I give you colour...SEE SEE!

[Ferno]

The Chinese do recognize puns' date=' and use them everywhere to make jokes and catchy commercial lines, etc.

[/quote']

wouldn't puns lose their effect if there are so many homonyms and repeated syllables in the language?

and do the Chinese still count things as homonyms for puns when you have the same pronounciation but different tone (if so this would open up a huge number of homonyms and pun material)?... I think so, because of the lucky/unlucky stuff - ie: giving 4 gifts is unlucky, and the number 4 is unlucky in general, because it is pronounced "si4" and "death" is pronounced "si2" - even though they have different tones. This leads me to believe that Chinese people really don't pay nearly as much attention to tones as a learner might believe.

[nipponman]

dalaowai:

this

There are plenty of other words/expressions that I'd love to find out the original meaning.

doesn't make sense to me not. The original meaning of huo3 shan1 seems obvious, but that's just me:roll:

[gougou]

Nipponman, two words after the end of your quote, he says "others".

He is talking about two kinds of words: one with obscure origins, and one with origins that make you laugh.

[nipponman]

Oh ok you're right, I missed that when I read his post, sorry dalaowai.

nipponman

I know that 火山 is the same in Kanji, so don't be all butt-hurt.

Laughing at you.

[dalaowai]

I thought I had been clear enough on my explanation about why I thought that 火山 was funny, but apparently I wasn't clear enough. I guess I better go improve my ESL writing skills before taking on a complex Asian language.

我马上去学习英文！请问。。。英语，火山则么说？haha, Gougou knows what I'm talking about! yeah!

[nipponman]

I was just speed reading, that's why I missed some of your post.

[eddiewouldgo]

I respectfully disagree with you. It's becoming very popular amongst young people to literally translate Chinese words into English. I'm currently experiencing this in Shanghai, as most of the younger people have good English. They do it in a comical way to get a laugh out of bilingual friends. The two most common things I hear them joke about is 我给你一点颜色Look look! and I've heard quite a few people say "fire mountain" instead of 火山。

Some time I watch the Taiwan variety shows(综艺节目), they would make joke like, 人山人海 is said to be "people mountain people sea", 来一点音乐 = come some music.

[gougou]

So maybe somebody here can tell me, is "long time no see" an actual English expression, or just a literal translation from Chinese?

[dalaowai]

Long time no see is a literal translation from Chinese to English. I read it in a book recently and have had it confirmed by many Chinese.

[Ferno]

it was taken from pidgin cantonese/english, right?

[semantic nuance]

In Taiwan, we say 給你一點顏色瞧瞧. 瞧qiao2=look(at).