I notice there are a fix pair of some adjectives in Chinese…
I don’t know what is grammatical term for them, so I just calli it expletives…
here are the sample, I’ve heard…don’t know if you guys heard of others…
黑嗎嗎 [hei ma ma] -> darky larky?
慘西西 [can xi xi] -> down to drain
兇巴巴 [xiong ba ba] -> fierce as can be
鬧哄哄 [men hong hong] -> noisy as can be
喘噓噓 [chuan xu xu] -> breathless
熱騰騰 [re teng teng] -> hot as can be
冷颼颼 [leng sou sou] -> cold as can be
髒稀稀 [zang xi xi] -> dirty as can be
冷冰冰 [leng bing bing] -> cold as ice
熱呼呼 [re hu hu] -> hot as can be
急忙忙 [ji mang mang] -> hurly burly
慢吞吞 [man tun tun] - slow as can be
紅通通 [hong tong tong] -> bright red
圓滾滾 [yuan gun gun] -> round as can be
神秘祕 [shen mi mi] -> secretive as can be
大辣辣 [da la la] -> big as can be
濕答答 [shi-da da] -> wet as can be (good one)
胖嘟嘟 [pang du du] -> fat as can be (need a more PC one)
黏答答 [nian da da] -> sticky as can be (moderator might love this)
綠油油 [lv you you] -> green as can be
死光光 [si guang guang] -> dead and out
蹦跳跳 [peng tiao tiao] -> jumpy wumpy…
Ok, let’s have some more. And yes, what do they all mean, I haven’t heard all of them yet.
insultmonger.com/swearing/mandarin.htm I know most of these but there are a few that I don’t know yet. I’d like to see the Chinese characters for them though - Anyone?
And Bassman - I’d be happy to sort you out with the characters for those, 'cept I’m stuck on 'net cafe computers without Pinyin entry, and I’m still only learning Zhuyin :s
I’m familiar with a few of them (one of the first things I learnt to say in Taiwanese, many years ago, was “ling gee gee” – “leng bing bing” 冷冰冰 in Mandarin – which I’ve always found very useful), but there are lots of new ones in your lists that I’ve never seen or heard before.
If I can get a reliable native speaker to tell me which ones are in common use, I’ll try to add some of them to my active vocabulary.
