Gweilo

Gweilo

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Gweilo or ( , pronounced ) is a common Cantonese slang term for white people. The term can be literally translated as "ghoul man" or "devil man" and has a history of racially deprecatory and pejorative use, though its modern usage is often in a general and non-derogatory context. The appropriateness of the term and whether it constitutes as an offensive ethnic slur are disputed among both Cantonese speakers and Westerners.

Etymology and history

Gwái ( , gui in Mandarin) means "ghoul", "ghost" or "devil", and lóu ( ) means "man" or "guy". The literal translation of gwáilóu would thus be "ghoul man" or "ghost man". It is sometimes translated into English as "foreign devil". In many Sinitic languages, gwai and its local equivalents can be a derogatory term used as a curse or an insult. The term 鬼 gwai has also been used to describe other ethnic groups, for example, a 17th-century writer from Canton, , wrote that Africans "look like ghouls", and gwáinòuh ( ) was once used to describe African slaves.

Usage

The term gwái ( ) is an adjective that can be used to express hate and deprecation, an example being the locals' expression of their hatred towards the Japanese during their occupation of Hong Kong in World War II with the same gwái. It conveys a general bad and negative feeling but is a somewhat obsolete and archaic/old-fashioned term nowadays and other more modern terms have largely replaced gwái for similarly negative meanings. Cantonese people sometimes call each other sēui gwái ( ), which means bad person, though more often than not it is applied affectionately, similar to "Hey, bitch!" in English when used affectionately. Nowadays, Cantonese speakers often refer to non-Chinese people by their ethnicity. Gwáilóu is often considered to be an acceptable generic racial term for Westerners. Also, some members of the Hong Kong community with European ancestry (particularly those with limited or zero Cantonese fluency) are indifferent to the term, and those who believe that the best way to defang a word intended as a "slur" is to embrace it, and use gweilo to refer to non-Chinese in Hong Kong. Gwailóu has, in some instances, been recognised as simply referring to white foreigners in South East Asia and now appears on Oxford Dictionaries defined as such, although non-white foreigners are not gwáilóu. While gwáilóu is used by some Cantonese speakers in informal speech, another alternative term the sound of which has several meanings sāi yàhn ( ) is now used as well, particularly if the conversation involves a non-Chinese person. Homonyms - ie words that sound the same or almost the same depending on the tone - to sai yan include references to female genitalia or boasting so sai yan is not necessarily a polite alternative to gwai lou. A neutral alternative would be 'foreign person', pronounced ngoi gwok yan. CFMT-TV in Toronto, Canada had a cooking show named Gwai Lo Cooking (1999) hosted by a Cantonese-speaking European chef, who was also the show's producer and the person who named the show. According to CFMT-TV, Gwai Lo was used as "a self-deprecating term of endearment". In response to some complaints, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that:

References

External links

- Opinion

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1373748850 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.