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tasty bytes from China
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02/23/14
You say tomato, I say Tā mā de
Filed under: Chenglish
Posted by: @ 8:08 am

 
PooWalker

So when I ask my nephews what Chinese words they want to learn, of course, their educated brains go right in the gutter.

“So what are the swear words, Aunt Ginger?”

And since you’re reading this post, you’re no better.
tamade
While there are many expletives in China, many originating thousands of years before road rage on the Silk Road, the verbal equivalent of flipping one off is tāmāde. It’s pronounced the way Ella Fitzgerald made famous, tomahta. Listen here

But my nephews aren’t the only ones whose mouths should be washed out with soap. Swearing makes up 3 percent of all adult conversation at work , 13 percent of all adult leisure conversation, and according to my ESL students, it makes up 99 percent of the words they dump into Google Translate.

While swear words vary in pronunciation in the world’s 6000 plus languages, verbal sewer falls in one of two buckets.

IMG_0030

Either, it relates to body functions or a heavenly deity damning you for mentioning that body function.
Other insults relate to the family treel. Take for instance, Cào nǐ zǔ zōng shí bā dài. While you may think it’s something on the Panda Express menu, it’s actually the Chinese insult that could get you deported. It means “f-bomb your ancestors to the 18th generation.”  So bite your tongue before saying that one.

IMG_0302

Then there are nice words sound like bad words and you don’t know until it’s too late. Thank you or xie xie, is dangerously close to shǐ shǐ, which means what you think it means.

That reminds me way back when I started out in advertising and was recording a jingle for the now defunct brand, Fruity Marshmallow Krispies. This short lived brand was deemed by Andy Rooney as one of the worse cereals of all time. Maybe he was disappointed there was a free decoder ring inside of the box instead of eyebrow trimmers.

But the jingle went like this:

 
 Fruity Marshmallow Krispies
 Lots of Fruity Marshmallow Shapes
 Snap! Crackle! Poppin!
 With lots of fruit taste!

Anyway, we got so focused on the bongos and other islandy instruments in the music track that we failed to realize that the word shapes got garbled in the mix. The word shapes turned into well, tā māde.

 Our ad agency discovered this mistake when Kellogg’s mailbox got flooded with thousands of letters from kids who didn’t want profanity as part of their complete breakfast.

IMG_0047

But if you are wondering how to say Tomato as in what to put on your BLT, you’ll say xīhóngshì Tomatoes literally translate into the red thing from the west, xi meaning west and hong meaning red.
And this word?
 Amoxacillin

It’s amoxicillin. I bring it to the Chinese pharmacy when I needed some medicine.

One Response to “You say tomato, I say Tā mā de”

  1. Jane Says:
    Great blog, Ginger. Entertaining and informative! Now I want to hear the music to your jingle so will go look for it.

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