Linguistic reefs: 01 (Singapore)

It’s the linguistic False Friends that are the hidden reefs.

    One example I cited to my Chinese community centre Mandarin students:

    In my dialect (Teochew / 潮州 / Cháozhōu), the word for “stingy” is “kiam siap”.

(kiam = 鹹 / 咸 / xián / salty;

siap = 澀 / 涩 / sè / tart*)

(*“tart” is the word the dictionary gives for 澀 / 涩 / sè, yet the Chinese for this sensation is more “unsmooth”, like the furring-up effect on one’s tongue when one eats unripe fruit, especially persimmon / kaki / Sharon fruit, rather than “sour / acidic” which is more like “tart” as in unripe apple.  澀 / 涩 / sè is also used for describing wheel axles that don’t turn smoothly and therefore need oiling.)

    One day, a Teochew speaker tried to describe, to some Cantonese speakers, a man (who was present) as being “stingy”.

(BTW, this was done good-naturedly, as the Chinese tend to go for what I call “rough humour”, i.e., the closer one is to someone, the freer one can feel about giving that person a hard time — in a teasing spirit, not in a bad-tempered way.)

    The Teochew speaker simply converted the two Teochew sounds of “kiam siap / salty tart” into the Cantonese pronunciation “haam sap”.  

    Unfortunately, “haam sap” in Cantonese = to be lecherous, so the Cantonese listeners all looked at the poor man in disgust.

(Singapore, 1960s)