Beard & Mustache

[Ian_Lee]

Nowadays hardly anybody distinguishes between mustache and beard. Most people lump it together and call it 鬍鬚

But strictly speaking, 鬍 is mustahce and 鬚 is beard.

In Mandarin, to shave mustache/beard is called 刮鬍子while in Cantonese it is 剃鬚. IMO the Cantonese term is more appropriate because it is more likely that you "shave your beard" rather than "scrape your mustahce" (many guys like to keep their mustache to show their macho)!

However, it used to be that in Mandarin, shaver is called 剃刀. But now due to the influence of Cantonese, the Philips or Panasonic shaver that you buy in Shanghai or Beijing are all called 剃须刀!

Speaking of the simplifed characters, the first time I read the term 胡须, it takes me 5 minutes to guess what the term means since 鬚 and 须 are pronounced differently in Cantonese!

Speaking of "Shave", there is another verb 薙. When the Manchus came in 1644, they asked every Han male to 薙髮 (shave hair on the forehead).

In Cantonese, it is still widely used. If you are not afriad of chicken flu and buy live chicken in the market stall, you tell the guy at the stall to 薙 all the chicken feather!

[流]

I love the exclamation marks, they make it fun to read.

[zhwj]

I've always assumed that when it comes to hair, 剃,薙, and 鬀 (髰 and 鬄 as well, it seems) were all variations of each other. Are there pronunciation differences in Cantonese for those three?

[skylee]

According to the dictionary I have now, the cantonese pronunciations of 剃, 薙, and 鬀 are the same (i.e. 替).