Unique Cantonese character

[Ian_Lee]

There is a unique Cantonese character that is not found in Mandarin.

The character is composed of three characters:

"male-female-male" and written in this way.

It means annoyed or angry (to a slight degree).

Its pronounciation is "Nau" in top-pitch.

Actually this character is very vivid. Just imagine if a girl has to shuttle between two guys, everyone of these three will get very annoyed.

Or if a girl sleeps with two guys on the bed, one guy lying on the left side and another guy lying on the right side, how can she handle them?

Unless they want to do a threesome, otherwise everyone will be sexually annoyed.

But beware. When your girlfriend scolds you that she "nau" your naughty behavior the other night during dating, most likely she implied that you were not bold enough on further action that she had eagerly anticipated!

[Quest]

How many of you Cantonese speakers say "nau". I think i say "lau" or maybe something in between. If "nau" is pronounced with the "n", it would sound weird to me, and I know some people stress the "n" sounds very much, e.g. Ney jong nau ng nau ngo? (Are you still angry at me?). I would find "Ley jong lau mm lau ngo" more natural to my ears.

[skylee]

The character is 嬲.

Just checked the dictionary. It's radical is "女", plus 14 strokes. There are two pronunciations -

> niao3 (niu5 in Cantonese/鳥) - to trick

> nou1 (nau1 in Cantonese/紐高平) - Cantonese dialect - to get angry

But as mentioned elsewhere before (on TT perhaps), we just don't care too much about "n" and "l", do we? I also say "lau", not "nau".

[Ian_Lee]

I usually pronounce it as "nau" instead of "lau".

I can tell that from my wife too when she gets really annoyed and spoke with the heavily nosed "n" sound in this word.

I guess HK people cannot really distinguish between "l" and "n". So both pronomuciations are acceptable.

For instance, the word cow is pronounced as "ngau" and used officiallly(i.e. street name English translation).

[niubi]

actually 嬲 is used in mandarin however it is very uncommon. it's most frequent usage is in writing. it has a couple of meanings depending on is contextual usage: my chinese to english dictionaries defines it as 'to dally with' and 'to flirt with'. my chinese-chinese dictionary defines it as '戏弄' or '纠缠'

please see my post about this character (and a fictional character) elsewhere on this forum: http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?p=2361&highlight=#2361