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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.
and upload it to every video site ! we can show those censors what the power of internet is, and they wouldnt have any chinese to prosecute in the end. result : total brain damage.
Read radical news here
Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them.
Actually it is the other way around in terms of cause and effect. The Chinese Script (Kanji) evolved because there are very few phonetic variations in the spoken language and they needed a way to make sure that you can mean different things even if essentially the same sounds are coming out of your mouth. Ditto for Japanese as well. The phonetic range is severely limited compared to say English or Sanskrit. You may find this interesting
This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.
It is, however, not as bad as you make it sound; the "context" is very often that certain meanings are expressed by certain combinations of words. The main reason why we think of Chinese as very confusing, I think, is that we associate 1 character with 1 word - which was the way it worked originally, but it would be more accurate to say that each character is a "mono-syllabic meme" which can occasionaly stand on its own, but more often is combined to form polysyllabic words. In this sense Chinese is actually not that dissimilar to most other languages.
Thus you have "qiche" (two characters) meaning "car" or "to ride a bicycle" - the ambiguity being an artifact of my inability to conveniently represent the tones of the language. Traditionally the "qi" part of it means "steam" and "che" means vehicle, so "qi" is still used in many combinations that are associated with steam and "che" is used as part of most vehicles.
True, but the countries that comprise Europe dont pretend to have eliminated censorship. They know all too well what happens if you forget or try to rewrite history. Which is why it's illegal to glorify or deny the various denizens of WW2.
In the USA, we have this thing called the Bill of Rights, which prevents the govt from silencing us. Instead, we let our companies and "think of the children" laws do that for us.
Same effect. The Europeans are just really clear what they dont tolerate, and I cant say I blame them.
My Girlfriend actually speaks Cantonese as well.
The Words for Bread and Full also sound almost identical.
And I've more or less given up on learning Cantonese as well but she hasn't given up on teaching me and drops words into our conversations.
I get to tease her back because there are some sounds that she can't tell apart, it may have something to do with the tonal nature of the language she listens for the tone and not the sound. So I get to tease her by switching words that I know she can't tell apart.
Such as Bed and Bad
This is my freedom we're talking about, right?
Wow. I mean, just, wow. What we're talking about here is subversion of censorship in a tool of government manipulation of information. Per the above-linked (informative) comment, This was seen as a punch in Baidu's face, and by extension, a joke on government's attempts to control online speech. Perhaps you failed to RTFA (shock amazement) and so missed this part of the article: "The resilient and intelligent caonima fight back to defeat the river crabs - yet another play on words. The pronunciation of river crab resembles "harmony" - a favourite slogan of the current Communist Party leadership. It has become common practice among internet writers whose posts have been deleted to say they have been "harmonised" - or "eaten by the river crab". Thus "river crab" has become a code name for internet censors." So in fact the entire battle is over censorship, it is not just a big jerkoff wankfest, and I do not believe that it is a false dichotomy to say that you either can see how this is relevant and in fact positive, or you do not understand the value of the freedom of speech. Perhaps you should read up on Parody and Satire so that you can better understand the concept. He who laughs, lasts. He who laughs last usually didn't get the joke.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, I think this is wonderful on two levels; as someone who doesn't believe in censorship in any form, and as a lover of languages (especially puns, good or bad).
Second, this is a perfect example of what happens when you combine the worst of bureaucracy, which destroys the spirit of the laws and censorship, which destroys the spirit of the people.
What a bureaucracy will never be able to accomplish is the true purpose of censorship in squashing the intent behind foul or dissident language. By its own nature, a large government loses ability to look at the mutable nature of intent and reduces circumstances to the most black and white of possibilities.
Situations like this expose the inherent flaw in red-tape censorship structures. A seemingly innocuous phrase with the intent of being a "bad word" is allowed to be a cultural movement, while an article on the etymology of curse words would be censored.
What is especially ironic to me is that "bad" words only hold negative power when people make a big deal about them. If you gasp every time someone says one, or do everything you can to prevent their use as some demonic talisman, they maintain their shock value. When I was young and learned my first curse word, I got a secret glee from saying it and seeing my parents reaction; then they decided to not overreact to it and told me instead the word was not polite and its use would make me look ignorant and I stopped using it.
As a wise man once said, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
On a slightly related final note, for a safe from censorship example of how Chinese intonation can make the same phoneme have different meaning, look at the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
Perhaps - one point of view is that all forms of censorship are wrong.
Another reasonable point of view is that banning something is justified if there is overwhelming evidence of harm. So one might make that argument if child pr0n - but not with "This image/word/etc is disgusting!" One could also make that argument with defamation (where it's shown that the false claims have harmed someone in some way).
Also note that copyright laws are less broad in that they don't ban all forms of an image, just that particular instances can only be distributed it by those who created the work. Also I think it's more sensible to treat this as a civil issue (so yes, I would disagree with places that criminalise it).
Be careful of polarising the issue - yes, there certainly are real examples of censorship in western countries - though then, that does not make it okay! It makes it bad in both cases. But the last thing you want in a debate is to suggest that someone can only be against censorship if they also support allowing child pr0n - that would be a fallacy.
Unfortunately I do feel that, in the UK at least, we are on a slippery slope. In 1978 when child images were criminalised, people questioned whether it was needed (and IIRC, it was only punishable with a fine). It applied only to under-16s. Three decades on, and laws are now being rushed through that criminalise things such as images of consenting adults, and cartoons that appear to depict under-18s, all on the grounds that they are "disgusting".
IIRC, the (American) Sign Language gesture for 'apple' is very similar to the sign for 'dirty sex'. 'hungry' and 'horny' are identical except for length of gesture, speed, and repetition. Usually a teacher will warn you about such pitfalls so that you don't make a fool of yourself conversing with native speakers.
Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them. This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.
This is both a pain and a godsend for foreign companies establishing products in China. Despite persistent rumours, the (official) Chinese translation of Coca Cola is not "bite the wax tadpole", but "makes pleasure in the mouth". The two phrases sound almost identical.
I think the underlying objection is that Western people think that Western things must somehow be superior or "correct" whereas other cultures must be flawed in some way. This bias can be seen in every sphere of life: the various USA v. USSR things, the China and India should be developing their economies this way, food issues (GE, whales, dogs) etc.
Because the West's shameful past is in the past, and the West's problems are just the West's.
The kind of (personal) individualism seen in the West is not seen as a good thing in other countries, since not everyone who acts for himself has a well-formed idea of honour (not the fanciful kind, but the kind dealing with conduct towards strangers) and personal responsibility.
A cursory viewing of Cantonese phonetics reveals that the near-open front unrounded vowel (the "a" in "cat") doesn't exist. The open-mid front unrounded vowel (the "e" in "bed") does exist in Cantonese.
The reason she doesn't hear a difference is because the difference between the "a" and "e" in those two words is slight at best. The vowel height and vowel backness are nearly identical. The fact that she doesn't have the habituation to hear the difference between them is because her native language doesn't have the sounds as different phonemes. If you don't learn to distinguish certain phonemes by the time you're, say, three years old, it becomes extremely difficult. It's connected to the Critical period in linguistics, but Wiki reports the boundary as sometime between five and puberty. However, that's for acquiring a native language. I think for acquiring the necessary phonological discernment, the cutoff age is much earlier. But IANALinguist.
For fun, listen to the "p" in "happen" (it's called a voiceless bilabial plosive because your voicebox doesn't generate sound (voiceless), you use two lips (bilabial), and you explode air out after building up pressure (plosive)) and the "p" in "parrot."
Rather, you won't hear a difference. Technically, one is aspirated and one is unaspirated.
But I guarantee you native Hindi speakers can hear a difference--in Hindi, they are different sounds that can affect the meaning of words; not so in English.
I'm not sure about native Spanish speakers. In Spanish, the aspirated "p" ("parrot"'s "p") doesn't even exist.
That's not correct, Mandarin words are by no means monosyllabic. What you probably mean is that unlike in Japanese, Mandarin characters are all monosyllabic. In Mandarin however words does not equal characters.
Also there are characters in Mandarin that have different pronunciations depending on the context.
Regarding the punniness of the language however it is my understanding that you are correct. Punning is said to be very common among those who speak the language far better than I do.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace