Chinglish History X

[st_swithin]

Phonetic sounding English and common misconceptions as to their Mandarin meanings:

[In Mandarin] - def. [In English]

Ah-yi - auntie
ba - a confirmation or eight
Ba-ba - dad, da, father
Bai - white (colour)
Bai kwai - haole, whitey, cracker, or Caucasian
Bu - no or not or cloth
Bu how - not good
Chi - se7en or energy or life
Da - big
Dan - egg
De - implies ownership, used with a noun
Di-di - younger brother
Dun wo ma - wait for me!
Dundien - wait up a sec.
E - one
Gno (as in 'gnocchi') - cow
Go - dog
Guh-guh - older brother
Gwo - cooking pot, to cross (as in, 'to cross the street'), fruit or country
Gwo gi - a border (not as in a lodger, but as in international boundary)
Hai - child or ocean
Hey - black (colour)
Ho tien - yesterday
Hoong - red (colour)
How - good
How dan - good egg
How bu how - are you/he/she/it ok?
How ma - ok (affirmation)
How poong yo - good friend
Huang - yellow (colour)
Hwai - rotten
Hwai dan - rotten egg
Hwai rin - bad person or people
Ir - two
Jie-jie - older sister
Jing - gold (Au), new,
Jing tien - today
Jio - nine or old
Kwai - a piece of [something] or a demon
Lan - blue (colour)
Lao - old
Lee - plum (as in the purple fruit)
Liu - green (colour)
Liew - six
Loong - dragon
ma - an affirmation
Mai yo - ain't got, don't have
Ma-ma - ma, mom, mother
Mao - cat
May-may - younger sister
Min - door
Ming - bright
Ming tien - tomorrow
Mu - wood
Nai-nai - grandmother
Nan poong yo - boyfriend
Ni - you
Niur poong yo - girlfriend
Ooo - five
Poong yo - friend
Rin - a person or a peole
San - three
Shao - small
Shao hai - little kid or little ocean
Shao rin - little person or people
Shen-sen - husband
Shi - wet
Shi fan - either rice porridge or literally, 'washing rice'
Shi pye - mixing it up on the mah-jong table or literally, 'washing rocks'
Sss - (verb) 'is' = to be (no verb conjugations in Chinese whatsoever), four or ten
Suh - snake
Su-su - uncle
Ta - he, she, it
Ta min - them
Tai-tai - wife
Thai lay - [he/she/it/I] [am/is/are/were] too tired (NOT as in buying a Thai prostitute, fih dollah fvcky fvkcy sucky sucky)
Tien - sky or day or heaven
Tien gwo - he11
Tsang de bu how - to sing poorly or off-key
Tsang de how - to sing well
Tsang guh - to sing a song
Tsoong - medium, middle, center, or onion (leek)
Tz - eat, or sheet of paper, or diminuitive of a noun
Way suh ma - Why?
Who - tiger
Wo - me
Wo ba - my father or who, me?
Wo ma - my mother or who, me?
Ye-ye - grandfather

[Richelieu]

Thank you.

[Velociryx]

/me takes careful notes....'specially the parenthetical portion of line one...



-=Vel=-

[st_swithin]

Thanks. At least ONE person got it - all people yelling 'thai lay' aren't asking to be fvcked, although if you don't speak Mandarin, I can see the confusion, although it's to the detriment of the speaker.

[Velociryx]

Dang....my hopes for the lunch date this afternoon are dashed! It seems I got stood up, rather than....





-=Vel=-

[Q Classic]

chinglish.

like engrish.

[Az]

wait.. you mean this is NOT the right meaning of the words you've written?


I am about to take Chinese. Either this simester or the next one.

[:) Smiley]

Re: Chinglish History X

[SIZE=1]
[In Mandarin] - def. [In English]
Mao - cat
Ming - bright

WRONG.

Mao - an Apolytoner known for his high post count
Ming- an OT Moderator

[Neutrino]

Good guide

It's also important to know that there are 4 (5, if you count a 'lack of' tone) different tones in Mandarin Chinese. If you pronounce a word with the wrong tone, it will not mean what you intended.

[Agathon]

My Mandarin speaking brother told me that "Georgie Pie", the name of a popular New Zealand fast food chain, actually sounds just like the Chinese word for smelly vagina.

[Kramerman]

[st_swithin]

Nice one, Jimmy Neutrino, boy wonder. In general, most non-Chinese speakers can barely tell the difference between the tones, let alone know they exist, so I didn't bother to put them in.

I count 5 tones, as in the 5 horsemen of the Apocolypse, not counting the one horseman who dropped out to become a milkman.

[Alinestra Covelia]

So, st_swithin, are you from China?

I see that a lot of the Mandarin you've written is in more straightforward format than Pinyin.

Youkeneng shi weile bangzhu womende waiguo pengyou xue Hanyu ba...?

[st_swithin]

Whoa, never learned pinying. I caught something about our American friends, but I don't know the pronunciation key.

My dad (originally from Hubei province) and I always wrote Chinese that way when we emailed or wrote letters - neither of us knew there was a standardised method to write Chinese in English, so we just made up our own.

My dad was a coder, and he often wrote his comments like that. I was the only one, apparently, who knew what he was talking about. Other people always said his comments didn't make any sense, but they always made perfect sense to me.

[mindseye]

I don't get it. Which definitions are "common misconceptions"? Most of them look correct to me!

It's odd that your father is from Hubei but you seem to speak (or at least write) with something of a southern accent (e.g. "suh"/snake, "sss"/to be). Northerners would say "she(2)" and "shi(4)" for these.

Here in Shanghai, the term "Chinglish" is used to describe the common phenomenon of using English words with Chinese grammar (e.g. "I no want he buy it.") The reverse (e.g. "Ta shi yi ge wo de pengyou.") is "Englese".