Those of you who love to watch Hong Kong movies will notice that many things are called differently in Cantonese than in Mandarin. So in addition to learning how to pronounce Cantonese, you also need to learn how to call things differently in Cantonese, or else you'll feel awkward communicating with other people in Cantonese in reality.

For example, the Mandarin word for "doughnut" is called "fried ghost" in Cantonese. If you say "fried doughnut" in Cantonese, people will think what are you talking about? It takes at least a reaction to understand what you're saying.

In fact, apart from Cantonese, this is also how it is said in Minnan.

I think: no matter which dialect, although the expression is not the same, but the meaning must be similar, so why would a simple and direct name such as doughnut be called such a "strange" name as fried ghost in Cantonese?

There's another question: why is a deep-fried ghost always in two pieces?

When you figure out why, you'll think: there's a lot going on here!

Fried ghosts, in fact, the original name is called "fried hinoki", just later said smooth, said fried ghosts. So how did you get the name "fried hinoki"?

This has to start from the Southern Song Dynasty, a famous traitorous prime minister, this traitorous prime minister is the history of infamous, spurned by ten thousand people, and the stench of Qin Hui for years to come.

While Qin Hui destroyed a lot of evidence that he surrendered on bended knee, framing Yue Fei, but the sky is clear, the crimes he committed are still through the folk by the common people a ten, a hundred spread down. So Qin Hui, and his wife Wang, the wife of the tiger, was forever nailed to the pillar of shame in history.

Fried hinoki, that is, Qin Hui to bring the meaning of frying with oil, can be seen to the extent of people's hatred of him. Why two? The other one is the wife of the treacherous minister, Wang, who was in league with him.

So there's another question: why is the expression "deep-fried ghost" only found in southern dialects like Cantonese?

This starts with another phenomenon in Chinese history, the famous - and famously - clothesline southward.

Some southern dialects, such as Cantonese nowadays, are actually not indigenous to the south; many years ago, they were originally northern dialects, or official languages, as the political center of China was still in the north at that time.

It was only later, when the Middle Kingdom went through turmoil and the political center gradually moved south, that the Middle Kingdom culture spread to the south. At the same time, it also brought the northern dialect.

According to incomplete evidence: the present Cantonese and Minnan, etc., are the northern official languages before the southward migration of the Central Plains dynasty, and they have retained many original pronunciations, which are more in line with the development process of Sino-Tibetan language family.

Based on the southward migration of the Central Plains Dynasty, we can conclude that before the Song Dynasty, the official languages of the Central Plains Dynasty were most likely the present-day Cantonese and other southern dialects.

It's hard to imagine: all those great generals in Romance of the Three Kingdoms shouted - in Cantonese - when they were fighting one-on-one.

In fact, many people have testified that many poems and songs from before the Song Dynasty were read aloud in Cantonese, while in Mandarin it was awkward and didn't rhyme at all.

So how did Cantonese gradually move south?

It all comes down to the two famous southward migrations during the Northern and Southern Dynasties of the Jin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty.

The first time was when the five northern hu (Xiong Nu, Xianbei, Capricorn, Qiang, and dynastic) attacked the Central Plains dynasty, squeezing the Western Jin Dynasty into a corner of Jiangnan, where the Eastern Jin Dynasty was founded in Jiankang (present-day Nanjing).

The second time, under the forceful oppression of the Jurchen, the Song scholars once again migrated in large numbers to the south of the Yangtze River, spearheaded by the Southern Song's Gaozong Zhao Ju.

In this way, the Cantonese language took root in the south, and to this day, they have retained much of their ancient pronunciation and culture.