Back in 中文学校 this year, with a wonderful class and teacher, 许稚宜. I love that our discussions bring up current mobile and internet slang that’s emerging through texting, but not in any textbook, nor Google Translate or other marvelous online language tools like nciku.
One of the interesting ones is 神马 (shén mǎ) “sacred horse” being used for 什么(shén me) “what”. I wonder if that also corresponds at all to Tibetan mythological animal and concept of windhorse, རླུང་རྟ། (lung-ta)? I can’t seem to find a direct Chinese translation for it — if you know, please share in comments.
Another is using 杯具 (bēi jù), cups as homonymic slang for tragedy, 悲剧 (bēijù). In the same manner, 洗具 (xǐ jù) washing stuff, is used to mean comedy 喜剧 (xǐ jù), and tea set 茶具, (chá jù), is used to mean 差距 (chā jù) difference.
An ancient, but new-to-me, language quirk is the unattractiveness of the number 250, 二百五 (èrbǎiwǔ), which means idiot or stupid person. If someone is trying to sell you something for 250 yuan, they’re probably joking. According to Wikipedia, the expression is based on 半弔子 (bàndiàozi). In ancient China, copper coins were grouped by stringing them together through the square holes in the center; originally 1000 was a unit of currency called a 弔. 半弔子 literally means half a 弔 (500 coins), which is a slang term referring to a person who is inadequate in skills or mental abilities. Since modest Chinese scholars may call themselves 半弔子 to humbly deprecate their own expertise, 半弔子 is not necessarily a pejorative term. On the other hand, 二百五 (250) is half of a 半弔子 and it is an insult. Ryan McLaughlin offers an alternate explanation,
ChinaSmack has a up-to-date glossary of current slang.