might be similar to the way I learn Japanese borrowed words from European languages other than English, which by their nature tend to sound similar to the English equivalent. For me this makes them easier to identify when reading or listening, but almost as hard as any other word to remember the correct spelling and pronunciation (for example my recent misspelling of コーヒー which you corrected for me).

Apologies for any mistakes I may have made, particularly related to the Chinese language. Please correct them if you see them!

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