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'Devilish' Chinese dialect stumps FBI in upcoming US TV drama

A trailer for a US drama pilot Blindspot had Chinese tuning in online because it referred to a Chinese dialect as the "Devil's language."

The thrust of the crime thriller series, set to air on NBC September 21, centers on the hunt for a Chinese terrorist who plans to blow up the Statue of Liberty.

In the trailer, FBI agents are baffled by intercepted messages written in what they later identify as the Wenzhou dialect of East China's Zhejiang Province.

"Our translators are struggling with the rare dialect in Wenzhou," read a widely-circulated screenshot from the trailer. "The Chinese call it the Devil's language."

The trailer begins with a mysterious tattooed woman found in a bag in New York's Times Square who has no memory of her past, but speaks fluent Putonghua and the notoriously difficult dialect.

The Wenzhou tongue is generally considered unintelligible by Putonghua speakers.

So much, in fact, that it topped a viral list of "China's 10 hardest dialects" posted on Sina Weibo in December 2013. 

"I don't fear anything, except when Wenzhou people speak their devilish dialect," the author of the ranking wrote.

A total 41 percent of around 40,000 participants in a 2013 news.qq.com poll agreed that Wenzhou dialects are the hardest to understand and learn. 

"My roommate is from Wenzhou and although we've lived together for four years, I can only understand 'bye-bye' when she's talking to her parents," wrote Weibo user "lipengpeng."


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