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Chinese Subvert Censorship With a Popular Pun
Anonymusing writes "In spoken Chinese, 'grass-mud horse' sounds virtually identical to an obscenity (hint: it begins with "mother-") — and as a cartoon character, it has become an amazing phenomenon. Meant as a subversive attack on censors, the alpaca-like mythical creature has led to a cuddly stuffed animal — selling over 180,000 in a few weeks — and a wildly popular YouTube video with children's voices singing words that are either completely benign or incredibly offensive, depending on how you listen." Update: 03/13 09:29 GMT by T : Since this story was set up, the originally linked video seems to have been pulled. Searching YouTube reveals that there are some alternatives available, at least for now.
Watch the cnut moderators censor this fscking post for all the shirty language it contains!
Hey, mods: kiss my RSS!
Yes its like that in Cantonese as well. I gave up trying to learn my wife's language when I found out that the words for Aunt and Vagina sound exactly the same to me.
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The follies of English orthography
achieve heights of linguistic pornography
when the fish that you fry
you spell g-h-o-t-i
for pleasure instead of cryptography...