Comments on: Some of the thinking behind the spitting

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:34:04 +0000

haha, no doubt this post is just as much about language students getting meanings “lost in translation” as it is about real cultural thought-category differences.

By: Sonia

Sonia — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:09:48 +0000

LOL. Anyway, really trivial thing, but tu3 can be used for any voluntary form of spitting, like “tu3 chu1 lai2″ for “spit that out” or “tu3 zi4″ for “spit words” which describes how you enunciate. For example “ta1 tu3 zi4 hen3 qing1 chu3″ means “he enunciates very clearly”, and stuff like that. Anyway, I’m no language expert, but just FYI.

By: James

James — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:03:45 +0000

For this discussion it might be good to differentiate “spit” – a very generic word – into:
(1) saliva (produced in the mouth by salivary glands)
(2) mucus (produced in the nasal cavity – also called ’snot’)
(3) phlegm (mucus produced in the lungs)

In my experience – and I worked on a grass seed farm during the summers for 5 years – if an American gets dust/sand or a mosquito or something from outside in their mouth – we spit it out immediately.

If I’m outside in the US, and can do it discretely – I spit out mucus/phlegm – whether I have a cold or not.

If I’m inside in the US – and it’s a big nasty wad of phlegm/mucus – I get up and go to the bathroom where I spit it into the toilet. If I have a cold, I spit out mucus/phlegm – always – reasoning that the job of the mucus is to trap the bacteria/virus and keep it from spreading – I don’t want it to spread inside me – to move from a runny nose to a sore throat or worse – so I spit it out.

If it’s not big and nasty, and I don’t have a cold – or if I’m cooking and can’t leave the kitchen conveniently – or in the middle of a project I can’t leave – I swallow it.

My reasoning is – my body produced it – it never left my body – it is relatively clean.

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:44:40 +0000

It’s the truth, I promise! ;)

By: Li Zijie

Li Zijie — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:59:59 +0000

Interesting to know! :)

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:31:44 +0000

I think I speak for most Americans/Canadians/Brits/etc. when I say we really do swallow almost always, at home. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I’ve seen. Unless we’re really sick with a really bad cough, then we swallow our spit. My throat isn’t uncomfortable unless I’m sick with a cold… definitely not every day or every week. I hope that’s not too gross! :)

We also don’t deliberately ‘work up’ a lot spit. The first morning we lived with a Taiwanese family, I thought the mother had really bad food poisoning or something because we could hear her in another room clearing her throat and spitting so loudly (I didn’t know then about the Chinese spitting habit). When I think of people deliberately trying to make spit/phlegm, the first thing that comes to mind other than China is in elementary school, when little boys are trying to be gross on purpose just for fun.