Gong Xi Fai Chai!
 

Gong Xi Fai Chai!

My best wishes to all Fodorites for a happy, healthy and prosperous Year of the Monkey!

For your Chinese horoscope for this year, take a look at www.12zodiac.com

In Mandarin that should be

gong xi fa cai,

and in Cantonese

kung hei fat choi.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

In my dialect it is
"Xin Jia Yoo Ee xin Nee huad Chai!"

Hope you all will have good health and prosperity for the year of the Monkey!

Peter, there is no official way to spell the transliteration! Run a search on the web for "Gong Xi Fai Chai" and you will see that dozens of people spell it the way I do. I also have received New Years card this year that spell it the way I did.

May this year bring you the ability to relax and get over yourself.

The transliteration of the six major Chinese language groups is deep water indeed, and the original poster has confused Cantonese and Mandarin in the past (such as in which of the two languages the homophone for 'eight' has a happy significance).

Mandarin does have a standard transliteration (Taiwanese use a different standard), although Cantonese has variants and there are attempts to render its various dialects with different spellings. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese do not spend much of their time writing in Roman letters, and are generally not much of an authority on how it should be done. In communities resident overseas for several generations particularly elsewhere in Asia spelling in Roman letters can be entirely hit and miss, and strongly influenced by dialects (Tai Shan for instance). The pure Cantonese spelling I offered comes from a calendar supplied by the HKTB, which which not exactly an academic source one might hope to be reasonably authoritative.

Searching the Internet for authority based on volume is a bit of a desparate throw, but just for the record, a search of Google produces:

6220 hits for the Mandarin 'gong xi fa cai' (although mainlanders more usually say 'xin nian kuai le')

2550 hits for the Cantonese 'kung hei fat choi'

8 hits for 'gong xi fai chai' which seem mostly of overseas Chinese origin, particularly Malaysia and Singapore, and may reflect a dialect.

But just eight.

While the mainland Mandarin-speaking diaspora is on the increase, most people resident in the West will find their Chinese neighbours are Cantonese speaking, and 'kung hei fat choi' comes closest to what will be understood.

In whatever Chinese language or dialect, best wishes to one and all.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

Thanks Peter for correcting yourself and admitting that I was right in using the alternative spelling. As you know, I lived in Singapore for 5 years and that is where I got used to the alternative spelling.

It takes a big person to admit that they made a mistake. Bodes well for the year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! >:D<

Cicerone: Don't they say "Gong Xi Fai Chai - La!" in Singapore? (Just kidding!)

As for the "correct" spelling of Chinese words in Roman script - whatever. I've never truly been able to "read" Chinese when written in Roman script anyhow. :B

There are Chinese consonants/consonant groups that don't exist in English, so we have those funny "x" and "c" transliterations which really don't tell you how to pronounce the sound anyhow. Besides, the Mandarin retroflex consonants don't exist in any other Chinese "dialect" that I know of.

The worst part is not having any indication of what tone is needed with each syllable.

It's very frustrating trying to figure out what the meaning of a Chinese phrase is when it is romanized.

Guess this is a long way of saying that, for me at least, it doesn't matter how the phrase is romanized, I appreciate the SPIRIT of your good wishes, Cicerone, Peter, and all Fodorites!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! AND MAY YOU ALL HAVE MUCH HAPPINESS AND WEALTH IN 2004! :)

BTW, it's New Year's for the Koreans and the Vietnamese as well, so:

SAEHAE BOK MANI PADUSEYO!

CHUC MUNG NAM MOI!

(Hope I got those right!)