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Chinese Government Moves To Crack Down On Puns
FreedomFirstThenPeac (1235064) writes "A story in The Guardian tells us that in an Orwellian move to legislate language, the Chinese government is attempting to stop the use of puns because they are disruptive and may lead to chaos (not the mathematical kind) and as such are unsuitable for use. However, Chinese is rife with puns, with this example quoted in the story: "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 powerful date and peanut lobbies are up in arms, claiming that such a ban will cost them more than peanuts. Their claim? "If you outlaw puns. Only criminals will have puns."
Woman who fly upside down have hairy crack up.
The Chinese government can bite me now.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
We'll see how that works out for them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I saw this article recently on ThePunion.com, I'm sure of it.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
"If you outlaw puns. Only criminals will have puns."
I'll admit, as a 2nd amendment proponent I laughed out loud at this one.
I don't read AC A human right
From all over the internet, punsters will hear the call of this thread, and they will come. They will post. Puns.
It is the End Times, I'm afraid.
-30-
... I don't know whether to slap my chin or knees.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Many man smoke, but Fu Man Chu.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Then there was the Chinese Stud - One Hung Lo.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Everyone knows that, and they will not succeed, as always.
Chinese pundits frequently opine upun political matters with clever word play. It's much more difficult to use automated search for all the combinations of characters that can phunetically mean something political. Those seeking a "harmonious society" therefore hate the practice.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Seriously, I can't tell if this is some kind of Kafka joke. Or if the level of cognitive dissonance their leaders has achieved is some new type of weapon. Either way, it's giving me a headache. o.o;;
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
we must punish the puny pundits with punty of punalties
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Guizi (Chinese: ; pinyin: guzi) is a Chinese slang term for foreigners, and has a long history of being used as a racially depreciating insult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
(Also posted below before it hit the front page)
That "State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television" is nothing but a bunch of imbecile pencil pushers
If they think that they can change a culture which has 7,000 years of history behind it, with an "official edict" they better stand in front of a big mirror
Chinese history is filled with many attempt of cultural engineering - and in the 7,000 years of history, only two succeeded
Confucianism and chop-sticks
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If they want to get out of puns they need to get a new language. My wife is Chinese and explains to me all the time about all the puns.
Hadlock has the correct link to that 2009 meme, but that meme had existed way before the advent of the Net
The word "Grass", or in Chinese "Cao", sounds like another word, to put it in "family term", sexual intercourse
The word "Mud", or in Chinese "Ni", sounds a lot like the word that carries the meaning of "You"
The word "Horse", in Chinese "Ma", is a root-character in Chinese, for many Chinese characters has "Ma" (or Horse) embedded, including the character that represents "Mother" (also pronounce as "Ma" in Mandarin)
Bonus tip for those who do not know the Mandarin Language: The "Ma" character that represents "Mother", has "female" on the left hand side and "horse" on the right hand side
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No, no, bite the wax tadpole. Don't cook it with baking soda and smoke it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You are wrong, in my opunion.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a pun.
Have gnu, will travel.
I have the feeling this is going to be one of those "Top 10 viral stories that where complete BS" on cracked.com in about a week.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
stinks - you can tell if she hang high: a veritable fragrant harbour. I'd put money on it if, if I were to bet, but I have no mao money so I'll have to gweilo for a while.
Just so /. stays readable in China, can we have a list of phrases in English that translate into Chinese puns?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
offenders are sent to the punitentiary
Table-ized A.I.
What, did the Chinese government finally cotton onto the fact that the Lion-Easting Poet in the Stone Den was mocking them? Not sure it's strictly speaking a lengthy pun, but it's at least a related wordplay, and was a protest against the choice of Pinyin vs other choices that would have presented more distinction when writing a tonal language.
IIRC, Wikipedia used to lead with the explanation that the poem was really an exercise in slipping one past the censors to protest the choice, disguised as an "exercise in constrained writing". Now the text doesn't seem to discuss the mockery at all, unless I'm missing it, making the joke image of "an uneaten stone lion" seem strangely out-of-place.
While The Hunting of the Snark remains the greatest-ever exercise in slipping one past the censors (so much so that a non-dirty meaning of "snark" has become common!), Lion-Eating Poet was always a close second IMO. I notice Wikipedia doesn't give the obvious explanation of the Carroll poem either, but maybe that's just an elaborate exercise in avoiding spoilers, so I'll do the same here!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
China isn't banning puns. They're disallowing news anchors from using them during broadcasts, specifically public media. But that's not fear mongering enough, so of course that's not how it got picked up.
but not first post.
Hurts me tsu much.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
before the advent of the Net
Mandarin works with one syllabus per character. There are 5000 characters (well, 2000 to read the newpaper), but 300 different syllabus. The language is extraordinary ambiguous.
Disambiguation often works by sticking synonyms characters together to form a word. I can understand puns are a threat to the language interoperability. It must be a serious threat for China to use law against it.
"In the land of many laws, many laws are broken."
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
I don't speak Mandarin, but a language where a variation in tones can generate a different meaning must be ripe for puns. Given such a puntastic environment, I don't the government stands a chance.
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is from the early 1910s, meaning it pre-dates pinyin by 50 years. It does look especially stupid in pinyin, but the joke works just as well for theoretical Chinese people who aren't aware of roman characters at all - making puns of words with different tones is very, very common.
I'd need to see a little more background than this article gives, because (as the article does state), puns are just a basic part of Chinese culture. This is probably just an over-interpretation of some vague proclamation given by some no-name politician, aimed at stopping Internet users from posting pictures of crabs wearing wristwatches.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I think there's a chink in their argument.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
One of the worst things a Government can do is make people laugh at it.
In no particular order... war, recession, genocide, ecological disaster, government prescribed religion, concentration camps, fascism, disbanding of social services, police state...
All far worse and clearly in a different category from "make people laugh at it".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Actually, one of the worst things you could do TO a totalitarian government is to laugh about them.
Nope.
Totalitarian regimes rely on fear and intimidation. Both go out the window once you see that the emperor has no clothes.
Also nope.
The actual quote mentions a TYRANT. A singular ruler whose power relies heavily on personal reputation.
Misapplying that to a regime at best makes you misinformed. At worst disappeared.
A totalitarian government is NOT one that NEEDS fear and intimidation to rule. It's a government that already HAS you by the balls.
It does not need fear or intimidation. That's for petty dictatorships. A totalitarian government has CONTROL over rules and laws.
I.e. It does not need to intimidate you into not drinking alcoholic beverages. It just makes it illegal.
So, because it is aware of its own power, it is perfectly fine with letting you get your rocks off at its expense - as it knows that all it has to do is squeeze for your laughter to become a squeal.
And it also knows that if it lets you bark at it you will never get frustrated enough to bite, while it can dismiss you with a wave of a hand "proving its openness to criticism".
If you do eventually bite... well, you're clearly a mad dog. Just look at all your history of constant barking.
It's totalitarian cause it already has all the power and control. It doesn't need fear nor does it fear ridicule.
Only those who DO NOT have absolute power, but pretend that they do, fear laughter.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Ah, thanks for the background! I hadn't heard of the 10 mythical species, but it's good to know creativity is alive and well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
He mostly intended it as a linguistic joke - if you've ever read any of his works, he can be quite amusing - and as a demonstration of how Chinese has changed over the millenia. In ancient Chinese, the poem would be more or less comprehensible (although still a little odd here and there), but in modern Mandarin, so many sounds have converged together, that it just sounds like gibberish.
When inlaws are outlawed only outlaws will have inlaws.
No brain, no pain.
We should outlaw puns. If you want to tell a pun to Princess Leia, you should have a Permit to Carrie.
Oh wait. That's a limmerick. Those are probably next.
I couldn't help but wonder about the new world order, but my reply is, "huasheng."
Boys and Girls, Google your Grand Parents about the use, and historical applications. Only say, "Nuts," to them and see their faces when you do. XD
...that these moves are feints, made to be fighted against and to distract from the more serious oppressions. No other "sensical" explanation comes to mind.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
... is when KTVU News in San Francisco got praked into reporting fake Chinese names on live TV as part of the story of the Asiana Flight 214 crash. As tragic as the crash was, it's one of the best pranks ever.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
This is the new word order :(
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
ah, the inevitable poorly-worded statement of false equivalence.
are definite articles really so fucking difficult to learn?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
They're not punny. Outlaw them!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Seriously, i thik the chinnese government has to much free time if they are passing laws against puns