Language Log

« previous post | next post »

Sok3 Kei1
索K
‘to inhale, ingest, take Ketamine, which is an illegal drug in Hong Kong’

["Ketamine is a medication mainly used for starting and maintaining anesthesia. It induces a trance-like state while providing pain relief, sedation, and memory loss. Other uses include sedation in intensive care and treatment of pain and depression." Source]

We've seen endless examples of polysyllabic characters in Chinese, and we've encountered countless instances of Chinese words composed of Sinitic and extra-Sinitic morphemes or letters, but seldom do we find elements of more than one writing system combined in a single Sinograph.

Most of the new, polysyllabic Sinographs in Hong Kong derive from the creativity of the anti-CCP protesters and dissidents.  This one, however, might be from the drug culture of Hong Kong, unless people are taking it to cope with the trauma and depression induced by the imposition of the National Security Law and other dictatorial, draconian measures imposed by the CCP on the citizens of Hong Kong.

Selected readings

• "Polysyllabic characters in Chinese writing" (8/2/11)
• "Polysyllabic characters revisited " (6/18/15)
• "A new polysyllabic character" (7/3/16)
• "Yet another polysyllabic Chinese character" (10/31/16)
• "Love Love Rock" (11/13/16)
• "Hong Kong protesters messing with the characters, part 2" (9/1/19)
• "Vocabulary of Hong Kong protest slogans and new characters" (9/1/19)
• "More completely new sinographs from Hong Kong" (9/8/20)
• "National Security Law eclipses Hong Kong" (6/2/20)
• "A New Morpheme in Mandarin" (4/26/11)
• "Nerd, geek, PK: Creeping Romanization (and Englishization), part 2" (3/5/13)
• "Creeping Romanization in Chinese, part 3" (11/25/18) — with a long list of relevant posts
• "The letter * has bee* ba**ed in Chi*a" (2/26/18)
• "Zhao C: a Man Who Lost His Name" (2/27/09)
• "Ask Language Log: The alphabet in China" (11/6/19)
• "The actuality of emerging digraphia" (3/10/19)
• "Sememic spelling" (3/27/19)
• "Polyscriptal Taiwanese" (7/24/10)
• "The Roman Alphabet in Cantonese" (3/23/11)
• "Love those letters" (11/3/18)
• "Acronyms in China" (11/2/19)
• "A Sino-English grammatical construction " (3/23/15)
• "English in Chinese: over了, out了, 太low了, 太out了" (10/25/15)
• Mark Hansell, "The Sino-Alphabet: The Assimilation of Roman Letters into the Chinese Writing System," Sino-Platonic Papers, 45 (May, 1994), 1-28 (pdf)
• Helena Riha, "Lettered Words in Chinese:  Roman Letters as Morpheme-syllables" (pdf)

[Thanks to Bob Bauer]

September 13, 2020 @ 7:15 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Diglossia and digraphia, Morphology, Orthography, Writing systems

Permalink