O不OK

[Lu]

I've always liked English loan words seamlessly woven into Chinese grammar. Best-known example is I think 'O不OK'; more recently the phrase 'hold住' was fashioable. I'm not sure if others like this too, and if we perhaps already have a thread for it somewhere, but today I ran into a lovely sentence in this category and I wanted to share it. So here it is:

A few women were talking about holidays. One said that Nice (in France) has good night clubs, to which another replied: 带着小孩子你night什么club啊。

[alantin]

Haha! Beautiful! ?

[Insectosaurus]

Get到 is another one.

[alantin]

On 4/28/2022 at 7:31 PM, Insectosaurus said:

Get到 is another one.

Seems a little redundant.

[Lu]

On 4/28/2022 at 8:38 PM, alantin said:

Seems a little redundant.

On one hand, yes, but on the other hand, a Chinese word usually consists of two syllables. Just 'get' or 'hold' feels a bit unfinished, it needs another syllable. The most obvious choice is one that means nearly the same thing.

[mungouk]

On 4/28/2022 at 5:31 PM, Insectosaurus said:

Get到

 

Right, so this is my ear-worm for the evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMiFPdhhCGk

 

 

[becky82]

My housemate sometimes says she's 出差ing.

[EnergyReaper]

A big fan watched Jackson Wang hit Coachella's stage and said, "快看，王嘉尔简直slay全场，台下的观众都在疯狂给他打call".

[TheBigZaboon]

"Get到" may be based on the super frequent use of the word "get" in English letters in a sentence in nearly all forms of Japanese to convey the idea "obtain." It's used so frequently in Japanese manga (comics) and advertising that even Chinese only slightly aware of the outside world would easily be able to pick it up. And as to its redundancy, maybe think "resultative complement"...

 

Just my unsolicited two yen...

 

TBZ

[Jim]

Not quite the same as it's not as integrated, but my daughter cracks me up by describing e.g. her brother doing something naughty as, "弟弟，這是No! No! No!的行爲！"

[OneEye]

On 4/29/2022 at 6:35 AM, mungouk said:

Right, so this is my ear-worm for the evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMiFPdhhCGk

 

My mind went straight to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC2ZY2loo74

He even gets the tone right. ?

[Lu]

On 4/29/2022 at 4:18 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

And as to its redundancy, maybe think "resultative complement"...

Yes, that is what I meant but didn't know the terminology for!

[alantin]

On 4/29/2022 at 1:20 PM, Lu said:

On 4/29/2022 at 5:18 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

And as to its redundancy, maybe think "resultative complement"...

Yes, that is what I meant but didn't know the terminology for!

"got" ?

[Lu]

On 4/29/2022 at 7:43 PM, alantin said:

"got" ?

Yes but in Chinese, the verbs of which we would think the success is implied (‘hold', 'get', 'kill') aren't necessarily succesful. So there is space (or even necessity) to specify that: 得到，杀死. Same for loanwords. Google tells me that 'hold不住' is indeed used and 'get不到' is possible.

[Tomsima]

might be useful to note that as Chinese is an analytic language, fossilising a concept like 'get' means that you could use it with any Chinese grammar structure without any issue, and might well expect to see it being used spontaneously by native speakers for fun in any number of situations. I could definitely imagine phrases like hold不起 being used (not they I've ever heard that) for fun and to subtley differentiate from something like hold不住

[丁二]

半 tour 而废

 

The original idiom is "半途而废".

It means "to stop halfway", which is a metaphor for doing something without finishing it.

 

It is interesting to note that the word 途 is very similar to 'tour' in both meaning and pronunciation. The word 而 only means "but" and has no real meaning.

What's more interesting is that the word 途而 is pronounced almost exactly the same as "tour" when read together.

 

So we literally changed two Chinese characters with one English word without hurting the original Chinese idiom’s meaning and pronunciation.

[Balthazar]

"三Q" I've seen (only in writing) used a couple times. Maybe not the most exiting example.

[Lu]

On 5/1/2022 at 8:27 PM, Balthazar said:

"三Q" I've seen (only in writing) used a couple times.

That's a different sort of case, with sound/vocab rather than grammar. But I like that one a lot too!

[EnergyReaper]

Recently, “emo” has become a buzzword on the web.

e.g.

A： 嘿，兄弟你咋嘀了，大半夜的不睡觉，在这哭哭啼啼，难道是长夜漫漫，孤枕难眠，让你又emo了？明天哥给你介绍个漂亮女孩怎么样，哈哈！

B：拉倒吧，我刚看完《周生如故》最后三集（One and Only, 2021），结局太悲惨了。

 

[TheBigZaboon]

Again, the Japanese influence is at work. "Emo" is Japanese shorthand for "emotional." Was popular last year amongst high school girls, but usually pronounced as "eemoii." Prior to that, the phrase "kimoi," short for "気持ち悪い (kimochi warui = gross, disgusting)" was not only all the rage, but proved to be longer lived than similar phrases. It's still widely used, even among older groups.

 

Used to be said in Japan that when America sneezes, Japan catches cold. Now maybe that phrase can be applied between Japan and China.

 

TBZ