Lad speak translation needed

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Wannabe Baiter Joined: 08 Jul 2011 Posts: 84

I just got an email from a lad I have been stringing along for a while that just said "bros na we we". What does it mean? I assume I have been rumbled but I would like to know what it means anyway.

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:40 am

His brothers have no weewees?

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 08 Jul 2011 Posts: 84

Hmmm...hadn't thought down those lines.

Maybe he is saying I have no dick?

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:16 am

He's probably shortened "na well well". Lads chop pidign all the time.

It translates into something like not complete. He's saying, bro, you are not all there. Laughing

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 08 Jul 2011 Posts: 84

Very odd then. All I was trying to do was buy £85000 worth of diamonds off him with the proceeds from my "associate's" illicit import/export business. Surely that is a normal day for him?

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:34 am

If he's calling you bro so he suspects you're another lad. Rumbled your character's name maybe?

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:35 am

"Mi bisnis orait. U no want di monis?"

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 08 Jul 2011 Posts: 84

Oh well, I guess it could lead to some lad-lad baiting. I will reply a bit later on.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Posts: 59

Attempt at translation:
"We're bros, no we-weeing on me."
I dunno...maybe the 'bros' is mistaken as well.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Apr 2011 Posts: 36

Without context, Pidgin can be a little tough to translate, but taken at face value:

"It's us, man!"

Analysis

If he's talking to you in Pidgin, he obviously "knows" you're a scammer yourself. You probably did something very Lagosish in your baiting (which is a good thing, by the way).

"bros" - a way to refer to someone. I've translated it by sticking "man" at the end of the sentence. Another way of looking at it is when folks start a sentence with "dude," or indeed "bro," which shares the same root word as "bros," brother.

"na" - common mistake to think it negates something. It doesn't. "na" is hard to explain since it doesn't have a direct translation in English. Loosely, it can be translated into "is" or "are." In the above sentence, I translated it to "it's."

"we we" - "We" is an English word. Saying something twice in Pidgin means he's emphasizing. For the sake of proper grammar, I translated it as "us" in the sentence above and added an exclamation mark at the end for the second "we."

And if you still haven't figured out what the fellow is trying to say, he's basically amazed that you, as a 419 scammer, haven't figured that he is a 419 scammer.

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:28 pm

Wow, you should write book. That was just down right professional. Shocked

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:07 pm

Weisze Tod beat me to it with a well-detailed explanation. That's exactly how I read it. The key is that he's calling you 'bro,' and as Weisze says, "na" translates to "is" it "it is" or similar depending upon context. Basically, "we're brothers." Probable unspoken meaning, "let's work together."

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Apr 2011 Posts: 36

username14 wrote:

Wow, you should write book. That was just down right professional. Shocked

Haha, thanks. Smile

OP, the best course of action to take in your bait right now would be to play it exactly as the scammer's called it. By doing this, in any situation, you're increasing the efficiency of your work since you don't have to spend time and energy convincing your Nigerian counterpart that what you say is truth, nor dealing with him getting cold feet out of suspicion at the last moment.

If you'd like some help writing back in Pidgin, you're welcome to contact me via PM and I can write up some translations or teach you to do it yourself.

The invitation's open to anyone, by the way. Don't underestimate the power of talking to scammers in their own language.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 1301

I am very impressed with the knowledge of pidgen - it's almost like a code rather than a language. I made the mistake of writing to a lad as a scammer in pidgen. He saw through me in no time at all but still thought I was a fellow scammer accusing me of being an Arab who was muscling in on his accounts.

It's all the NA and DEY which confuse me.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Apr 2011 Posts: 36

In a way, a code is exactly what it is. Being a pidgin language, by design, it's going to feel like the middle ground between many languages, held in place by culture rather than syntax. To everyone whom I've ever worked with in learning Pidgin, I've always told that 419 culture and their language are like two sides of the same coin. You can't truly comprehend one without the other. Something to think about for any aspiring pigeons amongst you.

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 9:27 am

na = it is, or it shall be that, ie

na u go chop bullet = You're going to get shot
ur mama na ashawo = Your mother's a whore
na e big fool = he is very stupid

dey = unclear. Sort of word mayonnaise, fills in gaps. can mean to, to do, doing, it just seems to keep the sentence going.

ie

go dey prison = go to prison
how you dey? = how you doing?
i dey = yeah, not bad.

Mistakes are common in genuine lad pidgin, so just batter it out and hope for the best. They seem to do likewise, with enthusiasm taking place over exactitude.

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 12:59 pm

^^^^^
Alot of them even seem to call you 'stupid' for typing in pidgin, as in they insinuate that yua dey bush monkey for not learning 'proper' english.

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 3:12 pm

^ with that in mind it can sometimes be productive to write in overly "educated" english (feel free to abuse the thesaurus), and lord it over your lad correspondent for not being suitably educated & thus inferior to you. "Please write in proper English as I am no street boy". This also means you don't have to try and pull off pidgin - which is hard to do believably.

however if you look around for pidgin sources (especially if you look for a specific word like "dey" and the term pidgin), you can get some good sources which give good examples how you might use them. If you add linguistic jargon terms like "tense" or "aspect" you can get some technical explanations of how they are used in the language.

Quote:

dey = unclear. Sort of word mayonnaise, fills in gaps. can mean to, to do, doing, it just seems to keep the sentence going.

"dey" originated from English "there" and is very often used to reflect present progressive (ongoing action in the present time):
U dey chop > "you are eating".

Can also just be the verb "to be" - u dey home > "you are at home".

Not quite a Newb Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Posts: 59

One other trick is to use something like Google Translate, there's a distinct corruption when you put it to, say, Spanish, and back, so you can reasonably claim to have simply used a translator.

Case in point:

One other trick is to use something like Google Translate, corruption is a different when you put it, for example, Spanish, and vice versa, it can reasonably claim to have been limited to using a translator.

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 3:24 pm

fwiw I had a lad on the go once to whom I spoke in very good BBC english with just the od lad-ism thrown in. he almost worshipped me for some sort of uber-oga. it was disgusting.

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:12 pm

Rowenar wrote:

One other trick is to use something like Google Translate, there's a distinct corruption when you put it to, say, Spanish, and back, so you can reasonably claim to have simply used a translator.

Case in point:

One other trick is to use something like Google Translate, corruption is a different when you put it, for example, Spanish, and vice versa, it can reasonably claim to have been limited to using a translator.

Or use Babel Fish for that stunt. It will make it look like it was written by a 6 year old. Very Happy

Not quite a Newb Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Posts: 59

TheDane wrote:

Or use Babel Fish for that stunt. It will make it look like it was written by a 6 year old. Very Happy

So, the typical intelligence level of a lad then?

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 6:11 pm

Quote:

"dey" originated from English "there" and is very often used to reflect present progressive (ongoing action in the present time):
U dey chop > "you are eating".

Can also just be the verb "to be" - u dey home > "you are at home".

useful - Thanks. I'd been wondering for some time.

** SUSPENDED ** Joined: 01 Oct 2017 Posts: 1

Sorry for the late reply, I'm new to this forum.

"Na we we" means "We are the same" or "You and I belong here". They commonly say it, when they are convinced, you are their fellow scammer.
I heard it quite a few times too.

Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:20 pm

Julia_Cio Welcome to eater. Please do not post in old threads. This one is several years old.

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