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There are some extremely clever and creative puns in Cantonese<br>
that you wouldnt teach your children to say to their mother but<br>
also many in standard Chinese as well.<br>
<br>
The number 8 is very popular because they think "ba" (8) <br>
sounds like "fa" (earn money), and<br>
they hate the number 4 (also 14,24,34, ...) because 4 (si)<br>
sounds like die (si).<br>
<br>
Some very old houses are decorated with bats at the main door<br>
because bat (ban fu) sounds like "business going well" (ban fu).<br>
<br>
[they also have swastikas as well, "rotating" in both directions,<br>
not because they are Nazis but because swastikas are good luck<br>
in some ancient cultures.]<br>
<br>
There has always been a sort of word police to maintain
standardization of characters.<br>
Some very difficult to write characters have official and unofficial
simplified forms.<br>
I have noticed the disappearance of a once popular simplified form
of "can"<br>
(pronounced tsan) meaning restaurant. This simplified form was
thought by<br>
some scholars to be ugly and was widely criticized and presently is
seldom seen<br>
any more. All simplified forms are strictly banned in Taiwan and
only pure forms<br>
are permitted.<br>
<br>
I have noticed simplified forms and simplified non-standard forms in
some ancient manuscripts<br>
written on bamboo strips a couple thousand years ago so this
character standardization<br>
seems to have a long history.<br>
<br>
During the term of Jiang Zemin there were a lot of floods in south
China and it was<br>
observed that his name sounds similar to "the river exterminates the
people".<br>
<br>
Actually in naming a company or product or your children one should
prudently<br>
choose words not easily misconstrued to something embarrassingly
humourous.<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/29/2014 03:02 PM, Carl G.
Estabrook wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:774CFE2B-03BF-4765-B474-AF8E68E3ABF5@illinois.edu"
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<h1 class="content__headline js-score" itemprop="headline"> China
bans wordplay in attempt at pun control
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Officials say casual alteration of idioms risks nothing
less than ‘cultural and linguistic chaos’, despite their
common usage
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China’s print and broadcast watchdog says puns may
mislead the public – especially children. Photograph:
Chen Li/ Chen Li/Xinhua Press/Corbis
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<p class="byline" data-link-name="byline"
data-component="meta-byline"><span itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemprop="author">
<a moz-do-not-send="true" rel="author"
class="tone-colour" itemprop="url name"
data-link-name="auto tag link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/taniabranigan">Tania
Branigan</a></span> in Beijing</p>
<p class="content__dateline" aria-hidden="true">
<time itemprop="datePublished"
datetime="2014-11-28T07:26:18-0500"
data-timestamp="1417177578000">
Friday 28 November 2014 <span
class="content__dateline-time">07.26 EST</span>
</time>
</p>
<p class="content__dateline" aria-hidden="true">From
online discussions to adverts, Chinese culture is full
of puns. But the country’s print and broadcast watchdog
has ruled that there is nothing funny about them.</p>
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<p>It has banned wordplay on the grounds that it breaches
the law on standard spoken and written Chinese, makes
promoting cultural heritage harder and may mislead the
public – especially children.</p>
<p>The casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than
“cultural and linguistic chaos”, it warns.</p>
<p>Chinese is perfectly suited to puns because it has so
many homophones. Popular sayings and even customs, as
well as jokes, rely on wordplay.</p>
<p>But the order from the State Administration for Press,
Publication, Radio, Film and Television says: “Radio and
television authorities at all levels must tighten up
their regulations and crack down on the irregular and
inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the
misuse of idioms.”</p>
<p>Programmes and adverts should strictly comply with the
standard spelling and use of characters, words, phrases
and idioms – and avoid changing the characters, phrasing
and meanings, the order said.</p>
<p>“Idioms are one of the great features of the Chinese
language and contain profound cultural heritage and
historical resources and great aesthetic, ideological
and moral values,” it added.</p>
<p>“That’s the most ridiculous part of this: [wordplay] is
so much part and parcel of Chinese heritage,” said David
Moser, academic director for CET Chinese studies at
Beijing Capital Normal University.</p>
<p>When couples marry, people will give them dates and
peanuts – a reference to the wish <em>Zaosheng guizi</em>
or “May you soon give birth to a son”. The word for
dates is also <em>zao</em> and peanuts are <em>huasheng</em>.</p>
<div data-node-uid="7" id="dfp-ad--inline1" class="ad-slot
ad-slot--dfp ad-slot--inline1 ad-slot--inline"
data-link-name="ad slot inline1"
data-test-id="ad-slot-inline1" data-name="inline1"
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<div class="ad-slot__label" data-test-id="ad-slot-label">The
notice cites complaints from viewers, but the examples
it gives appear utterly innocuous. In a tourism
promotion campaign, tweaking the characters used in
the phrase <em>jin shan jin mei</em> – perfection –
has turned it into a slogan translated as “Shanxi, a
land of splendours”. In another case, replacing a
single character in <em>ke bu rong huan</em> has
turned “brook no delay” into “coughing must not
linger” for a medicine advert.</div>
</div>
<p>“It could just be a small group of people, or even one
person, who are conservative, humourless, priggish and
arbitrarily purist, so that everyone has to fall in
line,” said Moser.</p>
<p>“But I wonder if this is not a preemptive move, an
excuse to crack down for supposed ‘linguistic purity
reasons’ on the cute language people use to crack jokes
about the leadership or policies. It sounds too
convenient.”</p>
<p>Internet users have been particularly inventive in
finding alternative ways to discuss subjects or people
whose names have been blocked by censors.</p>
<p>Moves to block such creativity have a long history too.
Moser said Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/china"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
data-component="auto-linked-tag" class=" u-underline">China</a>
from 1912 to 1915, reportedly wanted to rename the
Lantern Festival,<em> Yuan Xiao Jie</em>, because it
sounded like “cancel Yuan day”.</p>
<div><br>
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<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/28/china-media-watchdog-bans-wordplay-puns">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/28/china-media-watchdog-bans-wordplay-puns</a></div>
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