In Taiwan, the new movie Date Night has been given the Mandarin title Yuēhuì o mài gà (約會喔麥尬/约会喔麦尬).
Yuēhuì is simply the word for “date.” The interesting part is “o mài gà” (喔麥尬), which is a Mandarinized form of the English “oh my god.” (I wonder if this, being written in Hanzi despite still being basically English, would pass China’s new need for supposed purity.)
Most people here — especially those younger than about 40 — would simply write “oh my god” (or, less frequently, “o my god”) in English in the middle of an otherwise Mandarin text. (I’ll spare everyone the chart of Google searches; but it backs this up.) But brevity is standard in movie titles here, and “喔麥尬” is a lot more compact on a movie poster than “oh my god.” This, however, raises the question of why “喔麥尬” instead of the equally concise “OMG”. I don’t know the answer to that. But the path of lettered words in Mandarin is certainly not without twists and turns.
Like most other uses of Hanzified English, the results are not entirely faithful to the original sounds.
Mandarin’s ou would be a closer phonetic fit than o for the English “oh”.
There’s Ōu (區/区), a surname. But most of the time this Chinese character is pronounced qū (being one of those many Chinese characters with multiple pronunciations), so that certainly wouldn’t work well. There’s ǒu, which has a more clearly phonetic Hanzi (嘔/呕), but which has to do with vomit (ǒutù/嘔吐/呕吐). Another possible choice would be ōu (歐/欧); but that is associated mainly with Europe and doesn’t get used much as a phonetic component in non-Europe-related loan words outside the word for ohm: ōumǔ (歐姆/欧姆).
Mài (the Mandarin word for wheat), unlike most other Mandarin morphemes pronounced mai (various tones), gets used phonetically in lots of various loan words, such as Màidāngláo (McDonald’s/麥當勞/麦当劳), Màijiā (Mecca/麥加/麦加), Dānmài (Denmark/丹麥/丹麦), and Kāmàilóng (Cameroon/喀麥隆/喀麦隆). So its use is to be expected, though semantically there’s no link. And mài is certainly a better fit for the English my than it is for the Mc of McDonald’s, the Mec of Mecca, the mark of Denmark, or the me of Cameroon.
For ga there’s not a lot of choice. 咖 is often seen in the phonetic loan gālí (curry). The biggest problem here is that the same 咖 is also used as kā in a different, common phonetic loan: kāfēi (coffee). There’s 嘎; but, like 尬, it’s not exactly a well-known character.
Anyway, I could go on for a long time listing various possibilities. But the main point is that Chinese characters just don’t do well at this sort of thing.
As for Pinyin, I suppose the orthography could get interesting: o mài gà, o màigà, omài gà, or omàigà. But a Pinyin orthography would probably simply encourage people to write this in the original: oh my god.
BTW, you may wish to try the following experiment. The gà in o mài gà is most often seen in writing the word gāngà (尷尬/尴尬), which means awkward/embarrassed. Ask native speakers of Mandarin to write gāngà in Hanzi for you by hand without using a dictionary, a computer, or any other form of assistance. I bet that most people — even those with university degrees — won’t be able to write this common, ordinary word correctly.
And for lagniappe, the character 尬 is also sometimes seen in written Taiwanese as the equivalent of Mandarin’s jiā (加/add). I spotted an example of this just the other day on a cafe sign (in the sense of “buy something and ga something else for a special price”) but didn’t have a camera with me.
I’ve seen this usage before. Check it out. It’s a pretty cool song.
Interestingly, they chose different characters from the movie.
? actually makes sense for Mc in McDonald’s, Mec in Mecca and Mark in Denmark because the Cantonese pronunciation of that character is “mak”.
Is there any particular rhyme or reason when it comes to ? vs. ??
David of David on Formosa sent in another great example of a Hanzified “oh my god.” The photo was taken in Xindian, Taipei County.
For those who can’t see the image through the link, it shows a large advertising poster on the side of a building. The ad is for the “????Motel” (Y?um? W?nquán Motel). The discretely cropped photo is of a nude woman flipping back her head (presumably in passion), with her hair flying about her.
It reads
??? [?u m? gà]
OH MY GOD
??? ??? [w? xi?ngyào du? gèngdu?/I want more and more]
Here we have not just Hanzified English but a pun, with m? (?) being used instead of mài (?), so that the “oh my god” also evokes the name of the motel (??/Y?um?).
Note, too, how “?” (?u) gets used instead of “?” (o). This is perhaps both because ? is the more common character and because the advertiser probably hopes the association with Europe will convey a sense of sophistication — though, seeing that poster, how could anyone doubt this place is all about sophistication? The use of the English word “motel” rather than a Mandarin term might also tie into this, though “motel” is so common in Taiwan that it being English wouldn’t attract much attention.
Also interesting is the writing of w?nquán (hot spring) as “??” (with a ? element — thus making this what would often be characterized as a “simplified” character) rather than as “??” (with a ?). This has to do with variant forms rather than Taiwan adopting simplified forms from the PRC.
I don’t think that Tucheng, the location of this motel, has any real hot springs.
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“Also interesting is the writing of w?nquán (hot spring) as “??” (with a ? element — thus making this what would often be characterized as a “simplified” character) rather than as “??” (with a ?). This has to do with variant forms rather than Taiwan adopting simplified forms from the PRC.”
?? = (Japanese) onsen has probably more to do with it.
Ou Ma: Obama/Ma Yingjiu
Philip is correct. ?? (onsen) is not just a Japanese loan-word into Taiwanese Mandarin, but the name of the place, ?? is also an obviously (and common) Japanese name, originally read as ‘arima.’ This makes it obvious that the Japanese form of ? was chosen deliberately.
I bought a cheap Chinese-English phrasebook in Taiwan full of this stuff. My Japanese friend had bought an equally bad Japanese one in the same series.
? ? ?? ? ? ?? ?? ????
Are you going to be busy this evening?
I sometimes pull it out for a laugh every now and then, or read something out to a native speaker to see if it is understood.
I remember teaching a taxi driver who couldn’t read roman letters at all by doing much the same thing, but writing a little ? above characters so he would say them in Taiwanese and manage final consonant sounds like -m, -t, -p, and -k. He paid me in betel nut….
Hmm. Most people I’ve met here in Shanghai can write g?ngà (??/??); in fact, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many characters people can still write by hand (as opposed to Hong Kong, say)
“And for lagniappe, the character ? is also sometimes seen in written Taiwanese as the equivalent of Mandarin’s ji? (?/add). I spotted an example of this just the other day on a cafe sign (in the sense of “buy something and ga something else for a special price”) but didn’t have a camera with me.”
It is my understanding that ? is also used to represent Taiwanese ? in ??, which refers to a hip hop /break-dance battle (group or one-on-one).