Hi, Potato! Today, I’m going to teach you about curse words (because really, that’s the most fun part about learning new languages–right? Right? :D)
This all started when I was using my Wechat to talk to my roommate, and I ended up downloading the pack of alpaca-themed stickers (because alpacas are cute, okay?), and after I sent her a few, she told me that she couldn’t stop laughing, that the animal was very cute but was somewhat of a national joke, and it would be unfair for her to not tell me why.
So basically, caonima (tsao nee mah) or 草呢马, the slang for “alpaca” (the formal name for alpaca is yang tuo or 羊驼, pronounced “yahng toowhoa” which makes more sense because yang, or 羊, means “goat” or sometimes “sheep”), sounds a lot like 草呢妈, also pronounced caonima, which means “motherfucker.”
LOOK AT THIS FACE. SUCH A PROFANE FACE. This whole post is actually rated R because of this one picture.
The joke comes from the fact that the word for horse, ma (马), and the word for mother, mama (妈妈, or just 妈, which is kind of like calling your mom “Mom” instead of like “Mother” or something—some people do it and some people don’t), sound the same. Kind of.
(Also, see the left side of the mother character? When it stands alone, that’s the character for “woman.” Do you remember learning that in Chinese school? So basically, your mother is a woman-horse, which probably happened completely accidentally, but I’ve had three different Chinese teachers tell me it’s appropriate because mothers work like horses. Do with that what you will.)
So Chinese has tones, which means if you say a word with a different moving pitch, it can mean something totally different (and sometimes, if you say it in the same pitch, it can mean something different—so you have to use context and stuff, kind of like English with homonyms). There are four tones. The first is a relatively high, held pitch (that’s the tone for the mother ma). The second is a pitch that starts off low and gets higher (think of how we like to raise our voice a little bit at the end of a question—that’s like the second tone). The third is a low pitch that gets lower and then bounced back up, which is the tone for the horse ma (usually, though, you can just say the word lower than the rest of your words, and it’s understood that’s the third tone). The fourth is a pitch that starts off high and gets lower (I’ve noticed that this is used for a lot of decisive/imperative-ish verbs, like the words for “want,” “use,” “help,” etc.). And then there’s kind of a fifth tone, kind of like a very short tone that you use mostly to end sentences. For example, there’s another ma (吗) that you place at the end of questions (which is good because if you raise your voice at the end of your question, you’re making the second tone, and that doesn’t work—except I keep making this mistake). That’s just very short, almost like a punctuation mark.
So, the important thing you’re taught in school (if you remember) is that the tones are very VERY important, or else you will end up calling your mother a horse! XD Except depending on where in China you are, people have accents (the Beijing accent is very thick and adds r-sounds, or 儿, onto the end of ALMOST EVERY WORD, which is a little difficult for me because I learned a different accent), so it’s easy to get lost with tones, especially when people are talking quickly.
And uh, you know, you might accidentally curse someone out when you’re telling them about how profane cute alpacas are!
Love,
Kylee
Dearest Potato 