廣州語의 蠢⋅懵⋅矇⋅戇⋅黐⋅癲 고찰

Abstract

When we watch TV or movies, the words ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy’ is often appeared in any country. Most of the time, these words do not mean really stupid or crazy, but lightly reprimand when others say something out of place or something ridiculous. These words are also frequently appeared on Hong Kong TV and movies, but 笨 or 瘋 are rarely used in Canton dialect. In this paper, we examined the words ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy’ in Cantonese, which are not frequently used in Mandarin. To this end, the text referred to five paper dictionaries and the Internet dictionary called CantoDict, and also consulted the books of the Western missionaries in the 19th century. Through this, we were able to look at the meaning of words at that time and lexical change over the past hundred years. 蠢[ʧʻon], 懵[moŋ], 矇[moŋ], 戇[ŋɔŋ], 黐[ʧʻi], 癲[tin] are commonly used Chinese characters in Canton dialect, which are not often used in Mandarin. The first four letters mean ‘stupid’ and the last two letters mean ‘crazy’. Because of these six characters are not commonly used in Mandarin, you may think these characters are newly created in Canton dialect, but they are all originated from ancient Chinese. In addition, most of the letters are derived from their original meanings and are used to mean ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy’.