Triple topolectal reprimand

One of the most annoying things about being in China is that people will cut in front of you in lines when you're waiting for a bus, to buy a train ticket, or whatever. If you wish to achieve your aim, sooner or later you learn that you have to take defensive / offensive measures (I learned to spread my legs wide and put my elbows out). I also realized that it would help if I called the queue cutters out — loudly — in Mandarin. But what if the queue cutter pretends that he / she doesn't understand Mandarin? Watch:

(The video is also available here with a voice-over explanation.)

The foreign man speaks to two Chinese women in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), Wuhan topolect, and Dongbei (Northeastern) topolect.  Here's a transcription of the dialog between the foreign man and two Chinese women.  Because there are no conventions for writing Wuhan and Northeastern topolects in romanization (at least not that I am aware of), and also because I do not know their pronunciation that well, I am transcribing all three versions in Hanyu Pinyin:

Man (speaks good Mandarin):  Qǐng dào hòumiàn pái xià duì hǎo ma?  Nǐ hǎo nǐ hǎo, máfan qǐng dào hòumiàn pái xià duì hǎo ma? Woman 1 (speaks Wuhan topolect):  Gè bānmǎ shuō de me sī, láozī tīng dōu tīng bù dǒng. Man (speaks Wuhan topolect):  Ní'áng mò chāduì, dào hòutou páiduì kè (qù). Lēi áng (zhèyàng) tīng dé dǒng me? Woman 2 (speaks Northeastern topolect):  Gàn hā? Nǐ nǎ zhī yǎnjīng kàn dào wǒ chāduìle? Shì bùshì yǒu máobìng? Man (speaks Northeastern topolect):  Nǐ shuō gàn shà ne! Nǐyā chāduì hái yǒulǐ le? Yào bù ràng dàhuǒ píng gè lǐ? Woman 2 (speaks Northeastern topolect):  Shì bùshì yǒu máobìng? Bù qī (chī) la! Bù qī le! Zǒu zǒu zǒu! Wúyǔle hǎo ba! Man (speaks Northeastern topolect):  Qiáo nǐ nà sǔnsāi (sai)!

Man: 请到后面排下队好吗? 你好你好, 麻烦请到后面排下队好吗? Woman 1:个斑马说的么司, 劳资*听都听不懂. Man: 尼昂莫插队, 到后头排队克(去). 勒昂(这样)听得懂么? Woman 2: 干哈? 你哪只眼睛看到我插队了? 是不是有毛病? Man: 你说干啥呢! 你丫插队还有理了? 要不让大伙评个理? Woman 2: 是不是有毛病？不七(吃)啦! 不七了! 走走走! 无语了好吧! Man：瞧你那损噻(sai)!

*láozī 劳资 (lit., "labor and capital"), but here being used for its sound to stand for lǎozi 老子 ("[your] old man = I")

Man: Please go to the back of the queue and line up there, all right?  Hello, hello.  [May I] trouble [you] to please go to the back of the queue and line up there, all right? Woman 1: What's this zebra talking about?  Daddy doesn't understand what he's talking about. Man: Laydee, don't cut in line.  Scram back to the end of the line.  Do you understand me this way? Woman 2: What['re you talking about]?  Which of your eyes saw me jump the queue?  Is something wrong [with you]? Man: What are YOU talking about?  Ya cut in line and yet ya want to reason with me about it.   Do you want everybody [here] to decide who is making more sense? Woman 2: Is something wrong [with you]?  I'm not gonna eat / take it anymore!  I'm not gonna take it anymore!  Let's get out of here!  Let's go!  Not gonna talk to him any longer! Man: Just look at your miserable self!

I can't guarantee that I captured all the nuances of the Wuhan and Northeastern parts.

A speaker of Sichuanese comments:

The Wuhan topolect is not quite intelligible to me without the voice-over explanation and subtitles, mainly because the tones are greatly different from my native topolect. From what little I have perceived in the video, it seems that Wuhan topolect tends to prolong the pronunciation of the last word in the sentence,

The female:  听不懂 ting bu dong~~~~ The male:  排个队 pai ge dei~~~~

As for Mandarin and Dongbei topolect, they are quite familiar to me because they are widely used and presented in mass media. And they do not much differ from each other, except for some idiomatic usages, for example "你丫 ni ya" in the Dongbei topolect.

The inimitable Charles Liu has an article about this in The Nanfang:

"Foreigner Yells at Person Cutting in Line In Three Chinese Dialects:  The only thing missing was a mic drop".

It turns out that this short video may not have been entirely spontaneous.  Apparently the three students wanted to use it as a public service ad to encourage people to stand in line, but it became viral and controversial when it was put online.

There are accounts of this incident in Chinese here and here.

[h.t. Ben Zimmer; thanks to Fangyi Cheng and Yixue Yang]