Martian language


Martian language, sometimes also called brain-disabled characters, is the nickname of unconventional representation of Chinese characters online by various methods. For example, "一個人的時候" can be changed into "ㄧㄍ人ㄉ時候" since the word is consonant of and the word is consonant of the word in bopomofo.

Origin

The etymology of the word, "Martian language", is mostly believed to come from the 2001 Hong Kong comedy Shaolin Soccer, in which Sing tells Mui : "Go back to Mars. The Earth is so dangerous."
Martian language originated in Taiwan with the introduction of Chinese input methods and online games. It later began to catch on in mainland China when online games like Audition Online were introduced in China.

General aspects

The Martian language is written in Chinese using various substitution methods. Similarly to leet, where certain Latin letters are replaced by numerals, Martian language replaces standard Chinese characters with nonstandard or foreign characters. Each Chinese character may be replaced with:
  1. A character that is a homophone, either from Standard Chinese, Chinese dialects, or foreign languages.
  2. A character that looks similar, such as one with a shared radical.
  3. A character with identical or similar meaning.
  4. Pictograph characters and Emojis.
Characters used for substitution can include not only other Chinese characters, but also Latin characters, bopomofo, hiragana, katakana, SMS language, Emoji, or other characters defined in Unicode. For example, "謝謝" can be replaced by, a similar sound of "thank you" in English. is commonly replaced with, as it has the same intended meaning in Japanese.
In pictograph characters, can express a deep sense of helplessness, frustration, or utmost sincerity, since it resembles the act of dogeza. Similarly, can indicate embarrassment because of its similar appearance to a human face.
Substituting characters by similar appearance may involve splitting Chinese radicals. For example, "强" can replaced with "弓虽". Substitutions can also use characters from another language or script. For example, can be understood as laughter since its simplified form, "厂厂", looks similar to, a common expression of laughter in Taiwan.
There is no universal way of encoding standard Chinese to the Martian language, though some substitutions are popular and have even leaked into standard and spoken language, such as for , for .

Usage

In the 2006 General Scholastic Ability Test of Taiwan, students were asked to interpret symbols and phrases written in "Martian language" based on contexts written in standard language. Controversies which followed forced the testing center to abandon the practice in future exams.
Chinese online netizens later followed the trend of using Martian language since they found their posts written in the new language could more easily pass keyword filtering censorship. For example, when the censorship censored information about Ai Fen, the netizens used Martian language to deceive the censorship.