Chinese Puns (Grass-Mud Horse)

[Paul_in_Qatar]

I do not recall that we have any native-Chinese speakers. But in today’s New York Times is an article describing in a way suited to a family newspaper an internet fascination with “Grass-Mud Horses” (which sounds like an obscenity) fighting the River Crabs (sounds like “Harmony”) and so on…

The story is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=China%20pun&st=cse
Anyone able to discuss this more explicitly?

[Johanna]

草 căo = grass
坭 ní = mud
马 mǎ = horse

操 cào = fuck
你 nǐ = you/your
媽 mā = mom

Now are you glad you asked?

[Nametag]

Ifound a good discussion here; apparently, “grass mud horse” is phonetically equivalent to “f*ck your mother”:

Recently there is a popular online term called “Grass Mud Horse”, it pops up all at a sudden and crosses the red light. Even intellectual like Cui Weiping has written article on “Grass Mud Horse”, and now we have “Grass Mud Horse” toy on the internet. It is difficult to trace what is the origin of “Grass Mud Horse”, all we know is that around early Jan 2009, a post titled as “10 legendary creatures in Baidu” has caught our attention, together with two spoofing video “Grass Mud Horse at Ma Le Desert” and “Song of Grass Mud Horse”. It is said that the appearance of the term is related with the “anti-Smut” campaign. The article said that “Grass Mud Horse” is a creature living in “Ma Le Desert” (translator note: phonetically equivalent to “mother’s cxxt”), the creature launches a battle with “river crab” (translator note: harmony / meaning censorship policy) in order to keep their stock grass (translator note: also phonetically equivalent to “fxxk”). Netizen 1.5 pointed out that “Grass Mud Horse” emerged as a “ridiculous” popular term, is actually a collective conscious of netizens for sending out the signal: the ruling elites has fallen into the trap of Tacitus in the eye of netizens. The ruling elites have the power to see without seeing, but for the netizens, they believe that “river crabs will disappear from the Ma La Desert”.

"There is a herd of Grass Mud Horses*
In the wild and beautiful Ma Le Desert**
They are lively and intelligent
they are fun-loving and nimble
They live freely in the Ma Le Desert
They are courageous, tenacious, and overcome the difficult environment

Oh lying down Grass Mud Horse
Oh running wild Grass Mud Horse
They defeated river crabs*** in order to protect their grass land
River crabs forever disappeared from Ma Le Desert"

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

The pinyin for this is Cao (grass) Ni (mud) Ma (horse). You can hear the famous song here on youtube though heavens know how long it would be up there. However, the song is not as dirty as the subtitles would have you imagine.

The characters in question are 草尼马

Cao (草), as far as I know, isn’t vulgar by itself…however, in some dialect of Chinese, it does have that vulgar meaning…

Ni (尼）is in the same tone as “you” (你）

Ma (Horse, 马) is in the same tone as “mother” as well (妈）, so after so repetition, it does sounds like.

I think this is just a China thing (well, considering the size the China, maybe not just that)…but the native Chinese in Singapore seem to be oblivious of it, so I think it’s probably something of a local (on a wide-scale) slang…

[Paul_in_Qatar]

@Johanna

草 căo = grass
Now are you glad you asked?

Yes. Now, who will take it as a user name?

thank you all.

[Bluffcityguy]

@Paul_in_Qatar

Yes. Now, who will take it as a user name?

thank you all.

If this had happened before I joined, I would have…

I’d be surprised if it isn’t already taken now.

Cheers,

bcg

[Baffle]

@CrazyChop

Ma (Horse, 马) is in the same tone as “mother” as well (妈）, so after so repetition, it does sounds like.

I also see the character for ‘horse’ making up part of the character for ‘mother’ – is there a reason for the similarity in both sound and writing?

[robardin]

As mentioned already, the title of the song/beast is phonetically similar to a common vulgarity meaning “f*ck your mother”. The phrases sound identical but for the tones, which are not present when sung in a melody and so is very easily picked up as “that other meaning”, especially when this “grass mud horse” doesn’t exist while the vulgarity is in widespread use.

Of course there’s a whole political subtext to it also on the topic of Communist Party censorship of the Internet in China, as explained pretty well by this article in the NY Times. That would be why it’s only a vulgar pun to the Overseas Chinese community, but also an act of political satire in the Mainland. (The “river crabs” that are the natural enemies of these “mud grass horses” are phonetically similar to the term for “harmony” used in the standard euphemism for government censorship.)

Yes, the character for “mother” includes the character for “horse” because of the phonetic similarity.

[Yllaria]

Grass-mud horse - - - sounds like a chia pet. You could market those, and who would guess?

[matt_mcl]

@Baffle

I also see the character for ‘horse’ making up part of the character for ‘mother’ – is there a reason for the similarity in both sound and writing?

As I understand it, characters are frequently composed by combining a character representing the meaning with a character representing the sound. IIRC the first part of the character for “mother” is the character for “woman;” so by combining the characters for “woman” and “horse,” what you have is a character that means a type of woman, and sounds like the word for “horse.”

[robardin]

@Yllaria

Grass-mud horse - - - sounds like a chia pet. You could market those, and who would guess?

I’m waiting to see it as a set of Chinese characters tattooed on someone’s ass.

[friedo]

@Baffle

I also see the character for ‘horse’ making up part of the character for ‘mother’ – is there a reason for the similarity in both sound and writing?

Yes, the horse character is a “radical” one of many sub-characters that appear in several other characters. In the case of the character for mother, it is a pronunciation clue. The other radical is a generic female radical, so putting them together, you get “female that sounds like horse” which is mā. (Or māma).

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

@Baffle

I also see the character for ‘horse’ making up part of the character for ‘mother’ – is there a reason for the similarity in both sound and writing?

matt_mcl is right. Chinese is a pictographic language (I hope I got the word right; I am not a linguist) and usually use simplified symbols to represent actual object. However, there are some abstract concepts which cannot be represented this way, so what is done they append a radical on the left (the technical term eludes me) to something which sounds the same as the written character.

妈 consists of two character, girl (女) and horse (马). The ‘prefix’ to the left indicate something of the feminine characteristic, and that it is attached to 马, which gives a guide on how to pronounce it. It is quite possible to deduce a new Chinese character which you never come across before if you can deduce its composites, but in reality it’s hard because there is no standardization in the process.

**On edit:**friedo beats me to it.

[Johanna]

@CrazyChop

Chinese is a pictographic language (I hope I got the word right; I am not a linguist) and usually use simplified symbols to represent actual object.

Linguists call it logographic. A whole word in a character, instead of broken down into component sounds.

However, there are some abstract concepts which cannot be represented this way, so what is done they append a radical on the left (the technical term eludes me) to something which sounds the same as the written character.

Phonetic radical.
The other one is the semantic radical.