你说的他 是谁呀
“the person you mentioned— who is he?”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
小宇
“Zhiyu,”
你说的 他 是谁呀
“the person you mentioned— who is he?”
我怎么听不懂
“I don't quite understand.”
“I'm pretending I have no idea who you mean so you won't dig deeper.”
Feigning incomprehension or confusion using softened interrogative particles is a common Chinese interpersonal strategy to buy time or defuse tension.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
the one you mentioned / what you said
A very common conversational framing device to refer back to the listener's previous words.
cannot understand / fail to catch the meaning
Commonly used literally for language comprehension or figuratively to pretend not to understand someone's allusion.
Softens the interrogative tone, making the question sound more gentle, innocent, or informal.