Modern marriage, mortgages enter Chinese lexicon

BEIJING (Reuters) - Rapid social change, Western pop culture and the use of English have prompted Chinese authorities to add 171 terms to the national language registry, including those to denote mortgage slaves and loose marital arrangements.

Economic reforms and soaring rates of home ownership have coined a new moniker for the tribe of youth struggling to pay off home loans in traditionally debt-wary China: "fang nu," or "house slaves."

And young, married professionals who live in separate homes to keep the romance alive and maintain their own space have been branded "Semi-honey couples" ("ban tang fu qi"), the official Xinhua news agency said, citing education officials.

"(The new terms) reflect rapid cultural and social changes in recent years as well as thriving new concepts in our daily lives," the agency quoted Li Yuming, a senior education official, as saying.

The new terms were registered after two years researching more than 900 million commonly used words and phrases in Chinese, the report said, and showed how pervasive Western movies and the English language had become.

"Young Chinese moving in fashionable circles often drop phrases like 'duan bei', with a literal meaning of 'brokeback'," to euphemistically refer to male homosexuals, Xinhua said.

"Brokeback Mountain" was an Oscar-award winning film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee about a love affair between two cowboys in the United States.

The emergence of city-dwelling couples choosing a pet over children had seen the use of "ding chong jia ting," in Chinese, or "DINKS with pets," in English, the report added.

DINK -- short for "double income no kids" -- was coined in the 1980s, to describe couples eschewing children in favor of lifestyle and financial advancement.