What does 嗆聲 mean?

嗆聲 means to confront someone with harsh or demeaning words, often in order to provoke or threaten someone. 嗆聲 also means to express dissatisfaction straightforwardly or bluntly. We can also use 嗆聲 to describe the action of players of sports games or video games giving trash talks. Although the phrase is read as ㄑㄧㄤˋ ㄕㄥ(qiàng shēng) in Mandarin, you’ll probably hear people say “tshiàng-siann,” its Taigi (台語/Taiwanese) pronunciation, since it originated from the Taigi phrase “唱聲”, but now it’s mostly written as 嗆聲.

The word 嗆 means to choke. But in spoken Taiwanese Madarin, it means to speak out against someone harshly or rudely. For example：

• 她很愛嗆人。(ㄊㄚ ㄏㄣˇ ㄞˋ ㄑㄧㄤˋ ㄖㄣˊ tā hěn ài qiàng rén)
  她很愛嗆人 means she is really argumentative or confrontational. 她 means she. 很 means very. 愛 means to love. 很愛 means to love something very much. 人 means people. 嗆人 means to confront with unspecified individuals.

聲 means sound or voice. For example, 笑聲 (ㄒㄧㄠˋ ㄕㄥ xiào shēng) means the sound of laughing. 笑 means to laugh.

Let’s look at an example of 嗆聲：

• 市長在致詞時遭到嗆聲。
  The mayor was heckled during his speech. 市長(ㄕˋ ㄓㄤˇ shìzhǎng) means mayor. 市 means city or administrative division. 長 means the head of an organization. 在...時 (ㄗㄞˋ…ㄕˊ zài...shí)  means in the middle of doing something. 致(ㄓˋ) means to deliver. 詞 (ㄘˊ) means a speech or statement. 遭 (ㄗㄠ zāo) means to encounter something unpleasant. 到(ㄉㄠˋ dào) is a verb complement indicating the action of the verb is done.

There are many collocations of 嗆. Let’s looke at a few of them:

• 怒嗆
  怒 (ㄋㄨˋ nù) means angry. 怒嗆 means to shout at or argue with someone angrily.

• 回嗆
  回 (ㄏㄨㄟˊ huí) means to answer or to return. 回嗆 means to answer someone with harsh words.