Chinese netizens who like to create and use cyber words such as "geilivable" might find a new regulation very "ungeilivable."

The new regulation by the General Administration of Press and Publication last week banned the use of Chinglish buzzwords created by netizens for publishing in the Chinese language. An administration official said, condition of anonymity, that the regulation was aimed at purifying the Chinese language.

"Geilivable," combining the pinyin of Chinese characters geili (giving strength) with the English suffix for adjectives, literally means "giving power" or "cool." Different suffixes and prefixes can be added to the word for emphasis or for its opposite - such as, "hengeilivable" meaning "very cool;" and "ungeilivable" meaning "dull, not cool at all."

Cyber language is popular among Chinese netizens, who have created a number of English words reflecting this novel trend that is gaining popularity.

There are a number of examples that can be cited. For example, "antizen" refers to the group of college graduates who, earning a meager salary and living in small rented apartments, are like the tiny and laborious ants.

A "government" that harbors "corruption" becomes "goveruption". "Niubility" is formed from the pinyin of niubi (slang for 'excellent') plus a suffix to make it a noun. "Smilence" means to smile but maintain silence - an attitude people take to comment on an issue which has already achieved a consensus.

"Foulsball" showed the anger of netizens towards woeful Chinese soccer affected by match-fixing, crooked referees, and illegal gambling.

"Emotionormal" became a media cliché to convey that people are "emotionally stable" and not neurotic or outraged.

"Corpspend" was derived from an issue last year. Three college students died in central China's Hubei Province while saving two drowning children. The fishermen there tethered the bodies to a boat and demanded a high price for their retrieval.

"Suihide" came from the death of a man in a detention center in the southwestern Yunnan Province. Police said he died after playing hide-and-seek with inmates, but there were doubts about the claim.

David Tool, a professor at the Beijing International Studies University, first heard these novel cyber words from his students. "They let me guess the meanings and I knew it was a kind of  skill," he said.

He said it was very interesting to combine Chinese with English to create new words. "English is no longer mysterious to the Chinese people. They can use the language in a flexible way according to their own experiences," Tool said.

Sergey Dmitriev, a senior student from Russia studying international politics at Liaoning University, believes the words are a way to learn more about Chinese society. "In Russia, too, similar words were created," he said, adding that creation of the English words showed greater influence for China to the world.

Besides, Chinglish words, Chinese words and expressions were also created by netizens.

A commonly used example was "suan ni hen". This three-character or three-syllable expression originally meant "you win"; and, the first character carried the same pronunciation as garlic in Chinese. Netizens used it to satirize soaring garlic and food prices this winter.

"My father is Li Gang" was already known, even to some foreigners. It was first uttered by a drunk 22-year-old hit-and-run driver. Netizens worked it into classical poetry, jokes and ballads to vent their fury over the vicious behavior of the privileged and the children of the powerful and wealthy.

Chinese people use the character "bei" before a verb to indicate passive voice. It was used by netizens to show their helplessness in face of false conclusions and fake media reports. For instance, zisha means "suicide" while beizisha means "be officially presumed to have committed suicide," and xiaokang means "fairly comfortable life" while beixiaokang means "said to be living a fairly comfortable life."

Some of these words and expressions were picked up and used even in serious media reports.

On November 10, China's broadsheet, the People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, carried a front-page report headlined "Jiangsu geilivable cultural province."

 Although some netizens doubted the usage of the word, as "geilivable" was supposed to be an adjective rather than a verb, they hailed the relevantnewspapers' use of the term as progressive.

"This is a small step in the cyber world, but a giant leap for Chinese language," said a netizen with the nickname Sheshangjun. Another netizen, Yang Huatao, said, "I read the newspaper more carefully this time than in several months."

Wu Zhongmin, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, saw the phenomenon of word creation as a natural response of young people to social issues. "Cyber language is more vivid and it shortens the distances between people in communication," he said.

There is widespread concern among netizens over the regulation notified by the General Administration of Press and Publication. "The administration is totally ungeilivable," said a netizen named laoda1713. "I know other netizens would shed tears with me...it is a good chance to enrich our language."

"Language is always developing," said a columnist, Wang Pei. "It needs to be updated to absorb foreign culture and folk wisdom."

But an official with the administration, who did not want to be named, said that, in fact, many senior staff from news media supported the regulation. They were worried that years later, the younger generation would forget how to use formal Chinese expressions.

The official pointed out that the regulation applied only to Chinese language publications, and it only banned English, or more precisely, Chinglish words.

"The use of 'geilivable' in People's Daily, for example, is OK, so long as people see it as geilivable," the official said.

geǐlì
给力
geilivable    

bùgeǐlì
不给力 
ungeilivable

hÄ›ngeǐlì
很给力   
hengeilivable

yǐzú
蚁族
antizen

duÇ'māomāo
躲猫猫
suihide

niúbÄ«
牛逼
niubility

wÇ'bàbàshìlǐgāng
æˆ'爸爸是李刚
My father is Li Gang

Agencies