| Gweilo | |||||||||||||||
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| Chinese | 鬼佬 | ||||||||||||||
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Gweilo orgwailou (Chinese:鬼佬;Cantonese Yale:gwáilóu, pronounced[kʷɐ̌ilǒu]ⓘ) is a commonCantonese slang term forWesterners. In the absence of modifiers, it refers towhite people as White Devils and has a history of racially deprecatory and pejorative use. Cantonese speakers frequently usegwailou to refer to Westerners in general use, in a non-derogatory context, although whether this type of usage is offensive (i.e., anethnic slur) is disputed by both Cantonese and Westerners.[1][2]
Gwái (鬼,gui in Mandarin) means "ghost" or "devil",[3] andlóu (佬) means "man" or "guy". The literal translation ofgwáilóu would thus be "ghost man" or "devil man".[4] It is sometimes translated into English as "foreign devil".[5] In manySinitic languages, "鬼" gwai and its local equivalents can be a derogatory term used as a curse or an insult.[6] The term鬼 gwai has also been used to describe other ethnic groups, for example, a 17th-century writer fromCanton,Qu Dajun [zh;zh-yue], wrote that Africans "look like ghosts", andgwáinòuh (Chinese:鬼奴;lit. 'ghost slave') was once used to describe African slaves.[7]
The termgwái (鬼) 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 inWorld War II with the samegwái. 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 replacedgwái for similarly negative meanings. Cantonese people sometimes call each othersēui gwái (衰鬼), which meansbad 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.[citation needed]
Gwáilóu is often considered to be an acceptable generic racial term for Westerners.[8] 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.[9]Gwailóu has, in some instances, been recognised as simply referring to white foreigners in South East Asia and now appears onOxford Dictionaries defined as such,[10] although non-white foreigners are notgwáilóu. Whilegwáilóu is used by some Cantonese speakers in informal speech, another alternative term the sound of which has several meaningssāi yàhn (西人; 'Western person') 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".[11]
CFMT-TV inToronto, Canada had a cooking show namedGwai 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,"Gwei Lo" was used as "a self-deprecating term of endearment".[12] In response to some complaints, theCanadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that:
While historically, "gwai lo" may have been used by Chinese people as a derogatory remark concerning foreigners, particularly European Westerners, the persons consulted by the Council indicate that it has since lost much of its derogatory overtone. The Council finds that the expression has also lost most of its religious meaning, so that "foreign devil" no longer carries the theological significance it once did. Based on its research, the Council understands that the expression has gone from being considered offensive to, at worst, merely "impolite".[13]
Gwai is one of a number of terms to referring to non-Chinese people that can be considered controversial and potentially offensive; a list of such terms is given below:[11][14]
Guizi (鬼子;pinyin:guǐzi) is aMandarin Chinese slang term for foreigners, and has a long history of being used as a racially deprecating insult.
However,xiaogui (小鬼;pinyin:xiǎoguǐ;lit. 'little ghost') is a common term in Mandarin Chinese for a child. Therefore, some argue thatgui (鬼) in Mandarin is just a neutral word that describes something unexpected or hard to predict.[citation needed]
Laowai (老外;pinyin:lǎowài;lit. 'old foreigner/outsider') is the word most commonly used for foreigners and is a less pejorative term thanguizi. Althoughlaowai literally means "old foreigner", depending on context, "old" can be both a term of endearment and one of criticism.
