#peng

PURR

"平靚正 (Peng leng zeng)" means well-priced and high quality which are literally the BEST words you wanna hear when you get to Chinatowns all over the world.

靚 leng also means beautiful and good looking and this is exactly how the slang Leng is used. [Source] [Source]

Side note: I am aware that Jamaican patois also has “Peng”, but it doesn’t have as much of an etymology to it as Han/Mandarin characters and Cantonese language (Cantonese is indigenous verbal tonal language like all Baiyue languages, so Peng & Leng would’ve come first, and then the Mandarin/Han written forms 平 & 靚).

Jamaican’s “peng” came from “kushempeng” (kush/weed is good), but if kush is a separate word, then Peng is a separate word, so where did the Jamaicans get Peng from?

Some suggest it originally was used by Canto weed sellers to say that the the kush/weed is inexpensive, then Canto (along with other Asian languages) made their way into the Jamaican patois as there is a significant Chinese-Jamaican population.

Then it was popularised to just mean “good weed” since the entire phrase in Canto approximates to “good/pleasing” anyways. Not to mention, the way Sinitic languages work is that the single character may reabsorb the meanings from its usage in common phrases. So using Peng on its own makes sense from a Canto etymology.

Leng itself has always retained the Canto meaning of being beautiful. “Ho leng” is what you hear from aunties if you’re a well-liked fem.

The Jamaican etymologies are still plausible and could be independently derived, rather than Canto-derived, as false cognates. But both the Jamaican and Canto slang have similar chances of being absorbed into UK slang.

And people just think it’s “British”. Nawh. Yall need to know how diverse the languages you’re using is. Especially with all the anti-immigrant shit in the UK.