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It has become a meme in China to make fun of people speaking with a Henan accent.  Here are two videos of women dancing and singing Christian songs in Yùjù 豫剧 ("Henan opera") that are circulating on the Chinese internet to the accompaniment of much merriment:  first (for Easter, eulogizing the scene of the Resurrection of Jesus; folkish), second (in praise of Jesus, with an industrial, commercial, official flavor).

Comment by a Chinese friend on the first song-and-dance:

Just think of saints who resurrect from tombs riding in sedan chairs carried by angels and flying to heaven in throngs! It makes me laugh so hard. The girl in red with a piece of cloth over her head is obviously a bride. So it becomes a scene of wedding in progressing to heaven. What a combination of local customs with religion!

Further remark by the same friend:

As for the second piece, it will work perfectly well if "Zhǔ 主“ ("Lord") is replaced by "Dǎng 党“ ("Party").

People aren't just laughing at the videos, they're making jokes about the way Henanese talk.  Here's one from a linguistically oriented website called Xiéyīn gěng yánjiū suǒ 谐音梗*研究所 (Institute for Research on Homophonia Memes) on 11/5/20 at 08:32:

*See under "Selected readings".

Chuānpǔ yīzhí zài jiāojí de děng xiāoxī, yī wèi péngyǒu quàn tā zǎodiǎn shuì, shuō:  “Bài dēng la, děng yěshì Bàidēng.”

Wèn: Zhè wèi péngyǒu zuì kěnéng shì shénme rén?

A. Yī wèi Gònghédǎng péngyǒu

B. Yī wèi Mínzhǔdǎng péngyǒu

C. Yī wèi Hénán péngyǒu ​​​​

川普一直在焦急地等消息，一位朋友劝他早点睡，说：“拜登啦，等也是拜登。”

问：这位朋友最可能是什么人？
A. 一位共和党朋友
B. 一位民主党朋友
C. 一位河南朋友 ​​​​

Trump has been anxiously waiting for news. A friend advised him to go to bed early and said, "Bi ('don't') den ('wait'), even if you wait it'll still be Biden."

Question: Who is this friend most likely?

A. A Republican friend

B. A Democratic friend

C. A friend from Henan ​​​​

Key:  báiděng 白等 ("wait in vain") is pronounced as Bàidēng 拜登 ("Biden") in Henan topolect.

For those who are interested in advanced studies on Sinitic homophonia, a connoisseur of the subject writes as follows [for specialists only; others may skip to the next section on Bideniana]):

WARNING:  not for Sinitic homophonia amateurs

Actually the two 拜登s are different. And it has three different interpretations in topolects!!!! 

Bideniana variora

While doing due diligence on the above topic, I came upon Joe Biden's interesting middle name:  Robinette.  That struck me as diminutive and feminine, so I wondered about it.   A little bit of web-searching led me to this Intelligencer (New York Magazine) article by Dan Amira, "Joe Biden’s Middle Name Is Robinette" (8/26/08):

It’s widely acknowledged that Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate to balance out the ticket in his areas of weakness — national security, for example, or appeal to the female, blue collar, or smart-aleck voting blocks. One area in which Biden definitely doesn’t help, though: middle names. By now, we’re all aware that Obama is graced with the, er, politically uncooperative middle name of Hussein. But now the ticket is weighed down by a second, probably worse middle name: Robinette. That’s not a typo. Joe Biden’s middle name is Robinette. What the hell is that, even? It’s a little feminine, obviously. It also sounds like some kind of miniature bird, or maybe a doo-wop backup singer. Actually, it’s neither. As Biden explained it on C-SPAN a couple of years ago:

It’s my grandmother Biden’s maiden name. It’s French. And it goes back a long, long way. Allegedly the Robinettes came over with Lafayette and never went home. I don’t know that. We can’t guarantee that.

Wait a second, wait a second. They “came over with Lafayette and never went home”? The middle name is bad enough, but were Joe Robinette Biden’s relatives … illegal aliens?

Come to think of it, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757–1834), known in the United States as Lafayette, had a similar surname as Joe Biden's grandmother.

Lafayette or La Fayette, is originally a surname or a toponym coming from the Occitan words la faieta and that designates a beech forest.   (source)

VHM:  "the little beech tree", mind you (so says Wiktionary)

It's a long way from Pennsylvania to Henan, but there's a tie that binds them.

Interesting that "biden" means "wait" in Middle Dutch! (source). See the Henan homophonia joke above.  Cf. English "bide", which the dictionaries say is dialectal or archaic, but it is part of my active vocabulary, and I've heard many other English speakers use it in daily discourse.

Selected readings

• "Chinese Buzzwords of the year 2019: plagiarism / stealing a shtick" (1/8/20) — in this post, we go into the meaning and usage of gěng 梗 in great detail
• "What’s the Difference Between Homophonia, Homophobia, and Homophonophobia?", by Gretchen McCulloch, Lexicon Valley, Slate (Aug 01, 2014)
• "Mycological meandering: vernacular variora" (7/4/19)

[Thanks to two anonymous correspondents]

November 11, 2020 @ 4:47 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Memes, Names, Topolects

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