乌鸦嘴 (wū yā zuǐ)

In this video, we are going to learn a new word: 乌鸦嘴 (wū yā zuǐ) – The Crow’s Mouth. 乌鸦means “crow”. 乌，the first tone; 鸦, the first tone; 嘴，the third tone. Mouth.

Just like people in many other countries, Chinese people don’t like crows either. There are some reasons.

Compared with other birds, crows have acute sense of smelling, they can smell the stink of carrion and eat it. So people think they can catch the smelling of death, eating carrion makes people feel disgusting.

Crows are black. Plenty of Chinese think black color stands for death and dark, and it refers to bad luck.

Crows have a weird sound. Sometimes they make a strange noise, which makes people feel gloomy and cold, sounds like bad news is coming.

So, we use “乌鸦嘴” to describe a man who prefer to predict bad things, and what he said often becomes a reality.

Dialogue 1

tā hái méi lái, chū chēhuò le mɑ？ A: 他还没来，出车祸了吗？ He hasn’t come yet. Did he have a car accident?

bié wū yā zuǐ！ B: 别乌鸦嘴！ Don’t jinx it!

Dialogue 2

Hank shuō jīn tiān zhōnɡ ɡuó duì yào shū qiú. A: Hank说今天中国队要输球。 Hank said China will lose the game today.

tā zhè ɡe wū yā zuǐ! B: 他这个乌鸦嘴! He is such a jinx!