Yellow On The Outside

i learned something new and interesting today, while i was very busy and really should have been working:

Did you know that where in English we say "so so" and French they say "Comme ci, comme ça", in Chinese they say "ma ma hu hu" or literally translated, "horse horse tiger tiger"?

via end.co.nz

that's quite cool. i don't speak chinese, though, and it sounds very difficult so i don't think i will start anytime soon. i wonder what the origin of that expression is?

at lunch someone i work with who is chinese said that the old people in his family call him "jook sing" which translates into "hollow bamboo" but also has something to do with bananas, and which means something like a chinese person who doesn't know anything about being chinese. because he is american. it sounded like a mean thing but then he said that it was a strong community that he identifies with so i guess it isn't.

that is my chinese language and culture lesson for the day.

Monday 18-Aug-03

well I guess I will have to have a chat to my 5"0 tall mother of Chinese descent and find out some asian history for you! will get back to you soon. "Gung He Fa Choi" that is the only saying I know and it only means Happy Chinese New Year! not that versatile.

posted by: Blair on Monday 18-Aug-03

i think that makes you hollow bamboo.

posted by: ash on Monday 18-Aug-03

As I speak a little chinese, my friends from time to time call me an "egg". Thats white on the outside yellow on the inside...

posted by: nick on Tuesday 19-Aug-03

Actually, ma ma hu hu (de) means confused or mixed up, as in the inability to distinguish between a horse or a tiger. And Blair, 'Gung He Fa Choi' means that your 5'0" mother of Chinese descent speaks Cantonese, versus Mandarin. A couple of my favorites - shitou diao jing (the rock falls in the well) = to not understand (bu dong) er bai wu (the number 250) = stupid (as in, can't count past...)

posted by: Wind Rider on Wednesday 20-Aug-03

well.. I grew up in mainland china and i am sure that mamahuhu means 'so so' not confused. maybe there there are some people who think that it means confused in some way becuase of the story behind it, but it is commonly used in china to mean 'so so'.

posted by: cao huai yun on Thursday 21-Aug-03

Thanks Huai Yun, I only learned it in a classroom environment - never got a real opportunity to practice zhongguo hua in a native speaking environment. And it was many, many years ago that I was using it regularly... Glad you cleared that up and corrected my mistake...apologies for creating any confusion, folks...

posted by: Wind Rider on Saturday 23-Aug-03

"ma ma hu hu" does not mean "so so", close, but not exactly "so so" means neither very good nor very bad, meaning "the usual", and can be used to describe a variety of things but "ma ma hu hu" actually denotes substandard quality or effort calling someone "ma ma hu hu" means he's lazy and doesn't care much about what he's doing calling something "ma ma hu hu" means the workmanship sucks and the thing works only half the time "ma ma hu hu" is actually an idiom meaning "close enough is good enough" from extrapolation, it probably came from a story of one of the emperor's hunting trips, they setted out to hunt some tigers, but can't find any, so they pretended that some horses were tigers and so on, it was close enough, so whatever... there is a reason the meaning of "ma ma hu hu" is getting closer and closer to "so so" (the usual), under communism, Everything from doorknobs to hot water is "ma ma hu hu" (subpar) and it's become the new standard

posted by: Shane on Saturday 06-Sep-03

posted by: com credit free report on Wednesday 03-Nov-04