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Weird may not be the best word for this. Maybe revolutionary. I am prone to having word "pet peeves," and now
propose something I predict to be virtually impossible. Anybody remember when Madonna sort of ridiculed Kevin Costner because he said her (presumably sensational?) stage show was "neat"? It has to be well over half a century now, the popular term for something considered good, or very good, is "cool." I am sick of the word "cool" as an affirmative or superlative, but I don't think there are any other vernacular terms that compete with it. I would like to either delete or at least demote "cool" from popular slang, but I can't think of anything that would take its place. So... maybe some other thoughts on this. One recent slang innovation occurs to me: The hyperbolic "awesome." I want to replace these with something else. Virtually impossible?
(While I realize this is a digression....)
In the karaoke music video for Amber Kuo's song "Kuai Yi Dian", the opening line "Oh my god, oh my god!" is rendered as æ賣尬æ賣尬 (phonetically "ôu mà i gà , ôu mà i gà "). Google's Language Tools say this corresponds to "European sales embarrassed", but there's probably a much better translation.
Well, the best consolation I can shed for the embarrassing situation for Europe's sales figures is that the O æ character is almost always used to transcribe foreign words and phrases that contain (usually start with the sound) /o/ or /yu/. It does indeed stand in for Europe in many combinations. It also starts OPEC, Owen, opal, ohm, Euclid, Euler, and Obama (in Taiwan only æ巴馬), and it ends Casio, to name just a few. The other two characters indeed mean "an embarrassing sales situation". The second one means "to sell" or "sales". The third is "an embarrasing situation."
But the first character /o/ æ signals that these remaining characters are being used phonetically only to transcribe a foreign word or phrase. Translating the characters for meaning is not intended.
As a further aside, the first character to be used to transcribe Obama æ巴馬 is under some dispute. In Taiwan they use the one that starts and stands for Europe æ. In China, they use the one that starts Austria. If you translate the Taiwanese version, you get something reminiscent of Richard III: Europe longs for a horse.
It's odd, though, that the people doing the karaoke captions don't shy away from Roman lettering for other English phrases in the same song ("Hey u" and "Stand up"). I would have expected "O M G" for the opening line, and it was a Chinese fan blog that pointed out the han zi in its place.
The video itself might be helpful, or at the very least entertaining, so here's a link.
Part of the appeal of *cool* is the that it's very natural to say, and its sounds have many variations; that is, it's fun to say. There's "coooooool", and "kewl" and "so cool" and many other vocal changes that can't be reproduced here. The fact that it's so natural, however, is what puts it above most other choices. Awesome, hot, bitchin', none of them roll off the tongue like "oooooooo" does.
Markctf said: Hmmm. I must admit to being the one with the idiosyncrasy here, but would somewhat disagree that there is something basically fun about the word "cool." I just imagine (maybe 1930s or 40s) it became popular as contrasted with "heat" of a negative attitude (such as anger)... but I associate the word more with physics(?)... a term for temperature. I don't blame you or anybody else for having an affinity for "cool," but for me it's just WORN OUT. Cliches bug me, and I think "cool" is a cliche... way overused. (Note: I might be asked why I think it's okay to say something "bugs" me! Got to go now. Appreciate the feedback... whether I am wrong or right or who knows? You are of course right that "bitchin'" and "awesome" pretty much deserve to have been short-lived substitutes. One acquaintance likes "outstanding!" But he also employs "cool," I think.
Part of the appeal of *cool* is the that it's very natural to say, and its sounds have many variations; that is, it's fun to say. There's "coooooool", and "kewl" and "so cool" and many other vocal changes that can't be reproduced here. The fact that it's so natural, however, is what puts it above most other choices. Awesome, hot, bitchin', none of them roll off the tongue like "oooooooo" does.
Oops. Sorry mark... I seem to have fouled up the format here so you are misquoted.
Part of the appeal of *cool* is the that it's very natural to say, and its sounds have many variations; that is, it's fun to say. There's "coooooool", and "kewl" and "so cool" and many other vocal changes that can't be reproduced here. The fact that it's so natural, however, is what puts it above most other choices. Awesome, hot, bitchin', none of them roll off the tongue like "oooooooo" does.
eli_damon said:
Did you know that "cool", meaning "good", has been carried into Chinese as "ku"?
é…·
I did not know that. The character has a couple of other basic meanings having to do with harshness (strong alcohol and ruthlessness). Of course, that in no way prevents it from being "cool" as well. In fact, that makes it a bit cooler.
Personally, I was sorry to see "mint" fall into disuse. Hey, how's about we all conspire to bring it back?
Wan't sorry to see "malt" go, though.
Can't stand "bitchin'". Sounds to much like kvetching. I bet they're etymologically related. Can you picture a Jewish person saying "man, that's kvetchin'!"
cantgetitoomh said:
Weird may not be the best word for this. Maybe revolutionary. I am prone to having word "pet peeves," and now
propose something I predict to be virtually impossible. Anybody remember when Madonna sort of ridiculed Kevin Costner because he said her (presumably sensational?) stage show was "neat"? It has to be well over half a century now, the popular term for something considered good, or very good, is "cool." I am sick of the word "cool" as an affirmative or superlative, but I don't think there are any other vernacular terms that compete with it. I would like to either delete or at least demote "cool" from popular slang, but I can't think of anything that would take its place. So... maybe some other thoughts on this. One recent slang innovation occurs to me: The hyperbolic "awesome." I want to replace these with something else. Virtually impossible?
I think it's interesting that "cool" has had such persistence. Usually, I think, the next generation -- or even the hipsters next month -- distances itself from any slang word used by the previous one. But perhaps that sense of "cool" is no longer slang. As for me, I went back to using "neat" in the sense Mr. Costner used it, but I'll admit to occasionally using it with a sense of almost-ennui, just slightly positive of apathy, for what I'm describing (I also use "swell" occasionally for this). But that's just reviving old slang. In my younger, skater days (early- to mid-80s), my friends and I used "rad" and "wicked", which were fun and had a bit of a resurgence, I think, recently. I don't know that "awesome" has ever really fallen into disuse since it came around a little before "rad", so I'm not sure how recent the term is, but I agree that it's become the same as "cool". Both terms, in their sense of great approval, seem to me to be making the move out of *slang* and into common vernacular.
On a related note, a friend of mine -- and it caught on with many of my friends -- started using "dot-com" as a synonym for "cool" in the early 90s. Someone would say something, and the appreciative response would be "Dot-com!" or "That's some dot-com s***". I always thought it was pretty funny, though I didn't use it myself, but I think that was a phrase that would have been funny, if it ever were, only in its era -- the early days of the World Wide Web. I guess my rambling message was all to say: "Good luck with your quest."
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