Translation...
mattuk
May 06, 2010, 11:25 PM posted in I Have a QuestionHi. I read this and don't understand how it translates correctly - 男人冇個好人 - can someone help?
Thanks
zhenlijiang
May 27, 2010, 09:40 PMOK I read this as--someone pls correct me if I'm wrong--男人没有一个好人 nánrén méiyǒu yígè hǎorén (I'm using simplified characters. The original I think is Hong Kong traditional). So I think it means There's no such thing as a good man, "man" here meaning male person.
I seem to recall being told 冇 mǎo is a made-in-Hong Kong character. As the emptiness inside graphically expresses, it means the opposite of 有. The 一 from 一个 has been, as often is, omitted.
changye
May 28, 2010, 01:08 AMHi zhenlijiang
It's interesting to know that the dialect character “冇” is made by "subtraction", but not by "addition" as is often the case with dialect Chinese characters such as 甭 (beng2, 不用, no need to) and 孬 (nao1, = 不好, not good).
I guess the sound "mao" (mou in Cantonese) was probably made by combining the two sounds "mei" and "you" (没有，or "mut" and "you" in Cantonese), just like "beng" (甭) is the combination of "bu" (不) and "yong" (用).
zhenlijiang
I find such characters like 甭 and 孬 vaguely disturbing, can't explain why! Very interesting, thanks Changye.
changye
I think I understand what you mean. In short, they are a bit too "shoddy" or "fast food". In other words, they are very colloquial.
suansuanru
in the chinese version of Doraemon, the boy who has a wry face was called "小孬"which indicates him a bad boy.
changye
Hi suansuanru
How do you usually pronounce “小孬”, "xiao nao" or "xiao huai"? Chineseperakun (pop up dictionary) says that the character has two readings, "nao1" and "huai4", although my Chinese dictionaries only show "nao1".
zhenlijiang
I didn't know--in my 哆啦A梦 book スネ夫 Sune-o seems to be called only 小夫. Oh I see, he's called many names in Chinese.
suansuanru
nao1. we just have a common word within 孬 to indicate someone is useless,it is 孬种nao1zhong3。I cannot think up any other useage of 孬。
zhenlijiang
I guess xiǎonāo might be considered if not a transliteration an approximation of Suneo. If you choose to listen "generously", it could work!
bababardwan
December 17, 2010, 11:09 PMThis thread has to be a contender for thread of the year. Thanks to all contributors...very interesting.
rags
December 24, 2010, 08:59 PM男人没有一个好东西
zhenlijiang
May 27, 2010, 05:31 PMHi mattuk--is this a standalone sentence or do you have a bit of context?