![\"\"](\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/tingwong1.jpg\" "\\"Click")
<\/a><\/p>\nI love Hong Kong style congee<\/a> (rice porridge or gruel).\u00a0 Long before I started to learn any Cantonese, I already had a fun mnemonic for how to pronounce zh\u014du \u7ca5 (\"congee\") in that language.\u00a0 I would just think of the phrase sik6<\/span>zuk1<\/span> <\/span>\u98df\u7ca5 (\"eat congee\"), which sounded a bit like \"sick joke\" to me, although, of course, it was divine to the taste.<\/p>\n The English designation of the second item on the menu, \"with chopped beef\", didn't seem quite right, but I knew from the look of the restaurant and the bowls of congee on the neighboring tables that it would be delicious.<\/p>\n If the English name sounded a bit odd, the Chinese name was even stranger:<\/p>\n Cant. min5<\/span><\/span>zi6<\/span><\/span> ngau4juk6 zuk1 \/ MSM mi\u01cenzh\u00ec ni\u00far\u00f2u zh\u014du \u514d\u6cbb\u725b\u8089\u7ca5<\/p>\n The last three characters presented no problem; they just meant \"beef congee\".\u00a0 But the first two characters had us stumped:<\/p>\n min5 \/ <\/span><\/span><\/span>mi\u01cen <\/span><\/span><\/span>\u514d (\"<\/span><\/span>avoid<\/span>; dismiss; <\/span>escape<\/span>; exempt; <\/span>spare; excuse from; evade\")<\/p>\n zi6<\/span><\/span> \/zh\u00ec <\/span>\u6cbb (\"control; <\/span>cure; <\/span>govern<\/span>; manage<\/span>; punish<\/span>; rule; <\/span>govern; regulate; administer\")<\/p>\n We couldn't make any sense of \"avoid control\", etc. in the context of congee types.\u00a0 So we asked the waiters what it really meant.\u00a0 They just kept repeating \"min5<\/span><\/span>zi6\", \"<\/span><\/span>min5<\/span><\/span>zi6\", as though we ought to understand that.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I should interject here that the waiters spoke very little English and not much Mandarin, so we were relying on their limited Mandarin and our limited Cantonese to try to understand their answers and explanations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n When the bowl of congee appeared before us and we saw what it looked like, we immediately grasped what the waiters were saying:\u00a0 \"min5<\/span><\/span>zi6\" is the transcription of English \"minced\", and that is exactly how the beef in the bowl had been prepared.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Ting Wong specializes in what is known as caa1siu1laap6 \/ ch\u0101sh\u0101ol\u00e0 \u53c9\u71d2\u81d8, which are essentially barbecued meats.<\/p>\n caa1 \/ ch\u0101 \u53c9 refers to the spit on which the duck is roasted<\/p>\n siu1 \/ sh\u0101o \u71d2 means \"roast; bake; grill; barbecue\"<\/p>\n laap6 \/ l\u00e0 \u81d8 signifies a special type of preserved meat traditionally prepared at the end of the year<\/p>\n So we ordered a ping3<\/span>pun2<\/span><\/span> \/ p\u012bnp\u00e1n \u62fc\u76e4 (\"platter\") of various cuts of roast duck, chicken, and the special prepared meat.<\/p>\n After we finished the meal, I used proper Cantonese to ask for the bill:\u00a0 maai4daan1 \u57cb\u55ae (that does not<\/b> mean \"bury the bill\"!).\u00a0 See \"Sound rules<\/a> \" (9\/8\/15), in the middle of the post.<\/p>\n We may compare this check with another bill from the same restaurant when Yixue went there a couple of months ago:\u00a0 \"Chinese restaurant shorthand<\/a>\" (9\/22\/16).<\/p>\n All right, let's go through the items on the bill for the meal on 11\/26\/16:<\/p>\n min5 \/ <\/span><\/span><\/span>mi\u01cen <\/span><\/span><\/span>\u514d — that's for the congee with minced beef gaap3 caa1 gaai3 ping3<\/span><\/span> \/ ji\u01ce ch\u0101 ji\u00e8 p\u012bn \u7532\u53c9\u4ecb\u62fc — this one is rather complicated, but surprisingly we more or less figured it out on our own:<\/p>\n \u7532 (\"armor; 'A' [as in 'A, B, C' — it's the first of the ten celestial stems<\/a>]\"), but here it's being used to indicate the phonophore of aap3 \/ y\u0101 \u9d28<\/span><\/span> (\"duck\")<\/p>\n \u53c9 as defined above, this is caa1 \/ ch\u0101 \u53c9 and refers to the spit on which the duck is roasted<\/p>\n \u4ecb normally this is pronounced gaai3 \/ ji\u00e8 and means \"(lie \/ situate) between; introduce\"), but here it is being used as a near homophone of <\/span>gai1 \/ j\u012b \u96de (\"chicken\")<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u62fc (\"join \/ piece \/ place together\", as in p\u012bny\u012bn \u62fc\u97f3 [\"putting \/ placing sounds together\", i.e., \"spell\"], but here it's the different types of meat that are being \"placed \/ put together\" on a platter)<\/p>\n faan2 \/ f\u01cen \u53cdT (\"anti-; counter-; rebel; turn over\" T) here stands for faan6 \/ f\u00e0n \u996dT (\"rice\" T)<\/p>\n Now we have to tackle the hardest parts of the receipt, the \"O\" and the \"T\".\u00a0 This will take a considerable amount of unpacking.\u00a0 Yixue and I asked the waiter what \"T\" meant, and he used one of the two English words he spoke the whole time:\u00a0 \"two\".\u00a0 All right, we thought, \"T\" stands for \"two\", since we had two bowls of rice.\u00a0 We then again asked what \"O\" meant, since we had earlier been told that it means \"order\", but we didn't think that made any sense, since all of the items on the receipt were \"orders\".\u00a0 In contrast with \"T\" for \"two\" bowls of rice, we theorized that \"O\" must mean \"one\" order of gai lan, which is indeed what we got.\u00a0 But all of the waiters insisted the \"O\" stands for \"order\", so we just had to accept that.\u00a0 After all, it's their<\/b> language, not ours!<\/p>\n But then we thought that we were probably wrong about \"T\" standing for \"two\", even though that's what the waiters told us several times:\u00a0 \"T\" means \"two\" (the only other English word beside \"order\" they spoke to us).\u00a0 So we again confirmed that \"O\" means \"order\", not \"one\", as we had hypothesized.\u00a0 We then again asked for confirmation that \"T\" really means the English word \"two\", and were told that it does not stand for the English word \"two\".\u00a0 Rather, it is the second<\/b> stroke of the character \/ zh\u00e8ng \u6b63 (\"orthodox; correct; right; main\", etc.), as one of the waiters demonstrated at the bottom left of the bill.\u00a0 This use of \u6b63 to mark off groups of five fills the same function as our use of four vertical strokes crossed by a slanting line to complete a group of five.\u00a0 See the section on \"Clustering<\/a>\" in the Wikpedia article on \"Tally marks<\/a>\".\u00a0 Yixue tells me that she and her co-workers in the Chinese section of Penn's library use the technique of counting by marking off \u6b63s to keep track of how many books they bar code each day in the library.<\/p>\n That completes today's exposition of Chinese restaurant shorthand.<\/p>\n And here, just to make you drool, is a photograph of the glass case at the front of the Ting Wong Restaurant:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\nlaan2 <\/span><\/span>\/ l\u00e1n \u5170O — stands for gaai3<\/span>laan2<\/span><\/span> \/ ji\u00e8l\u00e1n \u82a5\u5170O (\"Chinese kale \/ broccoli \/ gai lan<\/a> \/ kai lan order\")<\/p>\n