I nearly choked on my food

I nearly choked on my food.

　　I was eating breakfast recently when I heard the chairman of the Liberal Party, Miriam Lau Kin-yee, being interviewed on an English-language radio station. She used a word that nearly made me choke on my food. She used the word while criticizing Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen for staying in super-luxury hotel rooms during overseas trips. Lau said Tsang was wrong to stay in such expensive rooms but as the Chief Executive he should also not stay in dumpy hotels. Lau, however, did not say dumpy. This is what she said: "Of course, we don't expect him to go into some shitty hotel."

　　The reporter also seemed surprised she said shitty but there was nothing he could do because it was a live interview. The adjective shitty comes from the slang word shit, which means excrement. Some people feel sh*t is an expletive, or bad word, that should not be used. But it is widely used nowadays. Almost everyone who speaks English uses it. I use it all the time. The widely-used slang word bullshit (nonsense) comes from it. A shitty hotel simply means a lousy or low-class hotel. You can say, for example: "My girlfriend cooks shitty food." This means she cooks lousy, or not very good, food. You can say "a dumpy hotel", which also means a lousy or cheap hotel, but the word is more acceptable to some people than shitty.

　　The word choke has several meanings but in this case it means getting food stuck in your throat. Nearly choke on your food is an expression that means something so surprised you while eating that the food nearly got stuck in your throat. You can say, for example: "I nearly choked on my food when I saw a man carrying a monkey with two heads enter the restaurant." I nearly choked on my food when I heard Lau Kin-yee say shitty because I have not heard her use that word before. But I think there is nothing wrong with her using it.

＊＊＊

不久前我吃早餐，聽自由黨主席劉健儀接受某間英語電台的訪問。她用了一個字，害我幾乎哽噎（choke on my food）。那是當她在批評特首曾蔭權外訪，入住超級豪華酒店時所用到的字。劉說曾不應入住殘破的（dumpy）酒店，但入住如此昂貴的房間也不對。不過，劉不是說dumpy，她是這樣說的：「當然，我們不是要他去住那些爛鬼（shitty）酒店。」

　　當她說shitty的時候，那記者也顯得有點錯愕，但因為是現場訪問，他也沒有甚麼可以做。Shitty這個形容詞來自俚語shit，是糞便的意思。有些人認為shit是髒話，不該用到。不過它在今天已經很普遍，差不多所有說英語的人都會用到它，我就常常談及。被廣泛使用的俚語bullshit（廢話）亦從它而來。Shitty hotel就是很糟糕或低級的酒店。例如你可以說：「我女友的烹飪糟透（shitty）了。」即是說她煮出頗難吃的食物。你也可以說“dumpy hotel”，也指糟透或簡陋的酒店，但對有些人來說它就比shitty來得順耳。

　　Choke這個字也有幾個意思，這個例子裏就解作食物噎在喉嚨裏。習語Nearly choke on your food就是你訝異得差點給食物哽住了。例如你可以說：「當我看見一個男人拖一隻兩頭猴子進來餐廳時，我差點哽噎了（nearly choked on my food）。」我聽見劉健儀說shitty時，我差點噎住，因為我以往從沒聽過她用這個字，但我也不認為她用這個字有甚麼問題。