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Students thaw cross-strait ice with seminar on slang

The two rival governments across the Strait may not have much in common, but there are active cultural exchanges between college students on the two sides as witnessed by commonly used colloquialisms.

Kubile (酷斃了) means "deadly cool;" shuaidaile (帥呆了) indicates "stunningly hunky;" meimei (美眉) refers to "young chicks;" and "konglong" (恐龍, literally "dinosaur") is used to describe unattractive girls. These are just some of the slang terms commonly used by young people in both Taiwan and China, according to university students from the two countries attending a seminar on languages yesterday.

A special lingo is also used in Chinese-language Internet chat rooms, where "mm" means "sister;" "dd" means "brothers;" "c.u.l." means "see you later;" and "886" means "good bye."

Unlike the usually tense discussions about cross-strait issues, a group of academics from both sides of the Strait met yesterday in a relaxed setting at National Taiwan University (NTU) to exchange views on youngsters' use of language.

Not all slang terms were used by both Taiwanese and Chinese youth, though.

Taiwanese students in attendance were puzzled by Chinese sayings, such as xiagang (下崗), meaning "to be unemployed" and doufuzha gongcheng (豆腐渣工程), meaning "a construction work having the solidity of toufu suds," while their Chinese counterparts were perplexed by some Taiwanese terms, such as shaokaile (少蓋了), meaning "stop bluffing."

Tong Yen (童豔), a junior from Tianjin University, cited more examples of slang terms used on college campuses in China. "For instance, in China, zongcai (總裁, which is the term for a general manager in Taiwan) refers to a boss who often fires employees, he said.

Tong said many terms had arisen with the prevalence of computers and the Internet. A common expression is "E me," which is a request for an email. Wangchong (網蟲, literally "net-bugs") refers to someone who spends an excessive amount of time surfing the Internet, and "@ group" (@一族) is used to name people who are addicted to the Internet, he said.

Wei Chiu-ming (魏岫明), an associate professor in NTU's Chinese literature department, said at the end of the seminar that the diversity of languages used by teenagers reflects the openness of society.

Wei further said a seminar of this kind provided an opportunity for people in China and Taiwan to improve people's understanding of the cultures across the Strait.

Yesterday's forum was sponsored by Chen Mao-pang Cultural and Educational Foundation (陳茂榜文教基金會), which has been inviting Chinese students to Taiwan to engage in cultural and academic exchanges with their Taiwanese counterparts every year since 1995.

The 15-person group, which arrived on Wednesday, includes students and teaching faculty from universities in Tianjin and Suzhou. The group will visit four Taiwanese colleges and attend various cultural performances during their eight-day stay.
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