So they say, but I wouldn't count on it. We've heard this patriotic, isolationist tune sung countless times during the last thirty years or so (in fact, it happens every time preceding a national political meeting, but nothing ever comes of it). The wealthy, privileged, elite, right up to and including Chairman Xi, keep spending a fortune to send their children to the comfort, safety, and English environment of the USA. I know, because I've taught hundreds of them during the last twenty years and more.
Julius Hui, who has done custom work for companies like Tencent, wants to radically rethink Chinese fonts."
I find this article to be curiously counterintuitive: Julius Hui, the font designer, wants to revolutionize Chinese typography by hearkening back to a time before modern (say, the last four or five hundred years) fonts for typesetting. That would be like telling designers of modern fonts for northern European languages to go back to the 4th-century pre-Gothic script of Ulfilas (or Wulfila) to develop a "revolutionary" new script for English or for designers of modern fonts for southern European languages to go back to the uncial majuscule script of roughly the same time period that was used for Greek and Latin.
New issue of Sino-Platonic Papers (no. 317 [August, 2021]):
“'Kong Girl Phonetics': Loose Cantonese Romanization in the 2019 Hong Kong Protest Movement,” by Ruth Wetters (free pdf)
Abstract
Cantonese in Hong Kong occupies a specific cultural and political niche, informed by the unique context of the Hong Kong identity. During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, protesters used modified Cantonese online to evade detection and cement their identity as Hong Kongers. One way in which this was achieved is through a new online vernacular, dubbed “Kong girl phonetics” Kong nui ping jam. This vernacular borrows from grassroots romanization, English phonetics, number substitutions, and bilingualism in English and Cantonese to exclude all readers except young Hong Kong people, who show high bilingualism and high tech literacy and share the vocabulary of protesters. This essay explores aspects of this protest vernacular through non-comprehensive analysis of a thread on LIHKG (Lineage: Hong Kong Golden) lin dang 連黨 that is the first recorded example of “Kong girl speech.”
Until Chairman Xi started going after the entertainment world, and especially foreign entertainment, the Chinese people were deeply enamored of Korean soap operas, boy bands, K-Pop girl groups, and so forth. They idolized the Korean stars, watched their performances, and would even go on pilgrimages to important places associated with them. Moreover, as with J-pop, manga, and anime, which inspired many young Chinese to learn Japanese language, so were Chinese youth inspired by Korean pop culture to learn Korean language. So it is not altogether surprising to hear a Chinese film star switch into Korean.
First listen, and see if you can distinguish between the Mandarin and the Korean. Below I'll give a rough account of the background to this scene.
Julia Preseau wrote to ask about a phrase in Caitlyn Jenner's (5/5/2021) interview with Sean Hannity, where Jenner seems to say "I love this country, I'm a patriarch":
Just talking about this strange locution, "niángpào 娘炮" (slang for "sissy; effeminate man"), let us hear what a necessarily anonymous PRC citizen has to say about it:
I think the CCP is widening its dictatorship under the veil of / through its social morality cultivation in various aspects these days, and that it bans "娘炮" from the entertainment industry (“boycotting being overly entertaining”) functions as one of its schemes to instill the antecedent atmosphere.
Always thought it odd that in Chinese,the politest way to refer to children is "little friend" 小朋友。Does it come from the Russian "little comrade" or Bing Xin's letters "To Young Readers; Chinese: 寄小讀者"? Anyone smarter than me have something better than an educated guess?
BEIJING (AP) — China’s government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote “revolutionary culture,” broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality.
The main term used to describe such persons is "niángpào 娘炮" (slang for "sissy; effeminate man"). The article quoted above says it means "girlie guns". That is a literal translation of the two constituent characters, but I have my doubts that it reflects the true derivation of the word, since it is also written with the homophonous characters 娘泡, which mean "girlie bubbles / froth / lather".
Christian Horn was reading an article in Japanese Endgadget (8/11/21) about the introduction of a new kind of robot called a "Cyberdog".
Says Christian:
You don't need to know Japanese to understand the fascinating part: in Japanese, when counting things, the type of "thing" you are counting is relevant. So you count "flat things" differently than "long shaped" things. Or machines, fish, or animals.
The article states that Cyberdog is aimed at developers, and is limited to "1000台(匹?)", showing hesitation over which measure word to use, dai 台 (counter for machines, including vehicles) or hiki 匹 (counter for small animals; counter for rolls of cloth; counter for horses). If you use dai 台 as a measure word for counting Cyberdogs, it would indicate that you think of them as machines. If you use hiki 匹 for counting them, it would indicate that you regard Cyberdogs as animals.
