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They call it the Grass-Mud Horse lexicon, and, lucky for us language lovers, theChina Digital Times just started a recurring word of the week feature to go along with its catalog of the slang China's bloggers use to subvert government censorship. The first post, which went up last Wednesday, explainsthe project's namesake,Grass-Mud Horse. "Grass-mud horse, which sounds nearly the same in Chinese as 'f*** your mother' (co n m), was created as a way to get around and poke fun at government censorship of vulgar content," writes Fiona Smith. The term is perfect for a lot of reasons: It sounds like a swear, has its own YouTube cultureandreferences the Communist party, which is often referred to as "mother." All of that has led to its evolution as not only a term that means "someone who is web-savvy and critical of government attempts at censorship," in the words of Smith, but also the representation of an entire language.

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Over at China Digital Space, where the Grass-Mud Horse project lives, we find the fullalphabetized list of common terms used on the heavily censored Chinese Internet platforms. Each letter has between 2 and 21 entries -- there's a lot on there. Here are some of our favorites:

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Term:Love the Future.

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Definition: "'Love the future' is a coded reference to Chinese artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei () that began to be used after Ai's disappearance in early 2011. Ais surname sounds the same as the word 'love' in Chinese, and his given name 'Weiwei' can be converted into the word future by adding two small strokes to the second character."

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What we love about it: The play on words just happens to work out so well for the beloved Chinese artist. Related, here's a video of the artist singing the Grass-Mud Horse song.

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Go here to see the original:
The Slang Chinese Bloggers Use to Subvert Censorship