China's Ministry of Education and National Work Committee for Language and Character issued the "2009 Chinese language status report" on Nov. 25 in Beijing. And 396 online phrases are listed as new Chinese phrases for the year.
The total 396 popular phrases come from nearly all aspects of people's lives.
"It helps a lot for us to look at our social life in last year clearly to analyze these phrases," said Li Yuming, an official from China's Ministry of Education and the Committee.
Li said that among those phrases, a group of new hot phrases carry strong ironic meanings to some social problems, such as "Being...(被××)," reflects people's sense about their rights, and "Building...(楼××),"reflects the quality problems of buildings.
Li also said that people on the Internet started paying much more attention on revealing, investigating and supervising public affairs since the "Hide-and-seek" affair happened in the early party of the year.
Online phrases soon became integrated into daily social life. A large number of new phrases first appeared on the Internet and then spread quickly among various media outlets. These phrases even became popular language to describe social life in 2009.
The language status report classifies those new phrases, and new phrases nearly get involved in every respect of society, including social life, political fields, economy, culture, education, science, environmental protection and sports.
"The changes to those phrases symbolize that the Internet has already become a necessary, convenient and effective channel for the public to spread their opinions in daily life," Li Yuming said.
By Wang Hanlu, People's Daily Online
