In the Shanghai dialect dirty is pronounced something like "o co" with the o pronounced like the "o" in cot and the "c" pronounced like the usual c in pinyin (kinda like an 'ts' sound).
Which characters would be used for writing these two?
In the Shanghai dialect dirty is pronounced something like "o co" with the o pronounced like the "o" in cot and the "c" pronounced like the usual c in pinyin (kinda like an 'ts' sound).
Which characters would be used for writing these two?
龌龊 wò chuò Meanings: (1) dirty;filthy (2) mean,despicable
It's not Shanghai dialect only. It's used a lot in northern China as well.
wu1 zou1
. The tones would suggest not, though.
– jogloran
Sep 6 '12 at 11:41
zu zi lo o co e
(桌子很脏)).
– Timothy Gu
Oct 16 '14 at 1:07
As answered concisely by StarCub, 齷齪 龌龊 is the Hanzi representation for Shanghainese o co
. Yet IMHO to call this word "the Mandarin equivalent" of o co
is a bit inappropriate, since
To add up, I'd like to mention 腌臢 腌臜 a1 za1
in at least 贛 Gan dialect nga41 tsa
is also a high-frequent daily word expressing "dirty". And the phonetic similarity among 腌臢 nga tsa
in 赣, 齷齪 o co
in 吴, 污糟 wu tsou
in 粤 and 肮脏 ang tsang
in Putonghua is really a interesting topic for further discussion.