Daddy talk in Chinese
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From Politico's "China Watcher" Potpourri this morning (6/18/20):
Chinese now has a term for “mansplaining”: die wei, or “daddy flavor.” Chinese internet users are increasingly using it as a derogatory term to describe anyone — male or female — who claim unwarranted authority and give unsolicited advice, reports Shen Lu. Chinese feminist organizer Lü Pin tells China Watcher that the term’s popularity shows growing resistance from young people — mostly women — to a patriarchal culture. But she adds, the term is mainly “internet catharsis; the hierarchy in real life is not likely to change.”
Here's the term they're talking about:
diē wèi 爹味 ("dad flavor")
Diē 爹 ("dad") is often reduplicated as diēdie 爹爹 ("daddy").
Here's how diēdie 爹爹 sounds in various topolects:
- Cantonese (Jyutping): de1 de1
- Wu (Wiktionary): tia tia (T1)
- Xiang (Wiktionary): die1 die
- Min Bei (KCR): dié-dié
- Xiang (Wiktionary): dia1 dia
- (dialectal Mandarin, dialectal Gan, dialectal Hakka, Min Bei, dialectal Wu, Xiang) paternal grandfather
- (dialectal Mandarin, Xiang, polite) Term of address for an older male.
And here is how diē 爹 looks in historical reconstructions and sounds in a few other topolects not mentioned above:
Mandarin
Middle Sinitic: /ʈia/, /dɑX/
Old Sinitic:
- (Zhengzhang): /*daːʔ/, /*tjaː/
One cannot help but notice the resemblance to English "dad" and "daddy"
Etymological Dictionary Online
"a father, papa," recorded from c. 1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (compare Welsh tad, Irish daid, Lithuanian tėtė, Sanskrit tatah, Czech tata, Latin tata "father," Greek tata, used by youths to their elders).
Compare the much more detailed and extensive entry in Wiktionary:
From Middle English dadd, dadde, of uncertain origin. Possibly related to Low German detta (“grandfather”). Possibly from a metathetic variation of unrecorded Old English *ætta, *atta (“father”), from Proto-Germanic *attô ("father, forefather"; whence also North Frisian ate, aatj, taatje, tääte (“father; dad”), Cimbrian tatta (“dad”)), from Proto-Indo-European *átta (“father”), whence Sanskrit तत (tata, “father”); or perhaps of Celtic origin, compare Welsh and Breton tad, Old Irish data; and possibly related to Russian дя́дя (djádja, “uncle”) and/or Russian де́душка (déduška, “grandfather”).
The Indic words remind me of Tata Motors, India's largest automobile manufacturer and the Tata Group, the massive multinational conglomerate that owns Tata Motors and many other companies in various lines of business. The Tatas are a Parsi family who originally came to Mumbai from Navsari in the state of Gujarat.
Diē 爹 ("dad") starts to show up in Chinese writing by the early 7th c. AD. The reduplicated form diēdie 爹爹 ("daddy") occurs from around the 12th century. See Hànyǔ dà cídiǎn 漢語大詞典 (Unabridged dictionary of Sinitic), 6.1119b.
[h.t. Don Keyser]
Mike K said,
June 18, 2020 @ 2:27 pm
The Yiddish טאַטע (tate) for Dad is listed on Wiktionary as likely via Slavic from Proto-Slavic *tata, which lead me to Latin's "tata" which also means dad (though more of a babytalk like "dada" in English).
David Marjanović said,
June 18, 2020 @ 3:31 pm
Well, yes. Tata/dada is the second most common form worldwide, after papa/baba and before kaka.
Stephen Hart said,
June 18, 2020 @ 5:32 pm
"a derogatory term to describe anyone — male or female — who claim unwarranted authority and give unsolicited advice"
This wording is in the original, it's not a copying error.
anyone… who claim…
anyone… who give…
Victor Mair said,
June 18, 2020 @ 10:39 pm
In "Hànyǔ wàilái cí èr lì 汉语外来词二例" ("Two Examples of Foreign Borrowings in Sinitic"), Hànyǔ jiàoxué yǔ yánjiū 汉语教学与研究 (Chinese Teaching and Research), 1 (1994), 154-160, Zhu Qingzhi 朱庆之 details the earliest appearance of diēdiē 爹爹, dàdà 大大, dádá 达达, and duōduō 多多 (different transcriptions for the "daddy" word). The fact that there is such a multiplicity of quite different orthographic forms for the same word is a fair indication that they are transcriptions of a borrowing from a non-Sinitic language. Zhu does a considerable amount of philological legwork to demonstrate that Sanskrit "dad(dy)" words existed in Buddhist texts from India before they first occur as transcriptions in Sinitic works.
Zhu traces Sanskrit "tāta" back to Vedic tata, around 1000 BC, long before the term shows up in Sinitic.
The second example studied by Zhu is that of gēda 疙瘩 ("pimple; knot; swelling on the skin; lump; nodule; blotch; a knot in one's body or heart [–> hangup; problem; preoccupation]"), for which there are twenty (!) different Sinographic transcriptions. Zhu follows a similar process of analysis as he did for "dad(dy)". For previous Language Log studies on this word, see
=====
"Too hard to translate soup" (9/2/18).
"Of knots, pimples, and Sinitic reconstructions" (11/12/18)
Victor Mair said,
June 18, 2020 @ 10:39 pm
From a Chinese citizen:
=====
You know what, I simply can't put up with the deluge of diē wèi 爹味 ("dad flavor") talks in diē guó 爹国 ("dad country") right now. I feel like it's Year 1820, instead of 2020.
=====
Here are three propaganda films espousing the name "Xi Dada" for Xi Jinping (they are over the top maudlin, so don't watch if your stomach is already queasy):
=====
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzfkDMKHRBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByMTB6n6HVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnRo9AMT8FI
=====
~flow said,
June 19, 2020 @ 4:45 am
In the first video, a direct reference to the "happy times that are here again": "中国出了个习大大" < "中国出了个毛泽东" ("China has brought forth a Xi Daddy" < "China has brought forth a Mao Zedong"), from the Red Guards hit (and Model Opera I think?) 《东方红》 (The East is Red).
One shouldn't blame the Chinese for it, today's world is full of 帝国主义 (aggressive imperialism) and 爹爹主义 (dictator worship, führercult).
Update: found this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_Is_Red_(1965_film), which includes a history of the song 东方红 (apparently not originally a propaganda tune).
languagehat said,
June 19, 2020 @ 8:58 am
Chinese internet users are increasingly using it as a derogatory term to describe anyone — male or female — who claim unwarranted authority and give unsolicited advice
Then it is not an equivalent of “mansplaining,” which is explicitly and importantly about men explaining things to women (prototypically, things the women understand better than the men). Anyone who thinks the distinction doesn't matter needs a remedial course in feminism.
Victor Mair said,
June 19, 2020 @ 1:43 pm
Feminism with Chinese characteristics — and that is not meant to be a joke.
Chris Button said,
June 20, 2020 @ 5:18 am
There’s also Japanese “chichi” in which the “ch” is a palatalized “t”. Apparently the vowel took other forms in earlier Japanese like “toto” from whence “otōsan” (as Wikipedia informs me, but it seems plausible). I would favor an onomatopoeic origin for the Chinese word myself, and would put the multiplicity of written forms down to that.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 7:06 am
It is important to consider the time when these words pop up in Chinese, as Zhu Qingzhi has done (see comment above).
Michael Watts said,
June 20, 2020 @ 9:41 am
Is the (very recent!) multiplicity of English spellings mom / mama / maman / mommy / marmee good evidence that the word is a recent borrowing into English?
The spelling "maman" is certainly a borrowing, but I don't think that reflects back on the word.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 9:49 am
Check the textual evidence, as Prof. Zhu has done.
Michael Watts said,
June 20, 2020 @ 11:21 am
I don't see what the textual evidence has to do with this claim?
Michael Watts said,
June 20, 2020 @ 11:31 am
Also, it seems to me (from uninformed first principles) that a borrowing from Sanskrit Buddhist texts is significantly more likely to start its life with an agreed uniform spelling than an indigenous word is. Anyone exposed to the Sanskrit borrowing is highly educated and meets the word already in a written form.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 11:58 am
As is widely recognized by specialists in the field, oral transmission is part of the Buddhist translation process and is one of the factors that accounts for the multiplicity of variants.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 12:10 pm
"uninformed first principles"
Michael Watts said,
June 20, 2020 @ 4:59 pm
How many spelling variants do novel indigenous words usually arrive with?
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 5:06 pm
It's not "spelling" in the Chinese case, and there's no set standard for how many variant characters there might be.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 6:03 pm
If there's indigenous and / or external textual evidence that is datable, you're obliged to take it into account.
Chris Button said,
June 20, 2020 @ 6:55 pm
@ Victor Mair
Fair point. I suppose the use of "papa" could be a similar kind of thing. An originally onomatopoeic word being borrowed directly from French into English as a loanword.
Victor Mair said,
June 20, 2020 @ 7:21 pm
Bingo, Chris!
Philip Taylor said,
June 21, 2020 @ 4:09 am
And yet in Anglo-Saxon we have pápa = "Pope" [1], where "Pope" itself means "the Holy Father". Is it really safe to assume that we (the English-speaking peoples) took "papa" (= "daddy") from French rather than from our own earlier Anglo-Saxon ?
——–
[1] Ðá wæs on ða tíd Vitalianus pápa ðæs apostolican setles ealdorbiscop
Victor Mair said,
June 21, 2020 @ 6:24 am
[Middle English, from Old English pāpa, from Late Latin, from Latin, father (title of bishops), from Greek pappās; see papa in Indo-European roots.]
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed.
Andrew Usher said,
June 21, 2020 @ 6:56 am
Since the Old English word does survive as 'Pope' (the form following regular sound change) it obviously has not becomes the general 'daddy' word. The further etymology is irrelevant after seeing that.
'Mama', 'papa' are French borrowings, but they were borrowed with second-syllable stress. It is strange that all other variants have first-syllable stress yet are thought to stem from the same source rather than any being native formations; could we really have completely lost the common IE 'ma' and 'pa' roots?
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Victor Mair said,
June 21, 2020 @ 8:01 am
"The further etymology is irrelevant after seeing that."
Not entirely.
Andreas Johansson said,
June 21, 2020 @ 11:30 am
@Andrew Usher:
The IE roots survive in "mother" and "father".
Andrew Usher said,
June 23, 2020 @ 7:21 am
I meant that, to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Anglo-Saxon 'papa' (Pope) was not the origin of modern 'papa' (either stress), that is enough and the further etymology made it no stronger as far as I could see, not that it had no interest whatever.
Although 'mother' and 'father' do involve the IE roots, they are themselves compounds already existing in PIE, and so don't really count. How and where did the bare form survive, or was it simply re-innovated from onomatopeia in some languages, but not English?
David Marjanović said,
June 23, 2020 @ 1:23 pm
That, incidentally, means "grandfather", not "father".
Yeah, well, not an Indo-European root.
All these forms are re-innovated from adults' interpretation of baby talk all the time, everywhere, and they're also borrowed pretty often (papa from French to German, Russian and to some extent English in the 18th/19th century, I think).
I mean, you can watch this happen. Nana is a widespread word for "grandmother" in American English, with no known source in England or anywhere else as far as I know.
Philip Taylor said,
June 23, 2020 @ 3:01 pm
Born U.K., 1947. My maternal grandmother was "Nanny". Not a great leap to "Nana", I feel.
Andrej Bjelaković said,
June 23, 2020 @ 6:02 pm
Isn't 'nan' common in England?
Chris Button said,
June 23, 2020 @ 7:07 pm
On more recent French loans, American English tends to favor the French intonation (which it approximates with second syllable stress), while British English tends to convert things to first syllable stress. So things like massage, salon, ballet, etc all have different stress patterns in British and American English.
I think you might have confused your vowels
Yes, it is.
The source there is Calvert Watkins. Mallory & Adams appear to treat it much the same way.
Andrew Usher said,
June 24, 2020 @ 7:18 am
Of course I know of the difference in 'massage', 'salon', etc. – the point is that 'mama' and 'papa' don't follow that rule. The only American use surviving today, as far as I know, has first-syllable stress just as if spelled 'momma' and 'poppa' (and those spellings do exist, but more commonly 'mom and pop'); I haven't heard any contemporary British pronunciations but I understand they still have final stress. So one can assume only one original pronunciation.
Actually, the British 'massage' and so on seems to me almost ostentatiously foreign, with the short stressed vowel and long unstressed one, and in a closed syllable. The American pronunciations on the other hand fit with the many existing iambic words in English just fine. (And the same for 'foyer' despite the protest of Michael Watts.)
Nan/nana/nanny clearly have one origin and are common to American and British English – as is dad/daddy. So I guess it's the dental forms that are the native 'baby' forms, while the labial forms are French – which must say something about the respective languages.
Philip Taylor said,
June 24, 2020 @ 8:11 am
Less "ostentation" that "conservative", I would suspect. We (in the UK) have a number of words that follow the "massage" pattern — barrage, collage, dressage, garage, mirage, portage, triage, … The more punctilious will stress "dressage" and "portage" on the final syllable but most will not.
Andrew Usher said,
June 25, 2020 @ 7:42 am
Obviously it's not ostentatious for those that grew up with only that pronunciation; that's just how it sounds to me, an American. I've heard the explanation that educated Brits have had more continuous contract with standard French and hence have adopted or retained more 'Frenchified' pronunciations for many words.
Also, we agree with you about 'dressage' and 'triage' – with I think the same hesitation about stress in the first, not that it's a term I need to use – and fully anglicise 'portage' to port-idge (it occurs in quite a few place names). The others follow the standard iambic pattern you're thinking of.
Philip Taylor said,
June 25, 2020 @ 9:07 am
There are people in the U.K. who Anglicise "garage" (/ˈɡær ɑːʒ/) as /ˈɡæ rɪdʒ/, but I shudder when I hear it — nonetheless, if the LPD is to be believed, John Wells may be one of them, tho' he syllabifies it differently [1].
I have never heard /ˈpɔːt ɪdʒ/, but I know fewer than five people who use the word at all — the LPD has it as preferred, followed by /ˌpɔː ˈtɑːʒ/.
——–
[1] I don't really understand the LPD entry for "garage". The speaker (almost certainly JW) clearly says /ˈɡæ rɪdʒ /, but the prose reads :