Cantonese Internet Slang is an informal language originating from Internet forums, chat rooms, and other social platforms. It is often adapted with self-created and out-of-tradition forms. Cantonese Internet Slang is prevalent among young Cantonese speakers and offers a reflection of the youth culture of Hong Kong.
Advantages
Save time and ease communication
Able to type faster with shorter sentences or letters
Becomes a medium for expressing their own ideas and an indication of memberships among Cantonese-speakers
Disadvantages
Negatively affect Hong Kong students' usage of grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure in Chinese composition
Students believe that it is acceptable to make serious grammatical errors and use informal Chinese vocabulary in formal writing.
Student Chinese compositions are often filled with casual phrases and slang from Internet forums.
Characteristics
Code-switching
Abbreviations
Rebus Writing
Categories
Puns and wordplay
Netizens often use words humorously as to ‘suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound' as a play on words.
MK: It is used to categorize some trend followers in unfashionable outfits.
Sap buk : With the meaning of "support".
Language cancer : The word is used to describe someone whose words fail to express what is meant or cannot be understood. Pronunciation of the word is same as that of breasts cancer in Cantonese.
New expressions
New expressions are mostly generated from popular HK online forums such as The Golden Forum, AK Zone and Discuss.com. Members of the above forums will discuss subjects ranging from social phenomena to entertainment, sports, and gaming. Forum activists consequently create new terms for easy illustration of their topics.
Hehe: Gay couple. It is often used to joke about two male friends who are very close as if they are gay.
Sheshe: Lesbian couple. Similar to Hehe, it is often used to joke about two very close female friends.
Ba Da : The term is derived from the English word "Brother" and is used to address male users in a forum, hence generate an amiable feeling within it.
Si Da : The term derived from the English word "Sister", similar to "Brother", it is a term used to address active female users in a forum.
Male Dog : It refers to people who aggressively seek love from women, in terms of physical and sexual attention. These people will love a woman without dignity and will strongly defend their loved ones when they are being attacked.
*Dog rush : The term not only shares similar pronunciation with "male dog", but also resembles with the action of men rushing to women they are interested in.
Gong nui : It refers to women exhibiting several negatively viewed behaviours such as narcissism, money-mindedness and blindly worshiping foreign people or goods.
Guanyin : It is a negative word to describe women who use various methods to attract men to be her followers.
Guanyin's soldiers : It refer to boys who are being absolutely obedient to their "Guanyin" and is willing to do everything for her. So in order to win "Guanyin's" heart they are ready to sacrifice their time, effort and money to please her.
Goddess : Similar to "Guanyin", "Goddess" is a slightly positive word to describe women who are worshipped by many men due to their beauty, angelic character, or good behaviours. In other words, these women are known as symbols of perfection.
Toxic boy : It refers to men who are not popular with women. The term originated from Japan, initially describing single men, but gradually came to describe unpopular men within a social circle.
Plastic : The word is used to describe people or things that is stupid or foolish.
Wash page : It refers to the spamming act on social platforms.
Dive underwater : It is used to describe the inactive behaviour or absence of social media users.
Above water : It refers to the act of showing up on social media
Uncover : It refers to doxxing, the act of digging up and exposing the identity, background, or personal information of someone online.
Broken gag : It refers to unfunny jokes that will lead to awkwardness after they are told.
Numbers
Numbers are often used to substitute words of similar pronunciation for time-saving purpose.
88 : With the meaning of "Byebye".
55: With the meaning of "Yes". The word is derived from the similar pronunciation of Cantonese, with the meaning of agreeing.
199 : It is used to describe the unclarity and confusion of someone's language.
Swear words can also be represented by numbers for similar pronunciation, especially for those which only differ in tones. Examples are:
7: With the meaning of the male genital as a noun. When used as an adjective, it describes someone who is ugly and stupid.
9: With the meaning of the male genital as a noun, similar to 7 above. When used as an adjective, it describes someone who is either stupid or who has low moral standard.
These two numbers can be combined with a series of phrases to serve as swear words, for instance 898, which means "bye bye" and "fxxk off" at the same time.
Political slang
Political slangs are mostly obtained from certain political event and are a product of political sarcasm.
Grandma 7 : Carrie Lam, the current Chief Executive of Hong Kong who got 777 votes in the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive Election.
Mr. Rubbish Bin: This refers to Mr. Lau Kong Wah, an infamous former legislative council member. He was given the name after the photo parody of his inability to speak a word during the HKFS-government conference when the Umbrella Revolution happened.
Mr. 4PM: This refers to Mr. Hui Chun Tak, Steve, the chief superintendent of Police of the Police Public Relations Bureau. He was given the name due to his regular appearance in everyday police press conference in the course of Umbrella Revolution.
Yellow ribbon : It refers to people who are in a supporting stance during Umbrella Revolution.
Blue ribbon : It refers to people who support police force to strictly enforce the law when Umbrella Revolution took place.
