Gorram
POSTED BY: Retro
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 23:47
VIEWED: 60103
PAGE 1 of 6
A friend that I just got hooked on Firefly just asked me this. Is Gorram meant to be Chinese, or is it just a futuristic word? I had always assumed Chinese, but I really have no idea.
"Just because I choose to wander, it doesn't mean that I am lost..."
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I've always assumed it was supposed to be linguistical drift of the word Goddamn
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I think I heard or read somewhere that Gorram is a made-up curse word for the Firefly 'verse so that the sensors can't bleep it out.
No power in the 'verse can stop me!
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Both right, I suspect 
"My God - you're like a trained ape. Without the training."
"Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all..."
I know the secret.
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It's not any Chinese that I'm aware of. (and i speak fluent chinese) So by elimination, it must be the other choice.
Lithi@EstateSerenity.net
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I agree. Linguistic drift and dancing around standards and practices. It's like the use of "frack" on Battlestar.
Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of burned out dreams.
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I am actually keen to the futuristic, linguistic drift idea, but in a Chinese perspective. In some Chinese dielects, "ran/ram" or "lan/lam/luan" imply testicles, and is commanly used in swearing. Similarly, "lan" also means "bad,screwed,rotten" in Mandrain and some dielects, for example, in Hokkien, "du-ran" means "fucked up".
Although "gorram" doesn't exist in modern Chinese, lets say that "go" (dog, as in go-se) still exists in 500 years, thus "gorram" is very likely to be a swear word that means "dog testicles" or "rotten like a dog".
And it just sounds so much like "God Damn".
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Well then that would make the license plates on my truck say "Dog testicles"? Maybe they should have let me keep "Dong ma" like I wanted! LOL!
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I am fluent in Chinese also, AND I looked in the official site -
http://fireflychinese.home.att.net/
- where they define the Chinese words used on the series and the movie, and Goram is not listed.
From the first time I heard it, I believed it to replace "God damn" as one previous poster said.
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Honestly, I don't see how anyone could think it anything but a variation on goddamn.
They use gorram and gorramit, pretty obvious.
Or humped for something...worse, much like farscape with "frel" and "dren"(spelling?)
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