要么语焉不详
“or they were vague.”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
“They either said the boss was not there,”
要么 语焉不详
“or they were vague.”
我考虑
“I was thinking,”
Direct spoken expression in this communicative setting.
In Chinese business interactions, counterparties frequently avoid direct rejection by being intentionally ambiguous or claiming superiors are absent, a tactic colloquially called 'playing Tai Chi'.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
vague; ambiguous; not explaining in detail
A set four-character idiom (chengyu) commonly used in spoken Chinese to criticize someone's lack of clarity or intentional evasiveness.
either... or...
Used to introduce mutually exclusive options or parallel phenomena, matching the preceding '要么'.
VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS
Parallel Spoken Cinema Scenes (语义近邻切片)
“spoke another word of it.”
“can't be explained in just a few words.”
“But it's hard to say”
“The friendship between you two is more than anything.”
“but your language is uncouth.”
“it was written very unclearly.”