The Chinese love taking advantage of the homophonic system to do puns, to have a laugh at the expense of the unsuspecting "victim".
I used to have a Malaysian woman in my evening class, by the name of May, who had married a Mr Yong, so she went by her married name.
For years, I called her May Yong, May Yong, before I suddenly realised one day it sounds just like 没用 méi yòng (shortened from 没有用 méiyǒu yòng / "not have use" = useless). I emailed her about this, and we had a good giggle over it.
After that, I'd call her 有用 (yǒu yòng / "have use" = useful) in class, which became a private joke between us.
(London, 2000)
Funny! Helpful to know that these shortenings of sentence structure exist. Another lifetime of 'trying to understand'! Lol
ReplyDeleteI will be that victim of language play many times, over and over methinks!