I go to the mainland's website, look at the mainland media, every three forks and five will encounter some kind of "coffee", whether it is a big coffee small coffee, A coffee B coffee, or a strange coffee social coffee, let me feel both kind and surprised.
I say kindness because "coffee" is a saying with deep Taiwanese characteristics, which appears in the context of simplified characters and Mandarin, giving me a familiarity that I know from other places. I say surprise because this is a word derived from Taiwan's Hokkien language, and the dialect is absorbed by the standard language, and it also crosses the Taiwan Strait and is widely used by all walks of life on the mainland.
Some people on the Internet believe that "coffee" is "character", which is a transliteration of the English cast "cast", but this is only a part of the right. Yes, the original meaning of "coffee" is a character, but it is not derived from the English cast, but first transcribed from the Hokkien language "coffee small", and then cut the length and shorten, and remove the tail.
"Curry Xiao" is a phonetic pronunciation, that is, using Chinese characters as phonetic transcription, and transliteration to give Hokkien phonetics through harmonic transliteration. "Curry small" is often written as "foot color", which originally means "character" in Hokkien, and later extended to "guy", with a disdainful meaning, often appearing in the context of contempt, such as "roadless foot color" (useless guy), "what foot color are you" (you think you are an old man).
According to scholars, the term "foot color" has been documented in the Tang Dynasty, and has gradually declined over the past thousand years, and has been replaced by a later "role".
Chiang Ching-kuo announced the lifting of the strict in 1987, gradually loosening the shackles in all aspects, Chinese no longer being exclusively respected, dialects no longer being suppressed, and Hokkien and Hakka dialects were able to move from the seclusion to the sun. Gradually, dialect speaking can be justified, and dialect vocabulary, or direct translation (such as "fighting": hard work), or harmonic transliteration (such as "kicking together": come out to speak), began to be mixed in with Chinese, becoming a grounded language fashion. This trend has made the Chinese based on the northern dialect add a little taiwanese local flavor in addition to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang characteristics brought by the Kuomintang.
However, how can the original obscure "coffee small" become a popular new word? This is directly related to Taiwan's showbiz.
Remember that in 2007, at the award ceremony of the 42nd Tv Golden Bell Awards in Taiwan, Gao Lingfeng and Kang Kang took the stage as guests of honor. Before the award, the two of them presented a 5-minute taiwanese skit in response to the "Singing Variety Show Host Award" and the "Singing Variety Show Award" awarded. In their gags, the two explained the distinction between the big and small cards of the past Taiwanese runway hosts.
Gao Lingfeng: Today, as long as there are two moderators, there is an insider in our circle, that is, there is a coffee called A coffee and one called B coffee.
Kang Kang: What is A coffee and what is B coffee, big brother?
Gao Lingfeng: It's easy to give an example. In the past, I hosted a program on China Television called "Diamond Stage", and I stood in the middle, and I was A-coffee. There are two people next to me, one is called Courgah, the other is called Zheng Jinyi, that is called B Coffee.
Kang Kang: Oh, that's the way it is!
Next, one by one, they named Taiwan's variety shows and program hosts, continued to make their jokes, but also did not forget to ridicule themselves, from the first-line protagonist A coffee, the second-line supporting role B coffee, to the third-line insignificant C coffee, and finally swept to the rookie Natto in the hosting industry at that time, saying that he was F coffee, which means an insignificant small role.
Through the dissemination of the media, this compact and funny passage suddenly became popular all over Taiwan, and the original hidden jargon of the showbiz circle, such as A coffee and B coffee, also entered the lives of the general public in a dignified manner, and through the dissemination of the Internet, it is also well known in the mainland and has become the daily vocabulary of the people on both sides of the strait.
"Coffee" was originally a transliterated word (e.g., coffee, curry), but now it has become an independent ingredient (e.g., I am also a "coffee", what are you "coffee"). "Coffee" also has a strong word-building ability, can be freely combined with other ingredients (such as: big coffee, small coffee, strange coffee, nameless coffee, social coffee, mahjong coffee, entrepreneurial coffee), the meaning is gradually extended from the basic "role" to "character, a certain type of person". It seems that the dictionary should respond to it, add this meaning of "coffee", stabilize the commonly used "big coffee", "small coffee" and "strange coffee" or consider a single list of entries to fully reflect the current situation of the language.
The vitality and creativity of language can always surprise people from time to time.