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IF SOMEONE calls you a ''mobile phone'', take it as a compliment. If he asks you why you have not ''jumped into the sea'' yet, then yes, he did mean ''sea'' and not ''lake'', and he is concerned about your welfare rather than getting rid of you.

  And if he calls you a ''Big Mac'', then you have made a pretty big impression.

  Economic reform and opening up were meant to change the face of China, but senior leader Deng Xiaoping never said anything about its tongue. Nevertheless, as the country's economy goes, so goes its language.

  The Chinese language is today as awash with foreign words - many of which enter the mainland via Hongkong - as China's economy is with foreign investment. Before 1979, foreignism accounted for 0.75 of the standard spoken Chinese, or Putonghua, compared with 3.4 per cent now, according to a recent study.

  But that is not all.

  Ideologically-charged words and phrases from the first three decades of communist rule are losing their revolutionary import and taking on a comical twist, while new expressions enter everyday language to reflect the changes in China's ''socialist market'' economy.

  Meanwhile, frustrated in their attempts to entrench Putonghua in regions where distinctive dialects are spoken, Chinese officialdom now listens helplessly as Cantonese spreads across the country, invading everyday speech even in Beijing, the home of standard Chinese, thanks to the growing popularity of Hongkong films, Cantonese pop songs and the steady infiltration of Hongkong business.

  Much of the new vocabulary remains in the realm of slang, but in some cases, standard Chinese words are being ousted from everyday speech by foreign and Cantonese words. Purists are scandalised.

  Yet ordinary Chinese seem to like it. Putonghua, which literally means ''common language'', but is actually the language of the former mandarins, is now, as one Chinese linguist puts it, being reclaimed by the common people. One effect is to make the language richer and more fun.

  Take the word for ''mobile telephone'', dageda, a term popularised in Hongkong gangster films to refer to a ''super boss'' or ''Godfather'', invariably depicted with a cellular phone. AT FIRST, dageda was used on the mainland to refer simply to a mobile phone. Now dageda may also be used to describe someone who is rich or powerful.

      ''Jump into the sea'' - or xiahai - was used in pre-revolution China for a Peking opera fan who becomes an opera professional. Now it means diving into the sea of commerce. Another popular expression is ru shang, a combination of the character ru for scholar or Confucianism, and shang for ''commerce''. A ru shang is an intellectual who ''jumps into the sea''.

  Juwuba, the Chinese character combination McDonald's uses for its Big Mac hamburgers, literally means ''invincible''. When used to describe a person, the expression thus has a double meaning.

  Meanwhile, English words are entering the Chinese language all the time. For example, kao, which sounds like the English ''call'', is a trendy word meaning to call or to page someone.

  And, as in Hongkong and Guangdong, many Beijingers call taxis dishi, which comes from the Cantonese transliteration of the English word ''taxi'', instead of the standard Putonghua term chuzu qiche, literally ''rented car''. Bashi for bus is also spreading north from Guangdong.

  Soon after Tiananmen, Chinese ideologues tried to revive the word ''comrade'' by ordering television broadcasters to greet viewers with that term at the start of the evening news. The move has not been successful.

  Chinese may use ''comrade'' to address strangers, and officials may use it at meetings, but ordinary Chinese do not normally use the word when referring to friends or business associates, except to be satirical.

  Even officialdom seems a bit embarrassed about it. When, at a gathering to honour visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres last month, the president of Beijing University addressed his audience as ''ladies, gentlemen, comrades'', the translator left out the word ''comrades'' in his translation.

  ''The forms of address are in utter chaos,'' said Xiao Feng, an anchorwoman at the Economics Radio station in Beijing. Listeners phone in for advice.

  Is it polite to refer to a rich person as a ''fat cat''? Do you call someone wearing shabby clothing and of inferior social status ''Mr'' or ''Ms''?   One of the most popular new expressions is nan xun or ''southern tour''. After Mr Deng's now famous trip to the south in early 1992, many people going to the south on business now say they are ''going on a southern tour''.



Speaking in strange tongues