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Bryan Van Norden is a Visiting Professor at Wuhan University this semester, and he ran across an interesting bit of language play. Below is a still (taken with his cell phone) of a television commercial currently running in the PRC. It is for a watermelon juice drink. As you can see, the tag line is a bilingual pun, substituting guā 瓜 ("melon") for "God."

Some Language Log readers may remember Bo Guagua ("Melon Bo"), son of the archvillain, Bo Xilai, who was brought low by the current president of China, Xi jinping.

It seems that practically everyone in China, at least those under around forty, knows how to say "Oh, my God!" and what it means, though they usually write it as "OMG". There was (is?) a Voice of America program called OMG! Měiyǔ OMG! 美语 ("OMG! American English") hosted by Jessica Beinecke that was (is?) very popular in China and Taiwan, so that is one vector through which OMG would have become widely known.

"Oh, my God!" is sometimes also written in Chinese characters. Fundamentally, these are transcriptions of the sounds of the English words where you're not supposed to think of the surface significations of the characters, but they also sometimes simultaneously convey a zany or clever meaning that adds a special flavor to the transcription.

Here are a few of the sinographic transcriptions of "Oh my God" or "my God" that I've come across:

ōu mài gā (also gá / gǎ) 欧麦嘎 (lit., "Europe wheat [onomatopoeic ejaculation]")

ō mǎi gà 噢買尬 (lit., "Oh buy -ward") — there's even a song with this title

Cf. ōu mǎi gà 欧买尬, which is the same as the previous version except for the interjection at the beginning, although this is in simplified characters, whereas the former version is in traditional characters.

Gà 尬 is one of those characters that, by itself, doesn't mean anything. It only means something as part of the word gāngà 尴尬 (var. 尲尬) ("awkward; embarrassed; discomfited; ill at ease; clandestine / secretive"). While gà 尬 undoubtedly, perhaps subliminally, carries some of the nuances of "awkward", etc., in the exclamation "ōu mǎi gà 欧买尬", it is mainly functioning strictly to convey the sound of "God" (sans the final -d, which doesn't exist in Mandarin).

ōu mài gā 歐麥咖 (lit., "Oh, wheat cur-") — this is the name of a restaurant in Taichung that serves Russian food

Again, gā 咖 is a character that, by itself, doesn't mean anything. It only means something as part of the word gālí 咖喱 (a transcription of the English word "curry", which is itself a translation of the Tamil word kari (கறி) meaning "sauce") or as part of the word kāfēi 咖啡 (a transcription of the English word "coffee", which is itself a transliteration of the Ottoman Turkish word kahve [I won't try to trace it back beyond that to Arabic, since the derivation is vexed and complicated]).

ó měi gā (also gá / gǎ) 哦美嘎 ("oh beautiful [onomatopoeic ejaculation]") – on Facebook

ó mǎi gá 哦买噶 ("oh buy [character reserved for transcriptions]")

ó mǎi gè 哦买个 ("oh buy one")

mài gāode 卖糕的 ("cake seller")

My favorite is the last one, for two reasons: 1. it gives us a sense of God's activity, 2. it doesn't neglect the final -d of his name.

One Chinese blogger has even gone so far as to declare that gàode 告的 is the British pronunciation of "God", while gāde 嘎的 is the American pronunciation of "God".

[Thanks to Melvin Lee, Sophie Wei, Fangyi Cheng, and Rebecca Fu]

September 15, 2014 @ 4:19 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Found in translation, Lost in translation, Puns, Transcription

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