In My Language That Sounds Like / Real Life — Chinese

Incidents of In My Language, That Sounds Like... specifically involving Chinese topolects and dialects.

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Cantonese

• Examples of English/European personal names sounding funny in Cantonese:
  • Picasso (畢加索; Bāt-gā-sok) is just one syllable away from bāt gā sī-sok ("不加思索"), which means "not putting any thought into it".
  • In Cantonese, Socrates (蘇格拉底/苏格拉底; sōu gaak lāai dái) sounds like "showing one's armpits" (show 胳肋底, with 胳肋底 being gaak lāak dái).^note The 'show' part is code-mixing with English; many Cantonese speakers, especially ones from Hong Kong, do that.
  • "Vanessa" sounds very close to wáan nàih-sā (Jyutping: waan2 nai4 saa1; Chinese characters: 玩泥沙), which means "to play with sand and mud" (say, in a children's sandbox or at the beach).
• The title of the video game series Armored Core sounds very similar to the Cantonese phrase amā kō (Jyutping: aa3 maa1 ko1; Chinese characters: 阿媽𠹭), which means "mom calls (i.e. using the phone)".^note The 'call' part is code-switching with English.
• For a reverse example, in Cantonese-language media, the name of Princess Peach is bīk gēi (Jyutping: bik1 gei1; Chinese characters: 碧姬, roughly translated to "Aquamarine Princess") — which sounds almost identical to the English phrase "big gay". This is quite pronounced in the Cantonese version of the "Peaches" song from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Internet videos of the said song often have comments pointing this out or joking about this.
• The English phrase "Thank you", and also its German counterpart Danke, sound very similar to dēng kiùh (Chinese characters: 釘橋), which means "nail bridge".
• 'Due' sounds like the Cantonese word Diú with a tonal change. Diú (屌) is basically the Cantonese equivalent of the English word "fuck" — both are vulgar ways to say "to have sex with", and commonly used as a curse word in their respective languages.^note If you are curious, the rough Mandarin equivalent is cào (肏). It gives a whole new meaning to "Due date". Meanwhile, in French, dieu means "God", and also sounds startlingly similar to Diú (屌).
• "Delay no more" sounds like a particular obscene Cantonese swearing term far surpassing "poor guy" — diú néih lóuh móu (屌你老母). It literally means "fuck your mom", with the 'mother' part said in a more casual, vulgar way. Naturally, Cantonese speakers regularly joke about this — especially Hongkongers, who not only speak Cantonese, but are also heavily exposed to English. The Hong Kong brand/company Goods of Desire takes advantage of this and made their trademark slogan "Delay no more" for this very reason.
• The ubiquitous particle/word dīk (的, at least in formal writing; the colloquial equivalent is ge, 嘅) most often means, roughly, "that which belongs to someone" or as a universal suffix for adjectives and relative clauses. This combined with the fact that "-son" sounds almost identical to the Cantonese word for "god" (神), it gives rise to some unfortunate puns for people named "Dickson".^note Which, for this case, "translates" to "the god who is". And even in Mandarin, "-son" still sounds quite similar to "god" (shén).
• In another reverse example, the Cantonese words for "flower bridge" (花橋; Jyutping: faa1 kiu4) sound like "fuck you" in English.
• Cantonese speakers occasionally joke about the English word "handsome", because it sounds quite similar to the Cantonese word hàahm-sāp (鹹濕; literally "salty/savory and wet"), which means "raunchy" or "sexually perverted". If you describe a male friend as "handsome" and think this will help him impress the Cantonese girls you're talking to... well, just be extra careful with your pronunciation.
• In Japanese, hai means yes. In Cantonese, depending on the tone you're saying it, hai can either mean something surprisingly similar^note haih, 係 ("Yes"), or mean something else entirely^note hāi, 閪 ("Cunt").
• The Vietnamese hay là is typically translated to English as "or". In Cantonese, it sounds very similar to haih la (Jyutping: hai6 laa3; Chinese characters: 係喇) — which can be translated to English (roughly) as "Oh, yes!", as in, the speaker just recalled something important.
• The German supermarket 'Lidl' is pronounced extremely similar to Cantonese for "here" (呢度)^note Technically, it's properly pronounced ni1 dou6 (Jyutping), but consonant drift (or as linguistic purists put it, "lazy sound") means a lot of people, especially Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, pronounce it li1 dou6, which leads to confusion when asking for directions.
• "Nazi" in Cantonese (納粹; naap6 seoi5 in Jyutping Romanization) is pronounced exactly the same as "tax-paying" (納稅; naap6 seoi3 in Jyutping) save for a minor pitch change.
• The English word "signal" sounds almost identical to the Cantonese phrase sīk lòuh (熄爐), which means "(to) turn off the stove".
• As for the world-famous Australian city Sydney, its name when translated to Taiwanese Mandarin, 雪梨 (syut lèih; Jyutping: syut3 lei4), means pear (the fruit). People in Hong Kong tend to follow the Mainland convention and call it 悉尼 (in Cantonese, sīk nèih; Jyutping: sik1 nei4), which is a closer reflection of the actual pronunciation in English.
• In yet another reverse example, the famous Song dynasty poet 蘇軾's name is pronounced sōu sīk (Jyutping: sou1 sik1) in Cantonese. That sounds very similar to the English phrase "so sick".^note The man himself would likely have pronounced his own name using Middle Chinese, which Cantonese is descended from. It is also possible that he might have pronounced it using the Ba-Shu language, a now-extinct Han/Sinitic language.
• The Cantonese word for iron (鐵)^note the metal, not the household appliance is tit (Jyutping: tit3; pronounced "teet"). Let's just say for an English speaker, metal isn't exactly what comes to their mind when they hear "tit".
• The name of the famous dice game Yahtzee sounds dangerously close to the Cantonese phrase ya͏ak sí (喫屎/吔屎) — a slang term that means "(to) eat shit".

Standard Mandarin

• Some of the chosen English names of Chinese actors (whether due to ignorance or a desire to stand out) sound English but are just plain odd to English-speakers.
  • Take Tan Songyun (譚松韻/谭松韵) as an example. She chose "Seven Tan" as her English name.
  • And then there's Wang Ruichang (王瑞昌), who chose 'Richards Wang' (yes, 'Richards' and not 'Richard') as his English name. Some spell-checkers insist on interpreting 'Richards' as a misspelling of "Richard's", and when combined with his surname... Well, there's a reason most English wikis use his Chinese name.
• He (何/賀/和/etc.), Shi (施/石/史/etc. with all three given surnames pronounced using different tones), Mi (麋/米/禰), and Yu (余/于/俞/etc.) are all valid surnames in Mandarin Chinese. Hence the statement, "He is Shi, she is He, you are Mi, and I am Yu." It doesn't work quite as well when actually spoken, because 'He' is pronounced sort of like "Huh", 'Shi' is pronounced similarly to "Sure", and 'Yu' is sort of like the "u" in 'pure'.
  • However, the surnames romanized as 'Xi' (習/奚/西/席/etc.) are pronounced sort of like "she" (actually more like "see"), which invites all sorts of "Hu's the president of China? No, Xi's the president of China!" jokes. ^note The former refers to Hu Jintao (2003-2013), the latter to Xi Jinping (2013-present).
• Bú shì (不是; "is not"), which sounds like 'bullshit' with an accent.^note Though the usual pronunciation of 不 is bù with the falling tone, the rising tone is used here because the word after it, shì, is in the falling tone. It's called tone sandhi.
• Then there's búshì māo (不是貓/不是猫; "is not a cat") which sounds remarkably like the Dutch poesje mauw, a child's way of saying "yes, cat" (equivalent to "pussy cat").
• Dǒng (懂) means "to understand", and there is a surname (董) that's pronounced the same. While the characters are pronounced quite differently from the English word, when written down and romanized (especially without the tone mark), it becomes quite awkward to read.
• "Give us..." (written 給我們 in Traditional and 给我们 in Simplified) in Mandarin Chinese is romanized as gěi wǒmen.
• For another reverse example, during the Cultural Revolution the nickname of one of the Gang of Four who came to power on the left was "Helicopter Wang" (real name 王洪文, romanized Wáng Hóngwén), so named because of how quickly he rose to power.
• The actor Hu Ge (胡歌)'s name looks like the English word "huge" split in two. It's possible that the actor is aware of this himself, as his English name is apparently 'Hugh'.
• The name of the famous cell phone brand Huawei sounds incredibly funny for Mexicans, as the name, pronounced phonetically, sounds similar to ¡Ay, guey!, which means either "Oh, dude!" or "Holy shit!".
• Much like English-speakers might giggle when they see the Chinese name 'Wang', Russian-speakers have trouble with the also-incredibly-common Chinese syllable hui. This is the Russian word for "dick". However unlike in English, (k)hui is considered an incredibly rude expletive in Russian. This has led to both much awkwardness and much hilarity for Russian speakers. Russians have adopted the practice of phonetically transcribing the Chinese syllable as 'huei' (which is how it's actually pronounced; the pinyin system is a little weird) just to avoid writing that word.
• In Mandarin Chinese, the Hmong ethnic group are known as the Miáo (苗族), which sounds like the English onomatopoeia for a cat vocalization.^note Admittedly, Miáo in Mandarin is pronounced with a rising tone and not a high, even tone, which further separates the two concepts when it's actually pronounced in Mandarin.
• "That one there" (那一個/那一个) is pronounced nà yī gè in Mandarin. In casual speech, this gets slurred into nèi ge (那個/那个), which sounds like a very racist N-word. It doesn't help that it tends to be used the same way the Valley Girl uses "like". This has caused a lot of real life incidents.
• The Mandarin Chinese phrase "你吃饭了吗？/ 你吃飯了嗎？" (Nǐ chīfàn le ma?) means "Have you eaten yet?". It sounds very like the Korean insult "니씨팔놈아" (nissipalnoma), meaning "you bastard".
• The English phrase "thank you very much" is often phonetically transcribed into sān kē yào wèi nǐ mā chī (三顆藥餵你媽吃/三颗药喂你妈吃), which means "three pills/tablets to feed your mom".
• Another joke turns "31 people" (三十一位; sān shí yī wèi), spoken with certain Southern accents, into "killed one person" (殺死一位/杀死一位; shā sǐ yī wèi).
• Xiān (仙), meaning "immortal", "enlightened", or "transcendent", resembles the Irish/Gaelic word sean (not to be confused with the name 'Seán', which is derived from 'John'), meaning "old", "ancient", or "wise".
• There's a Chinese actor named 汪铎 (or 汪鐸 in Traditional). In Chinese, there's nothing unusual about his name. Unfortunately for English speakers, it's transliterated in pinyin as 'Wang Duo' (see below for elaboration). Even worse, IMDb uses Western name order and writes his name as 'Duo Wang'.

Miscellaneous

General

• The character 王, both a term meaning "king" and a common surname (as in Wang Duo above), is romanized as wáng in standard Mandarin pinyin.
  • Cue the immature jokes from English speakers, though it should be noted that it's actually pronounced more like a non-rhotic "warng" with the first part rhyming with 'car'; and in Hokkien — the Chinese language spoken in Taiwan and the Southern province of Fujian — the same character is romanized as "bong".^note Aaaaand if you are curious, the character is pronounced "wong" in Cantonese, "waan" in Shanghainese, and "uōng" in Gan. But in microvariants of Hokkien spoken in Southeast Asia, it's sometimes romanized as "ong", without the letter B.
  • In Malay, wang means "money". Cue even more immature jokes about prostitution on school grounds.
• The character 福, meaning "good fortune" in various East Asian languages, is romanized as fuk in Cantonese, phúc in Vietnamese, and fuku in Japanese. Let's... just say none of these sounds exactly like "good fortune" to an English speaker.^note Vietnamese and Japanese aren't technically Sinitic, but they do have a lot of words in common with the Chinese languages. Those words tend to resemble their Cantonese counterparts more than their Mandarin counterparts. This is because Vietnamese and Japanese have been heavily influenced by Middle Chinese; Middle Chinese possessed for example the -k ending to syllables, a feature lost in Mandarin but preserved in Cantonese.
• 'Shun' is a perfectly good name in both Mandarin Chinese (pronounced something like "shwun") and Japanese (pronounced "shoon"). It looks exactly like the English word 'shun' ("to avoid").
• This happens even among Chinese languages and dialects themselves. The various Chinese languages can give identical-sounding words very different meanings.
  • The Gan topolect (spoken mainly in Jiangxi Province) and even some southwestern dialects of Mandarin (e.g. in Yunnan) use háizi to mean "shoes"^note 鞋子 while it means "child(ren)"^note 孩子 in standard Mandarin and various northern dialects. An adult claiming they've lost their háizi on the train can just be grumbling in one part of China and the cause of panic in another.
  • Going off of the wang example above, to a Cantonese speaker, wang sounds more like "broken (usually some sort of tools or appliance)" (wāang; Jyutping: waang1; Chinese character: 軭) than "king" (which, as mentioned, would be "wong" in Cantonese).

Specific examples

• In Korean, ai (아이) means "child". In Japanese and Mandarin, ai (愛/爱) means "love". All sound like the English word "I". And to further complicate matters, in Hokkien Chinese it means "want" (要), but depending on the context it can also mean "love". Cantonese is similar to Hokkien in this regard (it usually means "love" but can mean "want" in older usage) — except it is pronounced more like English "oi"; Cantonese can also use it as a command like "Gimme!" to add to the confusion.
• A Malaysian car company called Perodua released a new line of cars known as the Axia — which is supposed to be 'Asia' spelled in Xtreme Kool Letterz. Unfortunately, the way it's pronounced sounds very close to the Hokkien word for "airheaded". And Hokkien happens to be the third most spoken Chinese topolect in the country...
• Coca Cola can be transliterated into Chinese many ways, each with a different meaning. For obvious reasons, they went with the one meaning something akin to "to make the mouth experience joy". They actually had to choose something that's pronounced along the lines of "Coca Coluh" to do so, though (which isn't that far off in the first place because of the English schwa), as none of the words reading as la were remotely appetizing^note One means "hot", as in hot sauce, but that's not good in a drink — "wax" was actually the most common word reading as la, hence its ubiquity in the less appetizing unofficial names.
  • While they were still looking for the official transliteration, some Chinese shopkeepers used random combinations with meanings such as "female horse fastened with wax", "wax-flattened mare", or "Bite the Wax Tadpole". Urban Legend incorrectly attributes this error to the Coca Cola Company itself — as mentioned above, they were careful to pick something that actually sounded like a name for a drink.
• 龍/龙 ("dragon") and 隆 ("prosperous", or a sort of onomatopoeia like "rumble") are both pronounced lóng in Mandarin (and similar in Cantonese), and are therefore both popularly used in given (particularly male) names. And by this point, you'd already know 'Wang' is an extremely common Chinese surname. So it is almost certain there are guys whose name in Chinese means something like "Thunderous Dragon King" but in English sounds like "long, long dick".
• The Korean word-phrase Nalgae (날개) means "wings". It was supplied by North Korea to be used as an international name for storms in the Pacific typhoon season. When it is transliterated into Chinese (尼格), it often sounds dangerously close to the N-word (Mandarin: Nígé; Cantonese Yale: Nèih gaak).
• The English words "poor guy" infamously sounds extremely similar to a common Cantonese swearing term pūk gāai (仆街)^note For the record, it literally means "to fall on a street facedown" (a metaphor for dropping dead), and is a very versatile word indeed. It's commonly used as a noun to mean "someone who deserves to drop dead" (in other words, an asshole), or as a descriptor for someone who's wicked. It's also a common curse word roughly meaning "go to hell!" and (less commonly) used as an interjection/exclamation in ways similar to "damn it", "fuck it!" and "oh crap". It's also a vulgar way of saying that someone is "condemned", i.e. screwed/suffering. And finally, it can also mean "epic fail", and has been used in, like, a million instances, even by Legislative Councillors (think senators). However, in the Hokkien (Southern Min/Fujianese) topolect (as well as Malaysian and Singaporean Cantonese), pok gai means "[to go] bankrupt" — which, strangely enough, complements the English words.
• In Chinese media, Condoleezza Rice was usually referred to on the news as "US Secretary of State Rice", the problem being her surname (transliterated as 賴斯/赖斯), especially since Chinese languages tend to substitute R-sounds for L^note since there aren't many morphemes that start with the R-sound, and the ones that do are pronounced differently from the normal English "R", sounds like "to shit" (so it sounds like "US Secretary of State shitted") in Mandarin — and is somehow even worse in Cantonese, in which it is one tone off from "to shit uncontrollably".

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