LEARN CHINESE
Cheese anyone?
Welcome back! This week, we'll take a look at some of the most spoken lines in TVB series, but what do the
characters look like and what exactly are they talking about?
This phrase reads in Cantonese "CHOON LIK YI FU, JO DO JUI HO" - recognise it yet?
Yes, its the good ol' TVB motto that just cries out "Cheesy moment!" whenever it is used in a series. For the Mandarin speakers,
the phrase is "QUAN LI YI FU, ZUO DAO ZUI HAO" and in English it means
'Put everything into it and do the very best!'.
OK, now we've stopped cringing, when the phrase is broken down there is much to be learned. From the top, CHOON means 'entire' or
'whole' and LIK means 'strength' or 'power'. Just in case you're wondering, this is also the same LIK as the one in Alex Fong Lik
San's name. YI is a functional character that on its own can mean many things including 'use', 'according to' or 'so as to'
and in this phrase it links the 'entire strength' into the verb FU, which means 'to advance' or 'to meet (a challenge)'. JO is the
verb 'to do' or 'to make' and DO on its own means 'arrive'. JUI before an adjective makes it a superlative, for example 'JUI LENG'
(ZUI MEI) - most beautiful, JUI SIU (ZUI XIAO) - least. HO means 'good', so JUI HO means 'the best'.
Continuing on the topic of TVB's common phrases, we have this one that reads "NGOI CHING NG HOR YEE MEEN KEUNG GA" (AI QING
BU KE YI MIAN QIANG DE). Yes, the classic TVB cliche and the sign of a lazy scriptwriter!
Translated directly, this gives
us 'Love cannot be forced'.
Why so many characters for such a simple line? All will be revealed when we break down the meanings of the characters. NGOI means
'love' and CHING means 'feelings' and in Chinese, the phrase 'feelings of love' is the generally used phrase for 'romantic love'
as opposed to say 'family love' (CHAN CHING/QIN QING) or 'brotherly love' (HING DAI CHING/XIONG DI QING). NG or BUT (BU) is the
negative indicator, so placed before HOR YEE (meaning 'can'), it gives us 'cannot'. MEEN KEUNG means 'to force' and the phrase
is ended with a filler or emphasis character, GA in Cantonese or DE in Mandarin. These are there to just to end the sentence and
emphasise the verb.
So, there you go! More from me soon! JOI GEEN!
Article by Em
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