Recently, I am learning many new Chinese terms and one of them is 粉絲. I don't know who started using this term since I cannot seem to find its origin. 粉絲 is the phonetic translation of the English word "fans". Frankly I don't really understand this term at all.
First of all it isn't necessary to have this term at all since the Chinese language already has a term for fan, 迷. For instance, a basketball fan is a 籃球迷 and a fan of a movie star is a 影迷. This is unlike western words such as chocolate (巧克力) or coffee (咖啡) where there are no Chinese terms.
Second, 粉絲 is the phonetic translation of "fans" only in the plural condition. Therefore it simply doesn't make sense for an individual to be a 粉絲, because it really should be just 粉.
Maybe I should start a 粉 club (俱樂部) to promote the elimination of the term 粉絲.
the word comes from HK, just like they call strawberries 士多卑梨. Ha ha, there you go, Chinglish to the max. By the way the Japanese started all this.
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