Please make me happy by transcribing this piece of spoken Chinese!

January 25, 2012 4:10 AM

Can someone identify the words spoken at the beginning of Ground Zero's “Revolutionary Pekinese Opera” (“Opening ~ Flying Across The J.P.Yen”)? You can here the phrase spoken on youtube here. I'm reasonably sure the voice is speaking Chinese.
posted by nfg to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Best answer: It sounds like 宗教 (zong1 jiao4; "religion") to me, but I could be wrong, not knowing whether it's part of the lyrics, a stage direction, or just a random snippet of something.
posted by hellopanda at 5:55 AM on January 25, 2012

Response by poster: hellopanda: Yes 宗教 / Zong Jiao sounds very close. My Chinese skills are almost non-existent but all I'd decided on myself was that it sounded very like "Wo Jiao" ("my name is…") but with an "s" in place of "w". Unfortunately I don't know how the words are to be interpreted, I know the piece is a remix of “Peking-Oper” from Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth's “Frankfurt – Peking” (1984) [more info] but combing that for a clearer sample (or even just some context) turned up a blank — but I'll keep looking. Thanks very much for the help.
posted by nfg at 7:55 AM on January 25, 2012