What does XIAO MAN YAO mean?

With the popularity of modern medias, Chinese learners have many choices to learn mandarin Chinese. Besides learning Chinese with an online Chinese tutor, we can also practice Chinese by watching Chinese TV shows. From time to time, they hear words like  蛮舒服, 蛮开心, 蛮不错, etc. All these phrases contain the word蛮before the adjectives舒服, 开心, 不错. So what is the meaning of蛮 in Chinese?

Originally, 蛮(mán) has the meaning of “being rude” or “unreasonable” It refers to the general minorities in south of China. But when蛮 is used as an adverb, it means “very”. This is kind of a dialect which is spoken in the southern and northern parts of Jiangsu province near the Yangtze river. It was also used in Shanghai, Nanjing and other regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwai. And once at a time, with the popularity of Taiwanese TV shows, more and more young people, despite the regions, prefer  to say "蛮" instead of “很.” Young people in China use “蛮” instead of “很” as a way to show that they are “trendy” or “fashionable”. 

As we mentioned earlier, “蛮" is mostly used as an adverb to indicate the degree of an action or a state.For example, if you received a present and you are very happy about that, you can say 收到你的礼物，我很开心 or 收到你的礼物，我蛮开心(shōu dào nǐ de lǐ wù ， wǒ mán kāi xīn). I think the difference is similar to the difference between, "I'm so happy" and "I'm quite happy.

Other examples include:

“蛮舒服(mán shū fu)” --- “quite comfortable”

他们俩关系蛮不错(tā men liǎnɡ ɡuān xi mán bú cuò). --- They are on good terms.

这电影蛮好(zhè diàn yǐnɡ mán hǎo).--- This is quite a good film.

                                                                  Girl with 小蛮腰

Besides the meaning of “quite,” 蛮 also has the meaning of “slim, and thin.” When Chinese people want to praise someone for having a good figure, they may say “What a 小蛮腰(xiǎo mán yāo)！”. Here, 小蛮腰 means slim and thin waist.