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Diu (Cantonese)
Encyclopedia
Standard Cantonese
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese....
. It can be regarded as the Cantonese equivalent of the English fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
. In Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, it is equivalent to the English "dick". The character, in Mandarin, is also used by young people in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
to mean "cool" (in this context it is not censored on TV broadcasts).
In classic Chinese
Diu is a word in the Chinese languageChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
. It appears frequently in the text of the classic novel Water Margin
Water Margin
Water Margin , also known as Outlaws of the Marsh, All Men Are Brothers, Men of the Marshes, or The Marshes of Mount Liang, is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.Attributed to Shi Nai'an and written in vernacular Chinese, the story, set in the Song Dynasty,...
, and is written as 鳥 (meaning "bird", pronounced niǎo in Mandarin and niu5 in Cantonese when used in this usual sense). It is used as an emphatic adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
with a function similar to the English "fucking", "bloody" or "god damned". For example,
Water Margin, Chp. 29
Diu means primarily the penis
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
. It is written as 屌 when used in this sense, but usually as 鳥 when used as an emphatic adjective. For example,
Romance of the West ChamberRomance of the West Chamberthumb|250px|A scene from a multi-colored woodblock printing album depicting scenes from the play,Romance of the West Chamber is one of the most famous Chinese dramatic works. It was written by the Yuan Dynasty playwright Wang Shifu 王實甫, and set during the Tang Dynasty...
, Act 5, Scene 3
has its female equivalent 屄 in the traditional Chinese written language. In the Yuan Dynasty operas
Qu (poetry)
In Chinese literature, qu , or yuanqu consists of sanqu and zaju . Together with the various shi and fu forms of poetry, the ci, qu, and the other fixed-rhythm type of verse comprise the three main forms of Classical Chinese poetry.Yuanqu is a form of Chinese opera, which became popular in Yuan...
, the word, meaning penis, is sometimes written as 頹. For example,
Jiu Fengchen , Act 1
In Hong Kong and Macau
The written form [+] is mainly seen in Hong Kong, for example, on graffitiGraffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
. In Cantonese, it is used as a transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
meaning to copulate. In a manner similar to the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
word fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
, it is also used to express dismay, disgrace, disapproval and so on. For example, someone may shout "diu lei!" ("fuck you!" or "fuck off!") at somebody when he or she finds that other person annoying.
"Diu Lei Lo Mo!" is a highly offensive profanity in Cantonese when directed against a specific person instead of used as a general exclamation. In contrast to the English phrase "fuck your mother", which indicates that the person being attacked commits sexual acts with his own mother, the Cantonese expression has the implied meaning of "I fuck your mother".
The form is absent in the Big-5 character set on computers. The Government of Hong Kong
Government of Hong Kong
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, commonly the Hong Kong Government, is led by the Chief Executive as Head of the Government, who is also the head of the Hong Kong SAR...
has extended Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
and the Big-5 character set with the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS), which includes Chinese characters only used in Cantonese, including the Five Great Profanities. The government explained that the reason for these characters being included is to allow for the Hong Kong Police to record criminal suspects' statements. Consequently, these characters are now also in Unicode.
In English, "damn" gives birth to its euphemism "darn"; similarly in Cantonese, especially Hong Kong Cantonese, diu has yiu and Tiu "siu" "chiu", "Biu", "Hiu"as its euphemisms, all words with a "iu" at last
Further reading
- Robert S. Bauer and Paul K. Benedict (1997). Modern Cantonese Phonology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110148935. Part of the chapter 3 concerns the "bad" words in Cantonese.
- Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, "Bad boys and bad language: chou hau and the sociolinguistics of swearwords in Hong Kong Cantonese", in Grant Evans and Maria Tam ed. (1997). Hong Kong: the Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 0700706011.