Laugh and speak cantonese

We speak Cantonese every day, but do you find that our daily language is mixed with many foreign words transformed from English? I looked up the sources of these loanwords on the Internet and found that they were actually very interesting. For example, some words are transliterated directly, such as "sofa", "chocolate", "sandwich" and "grocery store", and some words have extended or even changed meanings besides pronunciation.

For example, a person is moody, which means he is a bit dull and taciturn. For example, we often hear people say that he was "burglarized", which means he was burglarized. There is also "hoof rattle" (fright and fear), which means that you are very scared and trembling all over. In addition, boys often describe a girl as beautiful, and they will say: This girl is very demanding, and demanding is a transliteration.

I remember hearing a joke that a boss in Guangdong can't speak Mandarin, and usually only communicates with employees in Cantonese. One day, he asked the employees of the company to help him change some Hong Kong dollars for a business trip. He said, "Tina, help me go to the bank and sing 10000 mosquito paper." Tina is a girl from the north. She has just come to Guangdong and just learned Cantonese. She thought it was strange. Can't she say no? Why are you singing? But the boss can't help listening. So she went to the bank counter and said to the staff, "No, I'm going to sing HK$ 65,438+00,000, so I'm going to sing high and low notes ..."? In fact, Tina doesn't understand the meaning of singing. The meaning of singing comes from English change, such as singing loose paper (changing change) and singing foreign currency (changing foreign currency).

There are also some words whose origin is a background story. For example, we often say that someone is boycotted (boycotted, boycotted). Boycott is a transliteration of "boycott". Boycholt was originally a person's name, and his full name was Charles Cunningham Boycott. He was born in 1832 and died in 1897. He was a villain in Northern Ireland and devoted himself to noble landlords. As a result, these tenants responded with one voice and joined hands to deal with the villain. Resisting can't beat them, but running away, humiliated from the beginning and dying painfully. The Irish tenant's victory was a sensation and had a great impact. Since then, however, whenever this relationship is resisted or cut off, the name of the Irish villain "boycott" has been used as a synonym.

Besides such interesting Cantonese, Cantonese songs were once popular symbols of a generation. Next time, I will share those classic Cantonese songs and find back the memories of that era.