A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES
95
one witness as "two other people, besides myself — and seven coolies" and by a second witness as "seven people — and three GWAEZIRLOO””.
Nor with the extraordinary reluctance to say the other's names right, which turns the easily pronounced BAY JING3 (or BUCK GING) into PEA KING, HAHN CO (or HAWN HOW) into HANG COW, and GWONG JOW3 into CANTON; or, the other way about, transformed Sir Winston Churchill into Mr. YAU, President John F. Kennedy into GUMMY DICK, or President Lyndon B. Johnson into JIMSON® Refusal to communicate is a separate subject, and a very disquieting one.
I would help those who wish to be helped.
For the Western end of my comparisons most of my examples will be from English, because I think my audience will be most familiar with that language; although I shall emphasize to my Chinese friends the need to approach English by way of Greek and Latin, and to my English friends the need to approach modern Chinese by an equally devious route. And for the Eastern end I have confined myself to Cantonese examples, but have somewhat soft-pedalled the elements, very numerous elements, in the syntax and vocabulary of Cantonese which set it apart from other kinds of modern Chinese and make it both scientifically and for practical considerations a separate language, whatever we would like to think for other reasons.
But I have denied myself the pleasure of an exhaustive look at the "classifiers" which would alone give matter for a whole course of lectures. Although "classifiers" or congruence-classes are a feature not only of Chinese but of Thai, Japanese and many other languages, Cantonese with its hundred or more classes ever increasing, too, it would seem occupies a somewhat extreme position and I have therefore referred to this feature in more general terms, to leave room for other matters.
To come back to the two sentences which may have startled you at the opening.
2 A7, a vulgar term for non-Chinese.
3
4 漢口
these, of course, are not SOAS romanizations.
廣州6 st
7+EN
› AE
A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES
95
one witness as "two other people, besides myself — and seven coolies" and by a second witness as "seven people — and three GWAEZIRLOO””.
Nor with the extraordinary reluctance to say the other's names right, which turns the easily pronounced BAY JING3 (or BUCK GING) into PEA KING, HAHN CO (or HAWN HOW) into HANG COW, and GWONG JOW3 into CANTON; or, the other way about, transformed Sir Winston Churchill into Mr. YAU, President John F. Kennedy into GUMMY DICK, or President Lyndon B. Johnson into JIMSON® Refusal to communicate is a separate subject, and a very disquieting one.
I would help those who wish to be helped.
For the Western end of my comparisons most of my examples will be from English, because I think my audience will be most familiar with that language; although I shall emphasize to my Chinese friends the need to approach English by way of Greek and Latin, and to my English friends the need to approach modern Chinese by an equally devious route. And for the Eastern end I have confined myself to Cantonese examples, but have somewhat soft-pedalled the elements, very numerous elements, in the syntax and vocabulary of Cantonese which set it apart from other kinds of modern Chinese and make it both scientifically and for practical considerations a separate language, whatever we would like to think for other reasons.
But I have denied myself the pleasure of an exhaustive look at the "classifiers" which would alone give matter for a whole course of lectures. Although "classifiers" or congruence-classes are a feature not only of Chinese but of Thai, Japanese and many other languages, Cantonese with its hundred or more classes ever increasing, too, it would seem occupies a somewhat extreme position and I have therefore referred to this feature in more general terms, to leave room for other matters.
To come back to the two sentences which may have startled you at the opening.
2 A7, a vulgar term for non-Chinese.
3
4漢口
these, of course, are not SOAS romanizations.
廣州 6 st
7+EN
› AE
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