[Peace-discuss] You're going to be ex-spelled because of this punitive decree...

Sat Nov 29 03:27:16 EST 2014

There are some extremely clever and creative puns in Cantonese
that you wouldnt teach your children to say to their mother but
also many in standard Chinese as well.

The number 8 is very popular because they think "ba" (8)
sounds like "fa" (earn money), and
they hate the number 4 (also 14,24,34, ...) because 4 (si)
sounds like die (si).

Some very old houses are decorated with bats at the main door
because bat (ban fu) sounds like "business going well" (ban fu).

[they also have swastikas as well, "rotating" in both directions,
not because they are Nazis but because swastikas are good luck
in some ancient cultures.]

There has always been a sort of word police to maintain standardization 
of characters.
Some very difficult to write characters have official and unofficial 
simplified forms.
I have noticed the disappearance of a once popular simplified form of "can"
(pronounced tsan) meaning restaurant.  This simplified form was thought by
some scholars to be ugly and was widely criticized and presently is 
seldom seen
any more.  All simplified forms are strictly banned in Taiwan and only 
pure forms
are permitted.

I have noticed simplified forms and simplified non-standard forms in 
some ancient manuscripts
written on bamboo strips a couple thousand years ago so this character 
standardization
seems to have a long history.

During the term of Jiang Zemin there were a lot of floods in south China 
and it was
observed that his name sounds similar to "the river exterminates the 
people".

Actually in naming a company or product or your children one should 
prudently
choose words not easily misconstrued to something embarrassingly humourous.

On 11/29/2014 03:02 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>
>    China bans wordplay in attempt at pun control
>
> Officials say casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than 
> ‘cultural and linguistic chaos’, despite their common usage
>
> China puns tory
> China’s print and broadcast watchdog says puns may mislead the public 
> – especially children. Photograph: Chen Li/ Chen Li/Xinhua Press/Corbis
>
> Tania Branigan <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/taniabranigan> in 
> Beijing
>
> Friday 28 November 2014 07.26 EST
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> The casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than “cultural and 
> linguistic chaos”, it warns.
>
> Chinese is perfectly suited to puns because it has so many homophones. 
> Popular sayings and even customs, as well as jokes, rely on wordplay.
>
> 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.”
>
> 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.
>
> “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.
>
> “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.
>
> When couples marry, people will give them dates and peanuts – a 
> reference to the wish /Zaosheng guizi/ or “May you soon give birth to 
> a son”. The word for dates is also /zao/ and peanuts are /huasheng/.
>
> 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 /jin shan jin mei/ – perfection – 
> has turned it into a slogan translated as “Shanxi, a land of 
> splendours”. In another case, replacing a single character in /ke bu 
> rong huan/ has turned “brook no delay” into “coughing must not linger” 
> for a medicine advert.
>
> “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.
>
> “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.”
>
> Internet users have been particularly inventive in finding alternative 
> ways to discuss subjects or people whose names have been blocked by 
> censors.
>
> Moves to block such creativity have a long history too. Moser said 
> Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of China 
> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/china> from 1912 to 1915, reportedly 
> wanted to rename the Lantern Festival,/Yuan Xiao Jie/, because it 
> sounded like “cancel Yuan day”.
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/28/china-media-watchdog-bans-wordplay-puns
>

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