Thursday, August 16, 2007

Learn Chinese -- Feiyue!

So, like, yoooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Inspired by Rob's recent acquisition of navy blue shaolin kicks (and needing a distraction whilst at work), I decided to take a gander at the Feiyue website (European version only, malheursement), and noticed this:

Seeing the pronunciation in the braces, it then occurred to me that the word 'Feiyue' is actually pinyin for Chinese characters. I consulted with our resident Chinese expert, Heng De, and he believes that the characters are 飞跃 (simplified; 飛躍 - traditional). He sent me to this online dictionary so I could confirm how it should be pronounced (1st line).

So it turns out, the proper pronunciation of Feiyue, is not fay yoo (or fay view, as some of us think it's a 'v' instead of a 'y'), but more like, fay yweh (much like Heng Yue's name)!

Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh, taking dork to a whole new level!


Update (8/19): I just consulted with my parents, and both believe that the second character above (躍) is pronounced more like yao, and that the actual Chinese characters for feiyue is more probably the ones found on the second line of the dictionary entry linked above (飞越 - simplified; 飛越 - traditional).

5 comments:

  1. Or...it could be "Fat Fish"...

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  2. am so jealous. $50 ain't bad really if you are going to wear them, really wear them. thanks leo for that hilarious other possibility

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  3. I think they're 50 euros, so they're actually $100. Not worth it for how fast they wear through... But I sure like the shiny gold ones....

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  4. stupid pounds. it's only worth it if i actually go back to my 3 days a week training! soon...

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  5. I looked this up in my chinese dictionary. It is pronounced "fei Yuè" With a down accent on Yue. Yao is not the correct pronounciation in mandarin. It may be pronounced that way in a different dialect or regionally, but not officially.

    The chinese characters 飞跃(simplified) and 飛躍 (traditional) are correct. If you check the bottom of your shoe, the simplified characters are in the logo.

    :)

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