Help through French puberty for sale

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Shared by David Cowhig:

The Chinese says:

Nǐ fāyù xūyào bāngzhù me?
你发育需要帮助么?
"You need help with your development / (sexual) maturity, eh?"

For "fāyù 发育" ("growth / development / (sexually) mature"), they meant "Fǎyǔ 法语" ("French").

For "me 么", it would be more common to write the interrogative particle "ma 吗".

The precise Mandarin term for "puberty" is "qīngchūnqí 青春期" ("pubescence; adolescence").

Maybe they should have just written "Ni Fayu xuyao bangzhu ma?"

[h.t. Bill Bikales and Perry Link]



8 Comments

  1. JB said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 1:14 am

    This makes perfect sense if one is aware of the slang meaning of "French lesson." See here https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=French%20Lessons and here https://lingomash.com/slang-meanings/5166/slang-meaning-of-french-lessons

  2. Thomas Rees said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 4:39 am

    Does Language Log now have a Canadian content quota?

    French Centre seems to be in Vancouver (604 area code).

    In the previous post ("Lapsus digiti") Brittlestar (Stewart Reynolds) is from Stratford, Ontario.

    In the post before that ("Google needs…") Drew Haytaoglu is also Canadian; his father is an RCAF officer stationed at CFB Trenton.

    BTW, I've heard "Hate-oh-glue". In Turkish, of course, /hajtaoːlu/.

  3. JJM said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 7:21 am

    Thomas Rees: "Does Language Log now have a Canadian content quota?"

    A Canadian content quota? Nonsense!

    Certainly not as far as I can tell, sitting here enjoying my coffee on another beautiful Ottawa Valley morning in Eastern Ontario.

  4. Philip Spaelti said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 9:12 am

    What I find amazing about this is how did they end up with this?

    The mix-up of fāyù and Fǎyǔ only works if you start from the Chinese. So the sign was made by a foreigner (French person?) who knows enough Chinese to come up with the phrase orally, but it is completely clueless about the characters? But is able to create the character output (using a computer) without any help?

    Surely a French person who knows any characters knows 法语…

    Or maybe I'm overthinking this and it was just carelessness?

  5. Doreen said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 10:13 am

    If "me 么" is best translated as "eh", then it seems entirely appropriate for a sign in Canada.

  6. Michael Watts said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 1:07 pm

    么 is just 吗 (the grammatically required interrogative marker) with the vowel reduced. It's common outside of formal contexts.

  7. Michael Watts said,

    July 24, 2019 @ 7:19 pm

    The mix-up of fāyù and Fǎyǔ only works if you start from the Chinese. So the sign was made by a foreigner (French person?) who knows enough Chinese to come up with the phrase orally, but it is completely clueless about the characters? But is able to create the character output (using a computer) without any help?

    Surely a French person who knows any characters knows 法语…

    This is pretty easy to explain — the person typing the flyer used Pinyin input, and then didn't proofread. The problem is in not proofreading, not in failing to know the characters 法语.

    I'll note that in both Microsoft's pinyin input method (on my computer) and Google Pinyin Input (on my phone), 发育 is the default selection when I type "fayu", and 法语 is #2.

  8. Victor Mair said,

    July 25, 2019 @ 12:27 am

    @Philip Spaelti

    "The mix-up of fāyù and Fǎyǔ only works if you start from the Chinese. So the sign was made by a foreigner (French person?) who knows enough Chinese to come up with the phrase orally, but … is completely clueless about the characters? But is able to create the character output (using a computer) without any help?"

    Although you phrased it as a question, what you surmised is so brilliantly spot on that I didn't bother to reply.

    Your scenario also fits well with the issue Doreen raised about "me 么", which I translated as "eh" — namely, an oral approach to Mandarin.

    There are plenty of people who know Mandarin (or Cantonese or Taiwanese, etc.) only through Romanization. Indeed, I started a Hanyu Pinyin only class at Penn about thirty years ago, and it is still thriving today. For the last twenty years or so, it has been taught by Dr. (of Chinese literature) Maiheng Shen Dietrich 沈迈衡. She is the granddaughter of Mao Dun 茅盾 (real name Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰 [1896-1981]), one of the most famous Chinese writers of the 20th century.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Dun

    I'm proud of this course at Penn, and I'm grateful to Maiheng for teaching it so expertly for all these years.

    As I mentioned in a number of previous Language Log posts and comments, often it's the most brilliant and best students who refuse to have anything to do with characters, because they want to learn the language (its pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, idiomatic usage [and I'm not talking about chengyu {set phrases} here], grammar, syntax…), and they learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc. extremely well — not caring a fig about the characters (not having time for them; too many other important things in life than sacrificing countless hours to the characters, which they instinctively, innately know they'll never master anyway).

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