Talk:Gung ho

Only American?
It is widespread in Aotearoa New Zealand, meaning "very (or too) enthusiastic, especially for action", and my understanding was that we had picked it up directly from Rewi Alley who was an enthusiastic propagandist. It is certainly not considered an Americanism. The test would be whether it is also common in other Commonwealth countries. --Hugh7 (talk) 03:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Etymology
The derivation seems plausible, but it would be nice to know the original Chinese phrase. I found one source that suggested it was Cantonese. Any ideas? Markalexander100 08:56, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I found some info online at http://www.bartleby.com/61/49/G0314900.html which looked accurate, so I'm putting it in there until someone smarter comes along. Also, I know nothing about the Chinese transliteration; if I did it wrong and someone else wants to correct that, go ahead. Omnipotent Q 01:49, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The 'he' syllable has two different tones in this article. I looked it up and it the character is usually second tone (the way it's written in the long version). I think I should change the abbreviated gong1he4 to a gong1he2. I assume it's just an oversight or a typo. User:NeonGeniuses 02:49, 03 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What I heard, growing up in Singapore, is that the phrase is an anglicization of "Kung hao", literally "good strength", the same "Kung" as in "Kung fu", and "hao", meaning good or well.

"ho" is the pronouciation of Cantonese "好“, and "hao"is the pronouciation of Madarian "好“, their are the same. Rmstudioph (talk) 06:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, my understanding is that the USMC has been using the term since the days of the Boxer rebellion, when US Navy boats occasionally patrolled Chinese rivers.

This is what the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) has to say about it (relevant parts quoted). 

Gung ho: Also kung-hou. Chin. (kung work + ho together.)

A slogan adopted in the war of 1939-1945 by the United States Marines under General E. Carlson (1896-1947); hence as adj.: enthusiastic, eager, zealous.

1942 Times Mag. (New York) 8 Nov. 13/4 Borrowing an idea from China, Carlson frequently has what he calls ‘kung-hou’ meetings... Problems are threshed out and orders explained. 1943 Life 20 Sept. 58, I [sc. E. Carlson] told them of the motto of the Chinese Co-operatives, Gung Ho. It means Work Together... My motto caught on and they began to call themselves the Gung Ho Battalion.

--Yuje 11:03, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

I'd be interested to know if the phrase was orginated from Mandarin. :-) &mdash; Instantnood 19:56, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, it has been stated in the article. Lo and behold, the first sentence should give you the answer. ;P -- Jerry Crimson Mann 20:31, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * On Wikipedia many articles on phrases originated from Chinese are provided with Mandarin pronuncations, but such phrases may not actually be originated from Mandarin.  &mdash; Instantnood 20:42, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed?
I was going to start a page on the Ron Howard starring Michael Keaton until I got here. It looks like a disambiguation may be needed. Osakadave 17:01, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Cantonese?
Hmm... i don't know about the transliteration, but i'm a native speaker of cantonese, "Gung Ho" in cantonese, literally means "Even better" or something of that nature - such as "Enthusiastic". I doubt it's mandarin because the phrase originated waaaaay before the communists took over.

BTW, the cantonese explanation i provided actually sounds like the phrase "Gung-ho". whereas "gōnghé" doesn't.

That’s what I thought as well, when I first heard it, but I think it’s just a coincidence. Non-Cantonese/Mandarin speakers normally can't pronounce Cantonese/Mandarin words accurately so the deviation doesn’t surprise me. ~ KilliMcgee

The link of the second reference doesn't work. ~ nuyuohz

I live in Guangdong Province, China. I first encountered this English phrase "Gong Ho" in a lecture"大众创业与转型机遇-科技创新与创业的有效对接", it sounds like the Cantonese"讲好”, means "reaching the agreement under informal negotiation". Another evidence, most earlier Chinese immigrants in American and UK are Cantoneses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmstudioph (talk • contribs) 08:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Chinese pronunciation of the phrase: 更好
I believe it is the pronunciation in Cantonese of the phrase, 更好, meaning "better" or "even better".

Gung-Ho is Cantonese
Gung-Ho is short form of Gung-yeh-zou-ho and I saw it from "Mail Call" of the History Channel.

I ask people who can understand Chinese military slang in the 1940s and the anwser is that it is Cantonese, which means "(You) Must Finish it Today!"

Gung-yeh = Today

Zuo-ho = Finish the work

Therefore, the literary translation of Gung-yeh-zuo-ho is "Must Finish it Today".

Sorry, In Cantonese:

Gung-yeh = discuss what to do, how to do and what should do

Zuo-ho = Finish the work

Therefore, the literary translation of Gung-yeh-zuo-ho is "Finish the work as what we agree with". ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmstudioph (talk • contribs) 06:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC) I think this explanation is more correct than the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LQY (talk • contribs) 00:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

To the USMC, Gung-Ho means TEAMWORK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.13.141.100 (talk) 05:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit:The article gives Mandarin pronunciation for the phrase 工合 but this bears no relevance to the article because the phrase is very obviously borrowed from Cantonese. It sounds nothing like the Mandarin pronunciation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:5B0:4EC2:7398:1099:15AF:30BB:2DFB (talk) 11:14, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Ironic?
The last line of the article says, "It is now often used in the ironic sense of excessively enthusiastic, overzealous." But reading the article doesn't describe the way it was used before so I don't understand why the current way is ironic. Perhaps someone could clarify this. Brainsik (talk) 20:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Explanation of Reversion
I took the liberty of undoing the version which (without offering an explanation) cut out the information from Alfred Moe's article which seems relevant to understanding the phrase and which answered several of the questions on this discussion page. ch (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I left a message on the talk page of user User talk:86.160.201.172 (who undid my recent additions -- twice) saying that I would be happy to see if she or he would explain if anything I posted was wrong. ch (talk) 00:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The user sent an email to me saying:

Hi. In response to your Gung Ho alterations.

I don't believe your additional comments are neutral.

I think it is much more neutral and satisfactory to simply say that the words separately, Kung and Ho mean "Work" and "Together".

Carlson never claims the words are actually used together in spoken Chinese, so I don't see why the article should focus on that.

(signed)

I can see this point, but I think we can still report the findings of the Moe article. I will work on this and post the results in the article ch (talk) 06:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Undoing an anonymous and unexplained cut
The change was made by a user who only had three Wikipedia edits, two of which on this page. I think that it is important to have the information I restored, but would be happy to revise it to meet any reasonable objections! ch (talk) 05:12, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I rolled back the blanking of this explanation, which was also anonymous and unexplained. I am still eager to hear how we can get this information into the article, so would whoever is doing this please let me know what's up? ch (talk) 05:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I can see a final version emerging, and I hope my suggestion is acceptable. ch (talk) 05:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I rolled back the cut of Moe's remarks, but would be happy to work out wording that meets any reasonable objections. The article by Moe seems to be definitive on this subject. Would it be acceptable to make this paragraph into a section marked "Further Views" or some such thing? ch (talk) 16:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Effort to Reach Consensus
After several rounds of cuts and roll backs, and after several attempts to reach him or her, I created a talk page for User talk:86.156.191.157. The only items on this user's page are for the Gung Ho article and the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives article.


 * Friend ---


 * I would be happy to hear your reasons for cutting material which seems to me to be useful and Wikipedian, but your anonymous and unexplained cuts will soon amount to vandalism! In addition, when you cut material on the talk page, this is not in the Wikipedia spirit of open discussion working toward consensus.

ch (talk) 17:31, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

The origin of Gung-ho
By 1937, the large part of China was occupied by the Japanese. The industrial bases such as Shanghai and Shenyang were already overran.

Rewi Alley, who was recently declared by China as one of ten great friends of China came up with the idea of a guerilla industry to meet the demand of war needs of Chinese resistance.His idea was to build hundreds of factories which were light, flexible, and perhaps even mobile. The brilliant idea took the form of a movement called Chinese Industrial Cooperative, which also received some token support from the then nationalist government.

The full form for such cooperative in pin yin (present Chinese pronunciation system) is gongye hezhuo. As is Chinese custom, the first syllabuls of these two words is coined as Gong He. This in Wade system was pronounced as Gung-Ho and later taken up by Rewi's American friend in US Marines and used as a clarion call of the marine unit and later slipped into the American English lexicon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milantuladhar (talk • contribs) 22:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds interesting, but do you have any WP:SOURCE for this? Thanks, MuffledThud (talk) 08:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The source and reference for my statement is "THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA

The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom."

By Simon Winchester.

Illustrated. 316 pp. Harper/HarperCollins, 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milantuladhar (talk • contribs) 07:06, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Now this word are usually used to depict somethimh else, when it comes to military.
If you say the guys were "gung ho" it simply means they were just doing something crazy, like on drugs, or in a murderous frenzy and, at the time, unstoppable or not accessible by arguments or the voice of reason. This is how soldiers mean and understand it, so please no whitewashing here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.238.13.228 (talk) 13:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

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Use of Chinese on English-language pages
I made some edits to this page to clarify the meaning and pronunciation of the Chinese characters, but another user reverted my changes. I would propose that this page follow the Wikipedia practice of providing monolingual English readers the full information for non-English phrases. For example, the current version of this page has:

''It is thought to have originated from the Chinese short-form of what were known in the 1930s as "Chinese Industrial Cooperatives", i.e. 工合, the Chinese acronym of 工業合作社. The official pinyin Romanisation of the acronym is gōng hé, meaning "work together".''

It's not clear what 工合 or 工業合作社 mean or how they are pronounced.

My revision was as follows, with Chinese characters + pinyin + meaning:

It is thought to have originated from 工合 gōng hé ("work together"), the Chinese abbreviation of 工業合作社/工业合作社 (gōngyè hézuòshè), what were known in the 1930s as "Chinese Industrial Cooperatives".

Also, the other user reverted my deletion of an unnecessary pronunciation aid ("slung low"). The IPA is already given in the entry, and this English phrase is vaguely sexual and could be offensive to some. Its inclusion makes the page seem less professional.

--Romaniceloqui (talk) 02:42, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It is perfectly clear what the meaning of the Chinese expression is because it is expressly stated immediately before the use of the Chinese characters. The romanisation then immediately follows.  The proposed change merely creates repetition and gives the impression of much more complexity than actually exists here.  As to the suggested sexual connotation, I don't see it but certainly an alternate could be provided, so long as its pronunciation is unambiguous.  IPA is for experts, not for general readership. sirlanz 02:55, 12 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I've never come across "slung low" as a sexual term in British English. If used at all, it must be a very mild euphemism.  --GwydionM (talk) 10:08, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * A search reveals it is the name of a repectable theatre company in Leeds. sirlanz 10:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)