The use of 门 for scandals in Chinese, ala -gate

[roddy]

In English it's quite common to add -gate to the names of scandals, to try and capture some of the glory of the Watergate Scandal. Watergate, in Chinese, is 水门事件.

Take a look at the name used for the 'scandal' here - 换芯门 - 'chip swopping-gate' (basically, Dell is accused of not supplying the advertised chips in its computers. You can see why they want some of that Watergate sexiness.)

There's also 铜须门事件 and more recently 黄健翔门事件.

Now, I can understand why when you have a scandal originating in an English speaking country the -gate tag gets translated, like in Irangate. But these are, if you like, domestically produced scandals (you can just see some government official proudly announcing that China has greatly increased scandal resources, can't you . . .)

The -gate suffix has become so widespread it's been translated into Chinese and is now being used locally.

Does anyone else find that odd? Or am I completely missing something, and 门事件 is a five thousand year old word which just happens to mean 'scandal'?

[miss_China_so_much]

I don't think you've missed anything here. This is another example of language "globalization":conf

[in_lab]

Also, the Chinese news is currently using 深喉 to describe a secret informant, a la deep throat. Someone said that the phrase (in Chinese) sounds pornographic. I explained that it is in fact pornographic in origin.

[wushijiao]

This -gate suffix trend makes sense. It seems to me that the elite Chinese news junkies are very well informed about the major news events in the English-speaking press, and many of them have good English skills. Using the -men suffix seems to convey a feeling of being "in the know".