The Grass-Mud Horse: China enacts pun control

[JollyRoger]

It shouldn't be a criminal matter, but someone bringing a civil suit should be able to collect punitive damages.

 

[Borachio]

OK. Right.

Two pungent Punjabis decided to have a punch-up in a punt, but were prevented by the punctual arrival of a puny pundit.

*sigh*

Happy now?

 

[JollyRoger]

Puns of steal

 

[cybrxkhan]

Isn't Mandarin big on puns? Isn't that how the language sort of works? - words sound like other words, and there's a lot of wordplay that goes on? That's what I thought anyway.

In the Sinosphere, puns are a pretty big thing given how our languages work. In Chinese in particular, the same word can mean a bunch of different things, further complicated by the fact that similar sounding words that only differ by tone, mean a lot of words can sound the same, making puns an art form - its no longer just a way for cheap laughs, it requires a lot of skill to pull off in a way that's also clever. For instance, the example Phrossack linked in the OP was Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, which uses only four very similar-sounding sounds: Shī, Shì, shí, and shǐ (yes, those are technically different sounds, not the same one, due to Mandarin's tone system). Here would be the text in pinyin:

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

Now, granted, the author kinda cheated by using archaic forms of Chinese as well as very obscure vocabulary (to put it simply), so this is more an extreme example, but you can see how it works.


Also, I wish I put more puns in ehre.

EDIT:

And here's the English translation on Wikipedia, just to see how insane this is:


In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

 

[warpus]

So if the language uses puns to such a large extent, how could they be banned?

 

[cybrxkhan]

So if the language uses puns to such a large extent, how could they be banned?

I'd say it's impossible. I mean, look at the translation of that poem I put above. Guy pretty much told a little story with just puns, and though this is more an extreme case, it's really difficult to pull off the same with English or a lot of other languages anyways whose words aren't formed the same way Mandarin is. It's real easy to come up with puns, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'd say it's impossible.

But then, if this is so clearly the case for this language, why does the government want to try to do so? If one of the known glories of your language is X, why have an initiative to stomp out X from the language? Sheesh!

I mean, I know why; puns are anarchic. But I want to hear you say what you think is going on in their thinking here.

Gori,, those were actually really good!

They'll get bad, I assure you--more and more strained as I stretch more and more for words I associate with China.

(If you want a taste, go see my involvement in the "1001 Bad (or Good) Jokes about Civ" thread in the Civ V General Discussions Forum.)

 

[cybrxkhan]

But then, if this is so clearly the case for this language, why does the government want to try to do so? If one of the known glories of your language is X, why have an initiative to stomp out X from the language? Sheesh!

I mean, I know why; puns are anarchic. But I want to hear you say what you think is going on in their thinking here.

Well, it's just a bad attempt to stamp out dissent through arbitrarily means, given how, as you say, it can be very anarchic, especially in the languages of the Sinosphere. Just because they try doesn't mean they will succeed, is what I mean. Of course, there's also the scare factor - don't try these sort of things, we will find out - I suppose, but it probably won't work. Hey, I'm not the one who knows what those ruling elites in China are thinking.

 

[Phrossack]

It seems to me that trying to ban puns in China is like pissing into the wind. Now, all this information I got from the "Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon," an online compilation of subversive Chinese internet puns, subversive internet jokes/memes/running gags, and infamous government statements. Each phrase sounds so much like so many others, many of which are naughty. For example, there's the head of the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, Qín Gāng (禽&#32923. Unfortunately for the minister, his name apparently sounds the same as--I kid you not-- "bird anus" in Mandarin. Moreover, the sentence "Qín Gāng fāyán (秦刚发&#35328," meaning "Qín Gāng made a statement," sounds exactly like the phrase "qín gāng fāyán (禽肛发&#28814," meaning "bird anus is inflamed." One netizen wrote,

"The anus is from where one farts and [poops]. In other words, if the bird wants to fart, the anus must let the fart pass—the anus cannot decide what kind of fart to fart. That is why he is called 'Bird Anus.'" [In Chinese “to fart” can also mean "to speak nonsense."]

Very fitting for an information minister who often finds himself justifying the government's censorship.

National Bureau of Statistics (统计局 Tǒngjì Jú) sounds almost the same as 捅鸡局 (Tǒngjī Jú): Bureau of Dicking Around. Meanwhile, GDP is rendered (鸡滴屁 jī dī pì), which sounds like GDP, but which unfortunately means "chicken butt," such that one can legitimately say that the Bureau of Dicking Around makes reports on the chicken butt. The words for “administrator” (管理员 guǎnlǐ yuán) sound nearly the same as 灌狸猿 (guànlíyuán): "watered weasel-ape". And "Party Central Committee" sounds very much like "Crotch Central Committee." Because so many people get around censors on the internet with such seditious homophones, the government decided to ban puns altogether.

The "Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon" also had some interesting government statements that circulate as memes. Just as we might make references to Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" statement, many Chinese netizens apparently reference such government gems as "it's not rape if you wear a condom," which came from an incident in which a government official got a young female teacher drunk and allegedly raped her while she was unconscious. Initially the police refused to charge the official with rape because he wore a condom. Or the phrase "temporary rape," of which a court convicted some police officers who had raped a drunk and unconscious teenage girl. Since the rape was ruled "temporary/not premeditated," the officers only got a sentence of three years.

Then there was the case of a police officer who claims to have "subconsciously shot" a villager six times, causing his death, when the villager resisted the forcible demolition of his home. And the phrase "moderate level of corruption." Apparently, the Global Times (whose name sounds like "Muddled [Poop] Times," "Baseball [Poop] Times," and "Horrid Servile [Poop] Times") published an article telling its readers that corruption was unavoidable, and another state propaganda organ republished the article with the headline "China Must Permit Moderate Corruption, the Public Must Understand."

True, all this censorship does provide ample opportunity for some comedy gold, but it's still some crazy stuff.

 

[gay_Aleks]

This language of yours, it's complicated.

 

[Borachio]

John where George had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher's approval.

Spoiler :

John, where George had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had the teacher's approval.

 

[gay_Aleks]

In the news: Borachio's a benevolent robot who just suffered a seizure. More at 11.

 

[Borachio]

Eh? Wut? Makes perfect sense.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Somewhere after the third had, it loses any semblance of sense.

 

[Borachio]

Oh?

It makes perfect (and some of it pluperfect) sense to me. But then I've been using hads and had-hads for as long as I can remember.

Have you not encountered that sentence before, Mr Tolni?

 

[warpus]

Bison bison bison bison bison bison bison.

Oh wait.. buffalo

 

[gay_Aleks]

Oh?

It makes perfect (and some of it pluperfect) sense to me. But then I've been using hads and had-hads for as long as I can remember.

Have you not encountered that sentence before, Mr Tolni?

Heard only about the buffalo equivalent Warpus mentioned above.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Hey, I'm not the one who knows what those ruling elites in China are thinking.

Yeah, I don't want you to answer for more than you really know, but as a speaker, you're closer to it than me, so thanks for confirming my sense that it's the subversive power of puns that they're trying to curtail. And thanks to Phrossack for the specific examples of that subversiveness. The prohibition won't work, and that's the beauty. The more they try to lock language down, the more it will slip out of their clutches. The more they intimidate, the cleverer the punsters will become.

@Borachio, I thought of the old "had had" bit as the closest equivalent to the Shi shi poem that cybrxkhan showed us, but damn, shi shi outdoes had had by an order of magnitude at least.

I dont' get the "bison" one. I'll think about it on my ride home, then ask for an explanation if I can't crack it.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Yeah, I don't want you to answer for more than you really know, but as a speaker, you're closer to it than me, so thanks for confirming my sense that it's the subversive power of puns that they're trying to curtail. And thanks to Phrossack for the specific examples of that subversiveness. The prohibition won't work, and that's the beauty. The more they try to lock language down, the more it will slip out of their clutches. The more they intimidate, the cleverer the punsters will become.

I'm actually not very fluent in Mandarin - though my native tongue is Vietnamese which borrows a lot of Chinese vocabulary and is similar in some respects (an analogy would be Vietnamese is to Chinese as English is to French/Latin) given its in the Sinosphere. I did take a few years of Chinese in high school, though, so I can speak a little bit, and I am familiar, obviously, to an extent with, er, the traditions of the Sinosphere (not sure how to put that without sounding pretentious, but let's just put it that way). As a side note, Vietnamese I think isn't *as* bad as Chinese when it comes to puns for various reasons (one major one is that unlike Chinese, Vietnamese has a larger variety of consonant endings besides /n/ and /ŋ/, and it has more tones). I dunno much about Korean, but I do know Japanese wordplay can also get insane, though partly for different reasons, based on the different scripts they use and other silliness.

@Borachio, I thought of the old "had had" bit as the closest equivalent to the Shi shi poem that cybrxkhan showed us, but damn, shi shi outdoes had had by an order of magnitude at least.

Even the translation into vernacular modern Chinese, while not really bad, does have an abnormal amount of different "shi" in it:

Yǒu yí wèi zhù zài shíshì lǐ de shīrén jiào Shī Shì, ài chī shīzi, juéxīn yào chī shí zhī shīzi.
Tā chángcháng qù shìchǎng kàn shīzi.
Shí diǎnzhōng, gānghǎo yǒu shí zhī shīzi dào le shìchǎng.
Nà shíhòu, gānghǎo Shī Shì yě dào le shìchǎng.
Tā kànjiàn nà shí zhī shīzi, biàn fàng jiàn, bǎ nà shí zhī shīzi shā sǐ le.
Tā shí qǐ nà shí zhī shīzi de shītǐ, dài dào shíshì.
Shíshì shī le shuǐ, Shī Shì jiào shìcóng bǎ shíshì cā gān.
Shíshì cā gān le, tā cái shìshi chī nà shí zhī shīzi.
Chī de shíhòu, cái fāxiàn nà shí zhī shīzi, yuánlái shì shí zhī shítou de shīzi shītǐ.
Shìshi jiěshì zhè jiàn shì ba.

I dont' get the "bison" one. I'll think about it on my ride home, then ask for an explanation if I can't crack it.

Similarly to the Lion-Eating Poet poem, the "buffalo" one requires knowledge of some more obscure terms and meanings I wasn't aware of myself until I came across it a while back.

 

[Borachio]

The Plains bison (Bison bison bison) or is one of two subspecies/ecotypes of the American bison, the other being the wood bison (B. b. athabascae)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_bison

Yeah, I realize the had had business is pretty thin compared with the Chinese shishi. Still, not bad for a non tonal language.

Anyway, on a slightly related note there's this "tongue-twister" in French:

Si six scies scient six cyprès

featuring the same sound six times in a row.

(If six saws saw six cypress trees.)

Again, not much compared with the Chinese.