丝语 sīyǔ (sweet nothings)

bodawei

I'll come clean on this - the 丝语 was written on a little commercial sweets wrapper, so it is 丝语, I wasn't just hearing it. I need to check ingredients for 小麦 and I didn't understand this (thinking it might be a clue to ingredients) and the group of young men I asked said that it is 'something a boy says to a girl' (wink, wink). I pressed them and they said 丝是悄悄的意思. Which as you (and zhenlijiang) have pointed out is very interesting. The (free) English translation is mine.

They immediately knew the 丝语 word, no hesitation, so I wonder if it has already passed into common usage, and dictionaries haven't caught up.

PS. I didn't risk it, but my wife ate it and reported that it tastes 'awful'. :)

tingyun

I wonder if this is a possible explanation: The manufacturer was playing a pun with its product name, ie it changes 私语 to 丝语 (since its a physical product that it wants to liken to silk, while invoking the association with private words of a lover), and when you asked the chinese people what it means, they decided to give you the metaphorical reference meaning. Honestly, that seems highly likely - most people would give you that response, I expect relatively few would then add 'but technically it should be written...but the manufacturer wanted to draw out the analogy....' I personally would be that complete, but that's why I write such long posts.;)

Or, its possible the people were mistaken. I'm usually reluctant to go to that conclusion, but searching on Baidu doesn't turn up uses as a word in that meaning, and the Baidu encyclopedia (good about keeping up with popular words, see 给力 for example http://baike.baidu.com/view/3803376.htm ) doesn't have it.

Native speakers often make mistakes with similar sounding words. The examples are countless, just taking a few mistakes I recently noticed in the subtitles of 三国 (which is a pretty professional production)- they mistakenly wrote 仍就 when it should have been 仍旧, 犄角之势 when it should have been 掎角之势...And I think the subtitle writers have a much higher accuracy than a randomly selected person.

The other thing I have trouble with, is I know we in english say 'silky words', but I haven't really encountered that sort of use of 丝...as I mentioned before the metaphorical uses seem different. So that leads me even further to think its a pun, with the sound suggesting 私语 while the charecter suggests the product's texture and quality.

That having been said, its entirely possible I'm wrong - but if it has emerged as a word, it likely is still be very local, very limited in use, else there would be more use showing up in searches.