Come on, drink it! (says the hippo)

I spotted this new bubble milk tea shop recently:

喝嘛 (He ma)

The name is 喝嘛, which is just the verb meaning “to drink,” combined with the particle , used to “express the self-evident.” This is a command, though. How does a command “express the self-evident?”

To a native speaker, the feeling of the two usages is connected, but here the word adds the feeling of a somewhat whiny, “come on, do it….” In fact, that phrase “come on” (used when persuading) could be translated 来嘛.

So yeah, this product name is actually saying, “come on, drink our product. You know you want to! Come on…”

What’s the deal with the hippo? Well, “hippo” in Chinese is 河马 (literally, “river horse,” which is also the meaning of the Greek roots of the English word as well). So we’ve got a pun here.

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

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