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On "Pah Chiu Cheng" (PCC), and its feminine equivalent
For some reason, I was wondering the other day what the female equivalent of "pah chiu cheng" (male masturbation aka "pak ciu ceng" aka "pak chew cheng" aka PCC) was.
From Slavery, I knew that it literally meant shooting one's gun, so in keeping with the theme of firearms, I decided to propose "cleaning the gun barrel" as an appropriate euphemism for the fairer sex. On someone's advice, I decided to switch in "qit3" instead of "suay4" (洗) (using a Hanyu Pinyin-inspired romanization), since the former had the notion of scrubbing whereas the latter was a generalised word for cleaning.
At this point, I decided that I should look for the Chinese characters in question - an especially important task, given that although the bulk of the words in the Chinese languages (or "dialects", in Singapore) are the same as in Mandarin, some characters might take on different nuances in each language.
This is not to mention that each Chinese language has some characters that Mandarin does not have. For example, one character only found in Cantonese is
(nak1/lak1 - meaning "decayed teeth; tongue-tied"; Blogger doesn't understand it). A more common one is "冇" (mou5, meaning "do not have"), which incidentally is quite clever considering that the character "有" (jau5, familiar to Mandarin speakers as you3, means "have").Unfortunately, whereas Cantonese resources in English are quite common online, due to it being the mother tongue of the Chinese diaspora and Hong Kong's unique position, I could not find any Hokkien resources in English.
I did, however, come across a recommendation on the China History Forum ("Premier Portal for Learning and Discussing Chinese History") for the official Hokkien Dictionary created by the Department of Education of that other developed Chinese state - Taiwan. Although this was only in Chinese (and in Traditional Characters, to boot) it was better than nothing.
Some fumbling about in my true Mother Tongue then resulted in which I discovered, thanks to the Classical Chinese Wikipedia, that in Hokkien the word for gun is not "枪" ("槍", "qiang1" in Mandarin) - which refers to a long spear used in ancient times - but "銃" ("铳", "chong4" in Mandarin), which is another Chinese word for a gun or pistol. After more fumbling and a 推敲 moment, I settled on the word "摖" (which, if I understand the romanization used in the Hokkien Diciontary correctly, is the qit3 I was originally thinking of, instead of "擦".
So my proposed Hokkien euphemism for female masturbation, in the vein of PCC, is "摖銃管" (tshè tshìng kóng according to the Taiwanese government, qit3 cheng4 kong3 in my bastardised romanization [the lack of audio files makes it hard for me to understand the intended pronunciation] and qi4 chong4 guan3 in Mandarin).
On reflection, though, a gun barrel might not be the best metaphor for the female bits.
In the process of all this research, it occured to me that I didn't know the characters for Pah Chiu Cheng in the first place.
Online, many sources talk about "pah chiu cheng", but none gave Chinese characters for it. The closest I could find was "打手枪" (da2 shou3 qiang1 - shooting the handgun), but then this was a Mandarin translation of the Hokkien phrase.
According to the Classical Chinese Wikipedia, the phrase was "放手銃". Yet, the Taiwanese romanisation of "放" as pàng did not sound correct.
More digging uncovered this entry in Taiwan's Hokkien Dictionary:
"詞目: 拍手銃
音讀: phah-tshiú-tshìng
釋義: 男性手淫、自慰。
異用字: 打手銃、扑手銃"
Translation:
"Phrase: 拍手銃
Pronunciation: phah-tshiú-tshìng (pah chiu cheng)
Meaning: Male masturbation, self-reassurance (i.e. masturbation)
Synonyms: 打手銃 (pàng-tshiú-tshìng, firing the hand gun)、扑手銃 (phok-tshiú-tshìng)"
So there you have it. The official characters for PCC (Pah Chiu Cheng) are "拍手銃", according to none other than the Taiwanese Ministry of Education.
Incidentally, I tried to find entries on female masturbation, but no such euphemism seems to exist. At least in that dictionary. So we can make do with mine for now.
As an aside, here is a letter I wrote to the Taiwanese Ministry of Education giving a suggestion about a pronunciation guide. A translation is available upon request:
先生/女士：
你好。
我来自新加坡，因此不会用繁体字，所以会用简体制字。对不起。
创造这个闽南语(新加坡，我们称为“福建话”）字典是个好概念；虽然我是福建人，但是说不出多过几十字的闽南话。但是，关于发音，我看了你们的英文字母后，还不知道怎么说出那些字 （你们是不是在用白话字？）。我虽然搜寻了你们的网点，但是却找不到一个发音指导。如果你们可以创造一个发音指导，或放一些MP3录音档在网点，我相信很多人会很感激你们。
我想你英语的程度比我国语的程度好；在这行之下，我会用英语表示我的建议。
谢谢!
Addendum :
Here is their reply (although I wrote to them in both English and Mandarin, they responded in Mandarin only. Hurr hurr):
您好：
感謝您的建議。有關《臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典》所使用的拼音，稱為「臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案」（簡稱「臺羅」），該方案為整合臺灣常用的閩南語拼音系統，兼納各方案之優點而成，聲母、韻母的符號符合國際音標之原理，聲調則採用教會羅馬字（白話字）的標示方式。
在拼音教學方面，推薦您使用國立台中教育大學所建置之「臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案及其發音學習網」（http://www.ntcu.edu.tw/tailo/），該網站提供詳細的拼音教學，並提供音檔。另，《臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典》亦正規劃附上詞目錄音檔，以利學習。
感謝您的來函，敬請不吝指教！
教育部國語推行委員會 敬復
Addendum 2:
This Malaysian forum thread tries to find the characters for some Hokkien Singlish terms.
Keywords: pak qiu, pah qiu
