Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

As far as I know, Fei by itself doesn’t mean anything, but as Feichang (非常) it means “very” or “particularly.”  It’s so pretty, with two wings side by side.

This is pretty random, but here’s some awful subtitles used in real (probably Kung Fu) Hong Kong movies.  My favorites are:

• I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.
• A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries.
• You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.
• Beat him out of recognizable shape!
• The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?

One of the things you want to know when learning a language is all the bad words and phrases. Besides knowing how to come on to someone, or swear really well, learning what a culture uses to express its strongest, most vehement word-forms can tell you a lot. That’s where this handy list in Swedish, Chinese, and English comes in.

For summary’s sake, here are the most useful terms:

• 性 xìng = sex
• 性生活 xìngshēnghuó = sex life
• 肏 cào = to f*ck (vulgar)
• 打炮 dă pāo = have intercourse
• 老屄 lăobī = old hag (vulgar)
• 牛屄 niúbī = really phat, way beyond cool (vulgar)
• 艺妓 yìjì = geisha

There are also a huge number of words to describe prostitutes, various parts of intercourse, STDs, and other such things.

However, when you look at some of the etymologies, barring things which are simply put together piecemeal in the expected way (性生活 being 性 + 生活), you can derive a more interesting cultural view. For example, 肏 is 入 + 肉, literally to enter meat, from which we learn that sex in China is defined by the language as a male-dominating act. This isn’t unexpected, but it’s interesting how language ties into culture, especially in these taboo waters.

Filination has an interesting entry which lists all the possible Chinese-language helper extensions you can get for Firefox:

ChinesePera-kun is an excellent tool that “will popup the pinyin reading and English definition when you mouse over Chinese in Simplified or Traditional characters.”

Sounds good–sign me up, mate!

That’s right, there is a single-syllable word in Chinese that means “to sell e.g. one’s own child during e.g. a famine,” and in a delicious little irony, it’s derived from 粥 “gruel” which makes it cognate to 育, “bear/raise children.”

If you thought you knew everything there is to express in the Chinese language, Bokane’s latest post will probably enlighten you.  It’s a delicious trek through linguistics and the derivation of characters as seen through a modern non-native viewpoint.  Warning:  salient language ahead.