Friday, August 19, 2005


How do you define the chinese word on the left? It's pronounced as "jian" in Mandarin or "jin" in Cantonese or "qian" in Hakka. But in English? OK, in Malay is keji. Upon surfing for quite long in the online dictionary & translator...
despicable, shameful, contemptible (deed).
However, I still find that the translation is not really as per the chinese meaning. In chinese, esp Cantonese, the word may or may not be tat despicable. Contradicting you're saying? Nope.... one can actually feel the familiarity or some sense of closeness being called "jin yan" which means despicable person. For instance, when I called my boss the other day, the 1st word he uttered when he realized it's me, its "jin yan". I was not angry but relaxed straight away instead. I was listening to HK Commercial Radio tat day and the DJs (I really mean DJs with plural "s" because there were 3 DJs on the mic at the same time) were talking about this as well. The radio station known as "siong toi" in Cantonese is staffed with lots of exceptional and unique DJs, which is politically-correct descriptions for the characteristics better known as outlandish, foul-mouthed and unsympathetic. I mean they're brave in their words and has no reservations in expressing their own opinions etc... well.. to be fair to the local DJs... they have more voice freedom there in HK.
Then I thought about myself.....and I thought I am one of those jin yan as well. Oh.. one thing for sure... I have a jin mouth.

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