Cute Cantonese words

[LurvJenny]

My mandarin isn't all that great, but I've got many friends who are Cantonese. They've been teaching me the basics like bing go (Who/where), lok u (rain) etc etc.

When we got to the food/fruits, I found two that stood out the most. I think its soo adorable.

(I've just spelt it phonetically)

Strawberry - see-tow-bei-lei

KFC - gei-en-gai

Does anyone else know more?

I'd love to see what other cute words they have.

[sebhk]

Yea, there are a lot of funny loan words in Cantonese. For example

to fail - fei4 lou2 (the word also means fat man)

number - lam1 baa2

file - faai1 lou2

store room - si6 do1 fong2

Mac Donalds - mak6 gei3

and many many more

[LurvJenny]

Lol thanks Sebhk. I think you have just made my day. Hehe. You are lam1 baa2 ONE~

Hope you have a fab weekend.

[Hofmann]

Those are just transliterations of English words. There are Sinitic terms for all of them.

[LurvJenny]

Hi Hoffmann,

Do you know the Sinitic terms for them? I'd be interested to know.

Thanks.

[sebhk]

Those are just transliterations of English words. There are Sinitic terms for all of them.

That is true. But what started as transliterations developed into something more in Hong Kong. All of the terms I mentioned have written representations, such as 冧巴 for lam1 baa2 (number), and many are used instead of the "correct" or original Chinese words in in spoken Cantonese.

And some transliterated terms found their way into Mandarin as well and have become very widespread. For example:

beer - be1 zau2 - 啤酒 (is there even a sinitic term for this?)

bus - baa1 si2 - 巴士

LurvJenny, you can find some more loan words with written representations that are used in Hong Kong Cantonese on page 9 of this presentation.

[Hofmann]

Blah. I shouldn't have said "all." It's impossible for foreign proper names and some products to have Sinitic terms.

strawberry 草莓

fail 失敗

number 號數

file 檔案

stor(age) room 儲物室

bus 公車

[calibre2001]

鬼鬼祟祟 - sneaky, discreet to the point of ppl thinking you are up to no good

I don't know if it exists in mandarin but I always thought it sounds cute.

Edited April 17, 2010 at 02:08 AM by calibre2001

[trien27]

lok u (rain)

It's 落雨 = "LOK YU" = to rain [verb]; raining [verb: present tense form], not 雨 = YU, rain [noun].

鬼鬼祟祟

The Mandarin borrows from Cantonese, but take each character's pronunciation in Mandarin, "gui gui sei sei"

Edited April 17, 2010 at 03:40 PM by roddy

[skylee]

The Mandarin borrows from Cantonese, but take each character's pronunciation in Mandarin, "gui gui sei sei"

ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE?? About the BORROWING and the PRONUNCIATION??

[Hofmann]

ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE??

Probably not. Besides, I've read too many of his posts to assume otherwise.

By the way, both 雨 and "rain" can be verbs.

[trien27]

鬼鬼祟祟

Fine. It's derived from Shanghainese, maybe? Everybody happy now?

Source: http://www.shanghaining.com/forum/thread-187552-3-1.html

Guess I'm wrong again:

If you take 红楼梦 which seems to be the origin of it:

The novel is written in the so-called guanhua 官话, the idiom of the magistrates, which is closer to vernacular rather than classical Chinese and helped establish the legitimacy of the vernacular idiom. Its author, Cao Xueqin, was well versed in Chinese poetry and in classical Chinese, having written tracts in the erudite semi-wenyan style. The novel's conversations are written in the Beijing Mandarin dialect, which was to become the basis of modern spoken Chinese, with influences from Nanjing-area Mandarin (where Cao's family lived in the early 1700s).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber#Language

Edited April 17, 2010 at 03:58 PM by trien27

[roddy]

Trien, I've reverted your edits - please don't delete stuff which people have commented on, it makes the discussion impossible to follow.