200 dollars?

[tara]

Hello,

Could you please teach me what "Do not pass Go, do not
collect two hundred dollars" mean?
And I'd like to know the origin of this sentence.


Thank you,
Tara

[BobK]

It's a reference to this board game: Monopoly (game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Wikipedia picture, "Go" is the square at the bottom right-hand corner, but as it is a German board that square is not marked "Go". Players in the game start with a certain amount of money, proceed round the board using dice, and collect $200 (in the original - US - version). Some cards issued by chance on the way round have instructions such as "Go to Jail. Move directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200". Receiving such a card is a penalty; if you are just approaching "Go", and looking forward to your 'salary', you are penalized twice: you go to jail AND you don't get the money you were expecting. And as Jail is one straight clockwise from Go [in the bottom left-hand corner in the picture], you have a long time to wait for the next automatic payment.

Idiomatically, the expression is used to imply a general penalty, or sometimes it refers to a regular/automatic payment that you are not going to get; and there's also the implication that the penalty is random.

Traditionally, during this holiday season, when relatives spend a lot of time together and may not know how to fill the time, they play Monopoly - so your question is quite seasonally apt!

b

[BobK]

PS In 1935, when the game was first issued, $200 represented a realistic salary. The number hasn't been revised to account for financial realities - although translated versions may take advantage of the translation to revise the value; so the UK version used the figure of £200 (in the days when the £ was worth many times more - against the $ - than the present $2). And I'd be surprised if that German version used a figure of €200.


b

[tara]

Hello BobK,

Thank you very much for your kind and detailed explanation.

I didn't know the rule of the game, but can picture how it works
from your explanation and the URL.

I looked at some sites which introduce Japanese version, and
they introduce US$200, not Japanese yen.

I wish you merry christmas and happy 2008!

Tara

[riverkid]

Hello,

Could you please teach me what "Do not pass Go, do not
collect two hundred dollars" means?
And I'd like to know the origin of this sentence.

Thank you,
Tara

Hello Tara.

Normally we reserve the verb 'teach' for more elaborate/ lengthy/involved situations.

Will you teach me Japanese? Will you teach me how to swim?

For a single thing like you've asked, the more natural verb is 'tell'.

Could you please tell me what "Do not pass Go, do not
collect two hundred dollars" means?

[rewboss]

And I'd be surprised if that German version used a figure of €200.

The original version used a figure of 4000 marks, updated after the Second World War to 4000 deutschmarks.

I have no idea what the current state of affairs is, but if they did a straight conversion from deutschmarks to euros, it would be €2000.

[tara]

Hello riverkid,

I see. I'll remember that.
Thank you for telling me.

Tara