pet's name

[Olivia]

A friend of my sister's calls her cat something that sounds to me like "sha la hu." Due to her background I believe this may be dialectal Chinese. Can anyone clarify this for me?

[Mark]

Yes, Sha la hu is of the Huidik (Su ma er jie ni ta er) dialect. It would appear to mean "stupid beast" or "one without a face". If used in the bedroom, it can mean "large breasts" or "get your cat off my chest".

[Mark]

Oh, and I should add-- it can also be used as a gardening term, meaning "rusty trowel"

Or a culinary term meaning "roast cat feces topped with white gravy" or "fried chicken feces smothered in roasted garlic vinigrette"

It is used in the more southerly Huidik districts to mean "buttock mouth person" or "cocaine addict"

And the Mandarin usage of the characters often is slang for "cockroach"

However recently it has been confused by many with the word for turban, "sha la huu", and it has come to mean that as well.

Another culinary term which is almost identical is "fried cat brains smothered in garlic butter and cat guts"

Best of luck finding out what this woman means!

Mark

[Thomas Chan]

Olivia wrote:
>
> A friend of my sister's calls her cat something that sounds
> to me like "sha la hu." Due to her background I believe this
> may be dialectal Chinese. Can anyone clarify this for me?

It sounds to me like it is Mandarin xiao laohu 小老虎 'little
tiger' (xiao 小 'little' sounds like English female pig "sow";
lao 老 rhymes with xiao; and hu 虎 sounds like English "who").


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

[Mark]

I maintain that my explanation is the more correct one.