Onomatopoeia, slang and loanwords

拟声词 nǐshēngcí is the name for words that imitate a noise: 拟 “imitate” + 声 “sound” + 词 “word” ⟶ a word that imitates a sound. English has just as many (bang, splash, tick-tock). But Chinese has to write them down, and it has nothing but characters: it takes one for its pronunciation alone, and very often adds the radical 口 “mouth”, as in 咚, 啪 or 嘘. The radical warns the reader: here, you read only the sound. 砰 pēng, for its part, has taken the stone radical 石, and you can hear the blow landing on something hard. This page follows on from Chengyu and proverbs: after the fixed language, the language that moves.

Animals do not speak the way they do in English. The rooster crows 喔喔 wōwō, not cock-a-doodle-doo, the frog goes 呱呱 guāguā, the duck 嘎嘎 gāgā; the dog says 汪汪 and the cat 喵 (sentence 3). Chinese likes to double things up, a noise that lasts is said twice, and 叽叽喳喳 jījizhāzhā, the chirping of sparrows, also does for a class that keeps chattering. Careful with 呱呱: in 呱呱坠地 gūgū zhuìdì, it is read gūgū and it is the first cry of a newborn baby.

Laughter has its shades. 哈哈 hāhā is hearty, 嘻嘻 xīxī mischievous, 嘿嘿 hēihēi sheepish or knowing. On the other hand, 呵呵 hēhē has gone sour: on messaging apps it comes across as cold, almost contemptuous, a sort of “yeah, whatever”. I am not sure older people hear the same thing in it. When in doubt, in writing, you put 哈哈哈.

With interjections, the tone counts as much as the character. 啊 is said ā in surprise, á to ask someone to repeat, ǎ to express doubt, à to say “ah, all right”. 嗯 ǹg works the same way, and is pronounced with no vowel. Textbooks say almost nothing about them; yet they make up half of any conversation. Note also 哎哟 āiyō, which you cry out when you hurt yourself, and 哎呀 āiyā, more when you realise you have done something silly (sentence 2).

Slang works through images. 晕 yūn, “to feel dizzy” ⟶ I can’t believe it. 坑 kēng, “the pit” ⟶ to rip off, and 坑爹 kēngdiē, “make Dad fall into a hole”, for something downright outrageous. 碰瓷 pèngcí, “bump the porcelain”: the story goes that at the end of the Qing, swindlers would carry an already cracked vase through the streets, get themselves jostled and demand the price of a rare piece. Today it is the pedestrian who throws himself at a car to get compensation. And 侃大山 kǎn dàshān, “chop down the big mountain” with nothing but words, just means chatting for hours (Beijingers are rather proud of it).

Internet language plays on sounds. 神马 shénmǎ, “divine horse”, for 什么; 童鞋 tóngxié, “children’s shoe”, for 同学; 有木有 yǒu mù yǒu, “have wood have”, for 有没有: you spell it wrong on purpose, imitating an accent. Numbers join in too: 886, bābāliù, sounds almost like 拜拜了, bye-bye. 真香 zhēnxiāng, “really fragrant”, comes from a reality show: a city boy swore he would not touch his country hosts’ food, then asked for more (sentence 22). But these words age very fast. 给力 gěilì, everywhere around 2010, already smells a little of mothballs. The vocabulary of social media itself is on the page Television, social media and celebrities.

For loanwords, Chinese has two methods. 音译 yīnyì transcribes the sound: 巴士, 派对, 拷贝. 意译 yìyì translates the meaning: 电脑, “electric brain”, for the computer. It clearly prefers the second, because a word that means nothing in characters is awkward. The best loanwords do both at once. 俱乐部 jùlèbù, the club, also reads as “place where people rejoice together”; 维他命 wéitāmìng, the vitamin, “that which sustains one’s life”; 霓虹灯 níhóngdēng is neon + lamp. Others came by way of Japan: 俱乐部 was already written there in characters, 便当 took on the meaning of “boxed meal” there, and 卡拉OK even keeps some Latin letters.

Careful with 打的 dǎdī, to take a taxi: 的 is not read de here but dī. The word comes from 的士 dīshì, the taxi of Hong Kong Cantonese. Mandarin kept the Cantonese spelling and gave it a new reading (sentence 8). The most frequent character in the language thus gains one more reading, for a small family of words that came with the taxi (the driver is 的哥 dīgē).

Foreign brands look for a name that sounds right and means something. 可口可乐 Kěkǒu Kělè is “pleasing to the mouth, delightful” (sentence 16). The story goes that the first bottles sold in China bore makeshift transcriptions, such as 蝌蝌啃蜡, “tadpole biting wax”. It is a nice story, the brand is happy to tell it, and I do not know how much of it is true. 宝马 Bǎomǎ, “precious horse”, and 奔驰 Bēnchí, “to gallop”: the German cars have horse names. 宜家 Yíjiā brings to mind the 宜其室家 of the Classic of Poetry (sentence 23), and 雪铁龙 Xuětiělóng, “iron dragon on the snow”, has a good deal more style than Citroën.

Laozi was wary of names: 名可名，非常名, “the name that can be named is not the eternal Name” (sentence 24, see Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching). Confucius, more practical, simply asked that speech should make itself understood (sentence 25, see Chapter 15 of the Analects of Confucius). Slang, loanwords and brands rather prove him right. The rest is a matter of fashion.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order appears stroke by stroke, with the arrow showing the direction of the line.