One of the expressions I teach my students learning Mandarin Chinese is: 慢走 màn zǒu / “slow leave/walk”.
This is used by the host to a guest when the latter is leaving. The English equivalent is: Mind how you go.
At 9pm, as the students were leaving the classroom and saying zài jiàn 再见 / bye to me, I’d say in return, 慢走，慢走.
林国强 Lim Kok Keong, one of the students who’d come to the pub after the lessons and therefore know me well enough to be cheeky (see also blog Donating blood for another student’s cheekiness), would say to them, 快走，快走 kuài zǒu, kuài zǒu / “quick leave, quick leave”!!
(London, 2001)
Would you say that 慢走 could be translated as "take care", and 快走 as "get out of here"? I know that the repetition is just Chinese and wouldn't be translated.
ReplyDeleteYes, can do "take care" for 慢走. The difference: "take care" can be for more things than 慢走 -- as you can see from the literal breakdown ("slow leave"), 慢走 is only for when someone's leaving, whilst "take care" can be for a wider range of activities.
ReplyDeleteYes, 快走 is "quick leave", so it is "get out of here quickly".
The repetition is because short strings (monosyllables especially) tend to get padded out for balance -- just a softening-of-tone device.