ChToEn.com<\/a>, which gives the following example usages of the expression as rendered in English:<\/span><\/p>\n1. \"He is a high profile asset<\/b> to the university due to the advanced research he's conducted.\"<\/span><\/p>\n2. \"He is a big deal<\/b> at the university now.\"<\/span><\/p>\n3. \"a big shot<\/b>\"<\/span><\/p>\nAll right, I got the basic idea of what <\/span>d\u00e0k\u0101 <\/span>\u5927\u5496 means (the bolded items in the sample sentences), but I wanted to know how and why it means that.\u00a0 The second character, <\/span>k\u0101 <\/span>\u5496, is often used in transcriptions of foreign words (e.g., <\/span>k\u0101f\u0113i \u5496\u5561 [\"coffee\"]; <\/span>g\u0101l\u00ed <\/span>\u5496\u55b1 [\"curry\"], here with a different initial<\/span><\/span>).\u00a0 The mouth radical on the left side is a clear signal that it is being used to convey sound rather than meaning.\u00a0 \"Character\"?\u00a0 \"Casting\"?<\/span><\/p>\nSince this usage seems to have arisen fairly recently (within about ten years) in Taiwan and first in the entertainment industry, some have speculated that it came from English \"cast\" (can also be transcribed as <\/span>k\u01ces\u012b \u5361\u53f8) or \"character\", perhaps through a Japanese intermediary (<\/span>kyasuto <\/span>\u30ad\u30e3\u30b9\u30c8; <\/span><\/span><\/span>kyarakut\u0101 \u30ad\u30e3\u30e9\u30af\u30bf\u30fc).\u00a0 Digging a bit deeper and asking around among a wider circle of informants, however, it appears that the notion of <\/span>d\u00e0k\u0101 <\/span>\u5927\u5496 (\"big shot \/ deal\") originated more directly from within Taiwanese.<\/span><\/p>\nT\u014dakha<\/i> is pretty common in Taiwanese. It means \"somebody important\", a \"big shot\".\u00a0 The fact that it is also written \u5927\u8173 (lit., \"big foot\"), gives us a hint as to its derivation, viz., kaksek \u811a\u8272 \/ \u89d2\u8272 (\"character; role\").\u00a0 So k\u0101 <\/span>\u5496 is being used to convey the approximate sound of Taiwanese <\/span>kaksek \u811a\u8272 \/ \u89d2\u8272 (\"character; role\").\u00a0 Hence d\u00e0k\u0101 <\/span>\u5927\u5496 <\/span>signifies the main or leading role in a particular circle \/ group \/ field.\u00a0 Taiwan media divide entertainers into several levels:\u00a0 A\u5496 (\"A-list\"), B\u5496 (\"B-list\"), C\u5496 (\"C-list\"). etc.\u00a0 There is also xi\u01ceok\u0101 \u5c0f\u5496 (\"minor role\" — that would be something like \"D-list\") and gu\u00e0ik\u0101 \u602a\u5496 (\"strange character\").\u00a0 You can even have an interesting sentence like this:\u00a0 z\u00e0i y\u01ceny\u00ec ji\u00e8, t\u0101 su\u00e0nsh\u00ec ge k\u0101 \u5728\u6f14\u827a\u754c\uff0c\u4ed6\u7b97\u662f\u4e2a\u5496 (\"in show biz, he is considered somebody\").\u00a0 In certain instances, xi\u01ceok\u0101 \u5c0f\u5496 might be thought of as a \"nobody\".<\/p>\nThis usage of k\u0101 <\/span>\u5496<\/span> as \"level of stardom \/ influence \/ significance\" appears to have become popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong first and then moved to the Mainland.<\/p>\nSo what's the second new Chinese term that I learned this morning?\u00a0 Actually, it's a word that I encountered long ago in Japanese (monogatari \u7269\u8a9e [\"story; tale; legend\"]), but I wasn't aware that it is also used in Mandarin, namely w\u00f9y\u01d4 \u7269\u8a9e (\"tale; story\"), the Chinese name of the ChToEn.com website from which I got the three example usages cited above:<\/p>\n
Zh\u014dng-Y\u012bng w\u00f9y\u01d4 \u4e2d\u82f1\u7269\u8a9e (\"Tales of Chinese and English\")<\/p>\n
Michael Cannings recalls:<\/p>\n
In my days in the Taiwanese tech industry, the sales team at my company used to classify potential customer companies as A, B, or C (pronounced x\u012b) d\u011bng<\/em> \u7b49 (\"class; grade; rank\"), with individual representatives from those companies identified as t\u014dakha<\/em> (\"big fish\") or si\u00f3kha<\/em> (\"small fry\") and offered varying levels of hospitality accordingly. So an A\u5927 got the fancy meals, personal appearances from our CEO and various VPs, chauffeured around town, evening entertainment, etc. The C\u5c0fs got a cup of tea and a chat with a junior salesperson. When referred to as A\u5927 or other combined ranks the \u5927 and \u5c0f were pronounced in Mandarin (d\u00e0<\/em> and xi\u01ceo<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n
If I can indulge myself in an entirely unrelated reminiscence, my favourite Taiwanese phrase I picked up at that company was s\u00ed ti-\u00e1 k\u00e8<\/i> \u6b7b\u8c6c\u4ed4\u50f9 (\"dead pig price\"). Apparently at livestock markets live pigs were sold via a bidding process, but pigs already slaughtered commanded a fixed (and lower) price. It was used by our th\u00e2u-ke<\/i> \u982d\u5bb6 (\"boss\") to describe competitors' products that were so cheap we couldn't compete.<\/p>\n
Commanding constantly shifting and expanding vocabulary, especially when it spreads across several languages in different geographical regions, keeps one on one's toes<\/i>.\u00a0 And now I'm trying to think how to say that<\/b> in Taiwanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and so on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
[Thanks to Mark Swofford, Michael Cannings, Liwei Jiao, Jing Wen, Melvin Lee, Grace Wu, Sophie Wei, Chia-hui Lu, Fangyi Cheng, Bo Xie, and Li Fuluowa]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least they're new for me. I'm always learning new expressions, constructions, usages, etc. in Chinese.\u00a0 The Sinitic languages are changing so rapidly that it is a heady experience trying to keep up with them.\u00a0 The two new Mandarin words I just learned are good examples of the kinds of transformations that are constantly taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,278],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borrowing","category-lexicon-and-lexicography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29204"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29210,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204\/revisions\/29210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}