Color your language with Net expressions
Updated: 2010-11-26 07:06
By Chen Jia (China Daily)
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BEIJING - Have you always wanted to be the rage around the water cooler or the funny guy on a date? Try slapping down a few words of cyber language and make yourself "geilivable".
Ma Xiao, a 27-year-old Beijing native who works for the marketing department of a Forbes 500 enterprise, ends most of her talks with the word "geilivable" - the latest popular cyber word spelled in Chinglish, which combines the Chinese words geili (give strength) with an English suffix to create a word meaning "empower".
"Interpersonal relations are always weak when you work in a competitive environment, while cyber language sometimes makes people relax when you speak face to face," she said.
"The word might be a weird and haphazard combination of sounds for people who never surf the Internet, but to a country with 420 million netizens, it's meaningful," she said. "It's even gradually becoming part of the mainstream social language."
Ma is just one of the increasing number of the Chinese who enjoy learning cyber language and using it in the real life.
About 65 percent of the respondents believe that cyber language could be used in daily life if it is standardized, according to the report Language Situation in China (2009) released by the State Language Commission on Thursday.
| Spice up English, with Chinese
Next time a Chinese friend asks how you are doing, just reply "horse horse tiger tiger" and smile in response. Whether or not other English speakers understand the phrase, your Chinese friend will, as it is a literal translation of the common expression ma ma hu hu, meaning "just so so". "Speaking Chinglish was once considered shameful for the Chinese, but now it's getting more and more fashionable, even for some foreigners," said Zheng Mengjuan, a compiler of the report of Language Situation in China (2009). "Chinglish has won more tolerance and to some extent, it brings Chinese culture to the outside world," she said. For example, "heart flower angry open", which means "very happy", is from the Chinese expression xin hua nu fang. In another case, Chinglish fans say "good good study, day day up" rather than "study hard" when they are praising students. According to an online survey launched in 2009 at sina.com, a popular news portal in China, about 70 percent of 8,000 netizens said Chinglish is funny and might find acceptance by English speakers. In fact, English has already absorbed many Chinese phrases, like "long time no see" (hao jiu bu jian), "no can do" (bu neng zuo) and "no go" (bu xing). The Global Language Monitor, a US company that analyzes trends in language usage worldwide, claims Chinglish is adding the most spice to the alphabet soup of today's English by contributing more words than any other single source to the global language. - Chen Jia |
According to the report, about 27 percent of respondents said cyber language should appear in Chinese dictionaries.
About 91 percent of respondents said they do not mind if they hear cyber language in their daily lives if the words make sense.
More than 7 percent feel uncomfortable and 1.8 percent disgusted while hearing online language in the real world, according to the report.
"I used to believe only teenagers were fond of using cyber language in real life to show their rebelliousness and make themselves stand out," said Li Yanqi, a 35-year-old photographer in Beijing.
"But one day I said huichang piaopiao, a cyber word for 'very beautiful', to my clients. I was shocked that cyber language had unconsciously become a part of my daily language," he said.
The survey also showed 30 percent of people said cyber language is more charming than traditional language in regards to being "fashionable and unique".
"However, there are worries that the frequent use of deliberate misspellings and misuse of homophones in popular cyber language will cause chaos in the development of the Chinese language," said Li Yang, a researcher of the report.
About 82 percent of respondents said cyber language has a "certain influence" on youngsters' personality development, and 33 percent said policy makers should discipline it, Li said.
China Daily
(China Daily 11/26/2010 page5)
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