One of the most annoying things about being in China is that people will cut in front of you in lines when you're waiting for a bus, to buy a train ticket, or whatever. If you wish to achieve your aim, sooner or later you learn that you have to take defensive / offensive measures (I learned to spread my legs wide and put my elbows out). I also realized that it would help if I called the queue cutters out — loudly — in Mandarin. But what if the queue cutter pretends that he / she doesn't understand Mandarin? Watch:
The recent discussion of different ways of writing Chinese reminded Jeff K of two books of Shanghai expressions that he had come across. See herefor scans of a few pages.
Near the Star Ferry terminal on the Hong Kong Island side, Bea Lam noticed a number of fantastic, huge, colorful posters plastered on the walls as part of a “LipsyncHK” project that showcases Cantonese phrases and encourages visitors to try them out. Bea was (very happily) surprised to see this large and open demonstration of Cantonese pride in a government-sponsored project, given the political environment.
Normally I wouldn't want to call attention to a program as vapid as the one transcribed in the "quasi-blog" post linked to below, but the intelligent, critical comments that are interspersed by the blogger make it an instructive exercise after all.
She describes how an advertisement on a career website at a Chinese university offers a glimpse into what skills the state security system finds valuable for employees.
There's one paragraph in the article that troubles me:
Students who belong to the Uighur, Tibetan, Kazakh or Mongolian ethnic groups or who can speak those languages, or those who know Chinese dialects such as Fujianese, Hakka, Cantonese or Wu should apply, the ad said. Those are dialects spoken by people in Shanghai or in the nearby southeastern seaboard or in the south of the country.
I am fond of this expression and have often wondered how it arose. In my own mind, I have always associated it with the hissing of a cat and hysteria, but never took the time to try to figure out where it really came from. Today someone directly asked me about the origins of this quaint expression and proposed a novel solution, which I will present at the end of this post. First, however, let's look at current surmises concerning the problem.
I am wondering if your collective knowledge of Gaomi Shandongese and dialectology can clear something up for me. My late beloved father-in-law, Tóng Jìguāng 佟繼侊, from Gaomi county, would pronounce something like an thi sandong len for "俺是山東人“ [VHM: MSM pron. ǎn shì Shāndōng rén ("I'm a Shandongese")]. My question is: is the lisp in 是 common in Shandongese? And, is there a specific word for "lisp[ing]" (of the letter/sound "s") in Chinese?
Not too long ago, we looked at some "Difficult Taiwanese characters" (11/8/15). By "difficult Taiwanese characters", I am referring to sinographs that literate Mandarin speakers are unfamiliar with.
The same situation obtains for Cantonese. See, for example:
It's all about how the Chinese term — mǎtí nèifān zú 马蹄内翻足 — for a congenital deformity referred to in English as "clubfoot" (talipes equinovarus [CTEV]) figures in the "slaveringly awaited"
New Year’s Day special episode of the series starring Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch.
