Mandarin Chinese profanity
Profanity in Mandarin Chinese most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's ancestors, especially their mother.
Based on regular sound change rules, we would expect the word for bird in Mandarin to be pronounced diǎo, but Mandarin dialects' pronunciations of the word for bird evolved to an alveolar nasal initial, likely as a means of taboo avoidance, giving contemporary niǎo while most dialects in the south retain the Middle Chinese alveolar stop initial and the homophony or near homophony of these words.
As in English, a vulgar word for the sexual act is used in insults and expletives: Insulting someone's mother is also common: The 中文大辭典 Zhōng wén dà cí diǎn (Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Chinese Language)), discusses 王八 (wáng bā) in vol.
There is a pun here because of the earlier expression 忘八 wàng bā used to describe (1) any person who forgets/disregards the eight virtues, (2) an un-virtuous woman, i.e., one who sleeps around.
Eggs are the progeny of turtles and other lower animals, so the word dàn (蛋) is a metonym for offspring.
Occasionally, slang words with a negative connotation are turned around and used positively: Other insults include the word hùn (混), which means "mixed-up", or hùn (Chinese: 渾), which means "muddy": Perhaps due to the influence of wángbādàn (王八蛋), dàn (蛋; "egg") is used in a number of other insults in addition to hùndàn (混蛋): The word guā (瓜; melon or gourd) is also used in insults: In addition to the senses listed above, the "melon" is a metonym for the womb, and a "broken melon" refers to a female's lost virginity.
Because shame or "face" is important in Chinese culture, insulting someone as "shameless" is much stronger than in English: Other insults accuse people of lacking qualities expected of a human being: Sǐ (死; "dead", "cadaverous," or, less precisely, "damn(ed)") is used in a number of insults: The words "屎" (shǐ) (= shit, turd, dung), "粪" (fèn) (= manure, excrement) and "大便 (= stool, poop)" (dà biàn), all mean feces but vary from blunt four letter to family-friendly, respectively.
[12] The expressions contain metaphorical references to the following domesticated animals: dogs, cows, and chickens (12 or 11 terms each), (8 times), horse (4), cat (3), and duck (2), and one each to sheep, donkey and camel.
[14] The fact that many insults are prefaced with the Mandarin Chinese word for dog attest to the animal's low status: In at least one case, rabbit is part of an insult: The Chinese word for bird "niǎo"(鸟) was pronounced as "diǎo" in ancient times, which rhymes with (屌) meaning penis or sexual organ.
Thus, bird is often associated with 'fuck', 'penis' or 'nonsense'： A tigress or 母老虎 (Mǔ lǎohǔ) refers to a fierce woman, usually someone's strict wife.
There are various circumlocutions in Mandarin Chinese for homosexual, and the formal terms are recent additions just as is the direct translation of "masturbation" (hand soiling).
An analogous story, of a sleeve being cut off so as not to disturb a sleeping cat, is told of both Confucius and Muhammad, and perhaps others.
It comes from a passage in the Dream of the Red Chamber in which Phoenix is described as having a "crystal heart in a glass body," meaning that she was glistening, pure, clear, fastidious, etc.
The English translation of Bai Xian-yong's novel about male homosexuals in Taiwan includes the term "crystal boys," derived from the same passage in the earlier novel, and also a rather gruff reference to the old photographer who befriends some of the boys as "you old glass," which, delivered by a female friend of his, comes out sounding about on the level of "you old fart," i.e., not really so very offensive, but indicating a passing mood of aggravation on the speaker's part.
