Random new word of the day

[Tomsima]

死麵

unleavened bread, unrisen dough. We tried making donuts today, but couldn't figure out why they were so doughy and appeared not to have risen at all. Turned out our yeast was out of date...anyway, thought it was pretty interesting, our yeast had died, so the bread had no life in it, and it turns out 'dough' in Chinese is 死麵. As you can probably telll, I'm not so good at cooking, but been trying to get better during this extended period at home

[Shelley]

I hope you had a nice little ceremony for your dead yeast  

 

I did for a split second feel sad your yeast had died, but then sense returned and I told myself to get a grip 

[roddy]

Bread is very last year. I'm all about the oatcakes at the moment - doesn't take much more than 30 minutes to make a batch and while homemade bread never seems to last very long, oatcakes are basically eternal. 

 

Anyway, to justify the post: 颔首, to nod. 

[mungouk]

One of my students on WeChat:

 

我昨天晚上登bb就有点卡

 

...indicating that our online learning platform bb平台 was a bit slow last night.

 

How do we pronounce 卡 in this context? 

 

MDBG says:

• kǎ      to stop; to block; (computing) (coll.) slow; (loanword) card; CL:張|张[zhang1],片[pian4]; truck (from "car"); calorie (abbr. for 卡路里[ka3 lu4 li3]); cassette
• qiǎ    to block; to be stuck; to be wedged; customs station; a clip; a fastener; a checkpost; Taiwan pr. [ka3]

If it's online slang, maybe there isn't even a consensus how to pronounce it outside of Taiwan?

 

 

 

[roddy]

That actually came up a few pages ago, although not sure about the pronunciation.

[imron]

I’ve only ever heard it pronounced kǎ

[Michaelyus]

49 minutes ago, mungouk said:

How do we pronounce 卡 in this context? 

 

MDBG says:

• kǎ      to stop; to block; (computing) (coll.) slow; (loanword) card; CL:張|张[zhang1],片[pian4]; truck (from "car"); calorie (abbr. for 卡路里[ka3 lu4 li3]); cassette
• qiǎ    to block; to be stuck; to be wedged; customs station; a clip; a fastener; a checkpost; Taiwan pr. [ka3]

 

I've only ever heard kǎ for computers. 

 

According to zdic, the meaning referred to as "to be stuck" under qiǎ is actually: 

Quote

夹住或被夹住，不能活动
如:一根鱼刺卡在喉咙里;卡鐄(刀剑的鞘口都有鐄，刀剑入鞘，就在护手处卡住)

 

I've heard this pronunciation for that awkward situation of fishbones getting stuck in one's throat, but not much else.

 

[zander1]

3 hours ago, imron said:

I’ve only ever heard it pronounced kǎ

Likewise, I've also heard (many many times):

卡= slow, laggy

卡住(了) = totally frozen, e.g. on a video call.

[mungouk]

Good Internet vocab, thanks!

 

[zander1]

My own new word: ‘卸磨杀驴’ - 'to kill the donkey when it stops grinding' - to kill/get rid of someone when they are no longer useful.

[Tomsima]

Seeing as we're on internet slang, one new one for me last week after watching some video with 彈幕 switched on was 翔 which has the new meaning of 屎, and if you're interested why,

heres why

[murrayjames]

边缘化 biānyuánhuà = to marginalize

 

From this sentence in 笛安’s novel 《景恒街》:

 

Quote

“以后想要把他边缘化有的是办法，现在，留着看看也是好的。”

 

[889]

霸凌

An interesting loan word from English. First, because I would never have guessed it. Second, because Chinese already has a perfectly good word for this. Third, because the Chinese does capture some of the meaning.

 

Spoiler

Bullying

 

According to a Wikipedia entry, "而2018至2019年的中美贸易战期间，大陆的官媒则大量使用'贸易霸凌'一词作为相关新闻标题, '霸凌'一词开始较大规模地进入中国大陆民众的视野。"

 

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/霸凌

[js6426]

On 6/16/2020 at 9:40 PM, zander1 said:

On 6/16/2020 at 5:58 PM, imron said:

I’ve only ever heard it pronounced kǎ

Likewise, I've also heard (many many times):

卡= slow, laggy

卡住(了) = totally frozen, e.g. on a video call.

 

Going back to this, during our classes we were regularly asked about 卡顿，which wasn't a total freeze, but just that kind of stuttering you get from slow internet.  I guess it's no surprise that during this time period with all these online classes, zoom meetings etc., words like this are getting used all the time!  It was also pronounced with a third tone.

[大块头]

俄罗斯方块

 

Spoiler

Tetris

 

[mungouk]

"Russian blocks"?  Love it!

 

[大块头]

A word I read a month ago in the excellent《地球知识局》on WeChat and ran into again this morning on the《文化土豆》podcast:

 

三k

 

Spoiler

Ku Klux Klan

 

[Ling Lee]

and I just saw a posted in the year 2007 about 叫花子, although not sire whether any of you still be interested in it, how this word come from. In ancient China the bagger always hold their bowel and yelling like “ Mercy! Mercy! who can give some food” such yelling behavior in Chinese called 叫唤 jiao huan  and in oral Chinese sounds like 叫话 jiao hua, then time past, people called the yelling bagger 叫花子 because in Chinese usually add 子 after n. or verb to become a kind if people, like 厨子 people who cook. 傻子 people who are stupid.  as for 花子, the meaning is totally different, it doesn’t mean bagger, only 花子 in TianJin native language means the people who did wrong or stupid thing or people who are not good at his major, for example: If you want to fix this thing, don’t find him, he is a 花子 (he cannot do it well he is stupid)

 

and there is a very famous dish i. China called 叫花鸡, which is famous in Hangzhou, you can google it. it is a very good way to cook chicken,  the bagger 叫花子 don’t have any pan or woks , so how can they eat the chicken when they get one? they cover the chicken withe the leaf if lotus and cover them with clay and out it on fire, when it fully cooked they smash the clay, took the chicken out.  in this way the chicken is fully in flavor and juicy, very delicious. 叫花鸡 is a way 叫花子 cooked the chicken, however this is a legend, nobody knows whether it is true or not

 

sorry iphone X keyboard is so wide, a lot of typing mistakes 

[If_IwasaLinguist]

Seems you are very interested in those neologisms. Then I will recommend an online dictionary for your reference. Here is the link: https://jikipedia.com/. 

[889]

Words that don't have a good English equivalent are often revealing about Chinese history and culture.

 

顺民

 

Spoiler

From Yahoo: "People who surrendered to their new lord; people who leave their fate to heaven; abjectly obedient citizens." From RTHK: 政府不可認為香港只有順民。