Martian language (Chinese: 火星文; pinyin: huǒxīng wén; literally "Martian script": 吙☆魰) is the nickname of unconventional representation of Chinese characters online. “Martian” describes that which seems strange to local culture. The term was popularised by a line from the 2001 Hong Kong comedy Shaolin Soccer, in which Sing (Stephen Chow) tells Mui (Zhao Wei): "Go back to Mars, the Earth is so dangerous."
In the 2006 Taiwanese national College Entrance Examination, students were asked to interpret symbols and phrases written in "Martian language" (orz), and the controversies which followed forced the testing center to abandon the practice in future exams.
In 2007, Martian language began to catch on in mainland China. The first adopters of Martian language mainly consisted of after-ninety (those born in the 1990s) netizens. They use it in their nicknames, short messages, and chat rooms in order to demonstrate personality differences. Later, they found that their teachers and parents could hardly figure out their new language, which quickly became their secret code to communicate with each other.
The Martian language became so popular in cyberspace that even some pieces of software were created to translate between Chinese and Martian language.
Chinese online bloggers followed up the trend to use Martian language, because they found that their blog posts written in the new language can easily pass Internet censorship engines, which are currently based on text-matching techniques.
Read more about Martian Language: General Aspects
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)