China bans Chinglish buzzwords created by netizens

NEW DELHI - Chinese netizens’ attempt at creating Chinglish buzzwords to be incorporated in Chinese language has been thwarted by the General Administration of Press and Publication.

Netizens had come up with words like ‘Geilivable’ (Geili means giving strength), which literally means ‘cool’, ‘antizen’ which refers to the group of college graduates who, earning a meagre salary, were like the tiny and laborious ants and ‘goveruption’ which means a corrupted government.

An unnamed official with the administration said that the regulation was aimed to purify the Chinese language, reports English.news.cn.

Other new words invented were ‘Niubility’, pinyin of Niubi (a slang to say excellent), ‘Smilence’ meaning smile but keep in silence, an attitude people take to comment on an issue, which already has drawn consensus.

‘Emotionormal’ means people are ‘emotionally stable’ rather than outraged and ‘Foulsball’ means the anger of netizens towards the woeful Chinese soccer affected by match-fixing, crooked referees, and illegal gambling.

David Tool, a professor with the Beijing International Studies University, said that it very interesting to combine Chinese with English to create new words.

“English is no longer mysterious to the Chinese people. They can use the language in a flexible way according to their own experiences,” he said.

China’s broadsheet, the People’s Daily had carried a front-page news story with the headline ‘Jiangsu geilivable cultural province’ on November 10, a move that was hailed as small but an important progress for the serious newspaper.

However, the Chinese official commented, “The use of ‘geilivable’ in People’s Daily, for example, is OK, so long as people see it as ‘geilivable’.” (ANI)