Today's Word: Nun's Dragon

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #japanese .
There is a goldmine of "funny words" to be explored in the "hanzification" of imported words. This is one area where Japanese has the edge, so to say. Where Chinese only uses Hanzi to write foreign words - and then you have to know how the character is pronounced - Japanese has the phonetic Katakana to make the pronunciation easy; more later.

It would be tempting to search for some correlation between the meaning of the individual characters and the word they represent, but I think this is in vain for 99% of the time. So what is a Nun's Dragon, or if you prefer, Nun Dragon? Ní + Lóng = Nylon. To satisfy out never ending quest for interesting images, we can visualize a nun putting on her Nylon Dragon Stockings in her cell. Beware though: 尼姑 is a Buddhist nun and 修女 is Christian nun.

We have already explored various dragon characters here, but I am still too fond of the traditional Dragon Character to skip it here:


A beauty, isn't it? (Would be interesting, though, to learn how the Masters of Simplification arrived at the version above!) Finally a look at Nylon from the Japanese perspective:


As you probably know Japanese has two scripts on top of Kanji: Hiragana and Katakana. The latter is used mostly for foreign loanwords - and do they have those in tons in Japanese? - and some emphasis in ordinary text. This means that once you have learned the 48 syllables in Katakana you can pronounce most loanwords, but there is a black hole here: these loanwords are not always what we think! アルバイト arubaito, from German Arbeit, does not simply mean work, but part-time work. And so on....

Today's World: I Ching or Economy?

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #japanese #kanji .
[ See also Tomorrow's Chinese/Japanese Radical(s) ]

I am a man of honor keeping my promises, so here is something easy:


It is easy: change + scripture = Book of Change = "I Ching" or Yìjīng as preferred in China. The simplified character for "easy/change" is a sun. On top of .... rays? An animal? Since it's not so far removed from the character for pig - 豕 - it would be possible to assign the label piglet to it, but Heisig has gone one step further and views it as the curly tail of the pig/piglet. Suggested story: It's easy to change a huge pig to a small piglet - or even nothing but a tiny piggy tail - when you put it under the hot, shrinking sun. 'Nuff said.

Let's dig deeper into Chinese tradition:


The Yin/Yang ☯ duality is probably even more CHINA than I Ching, for many of us living in the west. The Female Principle vs. the Masculine Principle, some would say. Sun vs. Moon (as in the simplified characters above) , Day vs. Night, Light vs. Darkness ... Darkness? Yes, if we look at the traditional characters the YANG principle is dominated by the top Sun, but all those strokes to the right in YIN is actually telling us that it's in the SHADE, and what's more refreshing after too much sun than to get into the shade? (阝 = some sort of hill/pinnacle).

From the world of Chinese thought to the ups and downs of the Brave New World we're living in : economy:


It's just like it should be. In the combination of the characters easy/change and sutra/scripture we got The Book of Change. OK, the character to the right above has many more meanings apart from "cross (a river)", like aid, relieve, help, be of help, benefit but it is still a stretch to arrive at Economy. That' is, if the ancients were clever enough to predict that the economy in the future - our time - would be "a religion/philosophy in need of help"??

See: I am making this easy, not getting deep down into any character details. Until now. I can't help getting very fascinated by how these characters have traveled through the ages, from China to contries like Korea, Japan and Vietnam. When you think about it, it's really amazing that there hasn't been more "corruption" of the originals.

Here are three versions of sutra (WikiPedia):


The component for thread 糸 is the same in all three versions, apart from the three strokes at the bottom reduced to a single one in the simplified character, as usual. The old character/component 巠 presents some familiar items like 一 (one - yī) and 工 (work - gōng) with sandwiched <<< style="font-weight: bold;">

Update: This project follow the technique/method of James W Heisig ("Remembering the Kanji" and Remembering the Hanzi"). It's nothing more than doing exactly what's been done here: break down the characters to smaller "atoms" (radicals/primitives/components) and turn them into actors in a story to help you remember the character. In Heisig speak the two components ス + 工 in 经 are a spool. In my own mental image the entire character is a Tibetan Prayer Wheel (Wiki) where prayers - sutras! - are sent rotating on threads from the center spool. Click image from WikiPedia below to enlarge.

Today's Chinese Character: Simple Justice

Today's character/Hanzi/Kanji is a RADICAL simplification. But does it fit into the UGLY vs CUTE categories, previously defined here?

I don't think so. The original traditional Hanzi/Kanji is one of my favorite characters. The most common meanings are "justice; righteousness". But "meaning" is also there as in 意义.

A couple of Japanese vocabulary items: Islamic fundamentalism vs. Christian fundamentalism. These Kanji seems to be possible to bundle to form many words 原義 (gengi) means Original Meaning here, taking everything very literally. 主義 means doctrine etc. and 原理 means "doctrine, rule, principle". Whatever you think of Japanese, "inflexible" shouldn't be there.

As usual I have some nagging feeling that I've made some mistake in my Japanese: "should it really be クリスチャン (ku-ri-su-ta-n) or something else?"

イスラム原理主義
vs.
クリスチャン原理主義

So let's go back to Mandarin. I've found two, rather similar words for fundamentalism:

原教旨主义 yuánjiàozhǐzhǔyì

Where the 教 ought to emphasize the religious aspect ("teach, religion...."). The other word for fundamentalism, 基要主义, seems to be less used so I simply ignore it here. 主义 has the same meaning in Mandarin as in Japanese - doctrine; -ism - which is no wonder since the world probably was imported to Japan from China.

To round up this not so deep-digging post:

義 = 羊 + 我

羊 is easy enough to remember as SHEEP, but the very important and frequent character 我　will get a component destruction any day, week. You have to admit that it's a bit faster to write the simplified version, isn't it? These characters are pronounced as yì in Mandarin. The fourth tone here would be easy to remember if the animation really showed the strokes: dot - down - down. Get a better view at nciku.

Nice Japanese fonts to download

Once upon a time I was an obsessive font collector. Now I am happy to pick up some new font here and there. Unfortunately I am not good at bookmarking my downloads, but the most recent one - top - can be downloaded here. The second one - my favorite Aoyagi Kouzan - can be downloaded on this page.


The first one is a strict "ballpoint font", with 2nd Aoyagi more in the Shodo (brush) style, perhaps even scanned from brush writing. The bottom two fonts are intended for more conventional printed material.

Julia Nunes to Japan and China! Soon :-)

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UPDATE: You can follow blog posts containing "JULIA NUNES" here. Still a trickle, but trust me: soon it will be a flood!

Considering my recent experience with Really Silly US High School and College Boys, I will indulge in Julia Nunes, a Really Sweet American Young Lady as a pleasant change in mood (from pissed-off to happy!):


It's really funny how the net takes you to never thought of places:

1) I got a letter from Mr Nibs (HisNibs.com) a couple of days ago when he recommended the Uranus '2018' Multifunction pen

Did I want one ??? YES! But then it's sold out (as Norman wrote in his letter). Can I wait? NO!

2) So I searched for this pen on Google, but it's seems like there are no other dealers than Norman. Nevertheless I took a look at Ruminations, a blog publish in Western Australia writing about New Toys, including this pen. Nice, but not fair. Me too. Wouldn't have rejected the Speeno pen, either.

3) Took a look at the The Fountain Pen Network. Saw that one was for sale at http://www.sharpclaw.com/. Was seduced into looking at Sheryl's wish list and got stuck drooling over handmade Japanese paper at DanielSmith.com ('merely' $6.14/sheet).

4) Found another blog at The Fountain Pen Network, which I got interested in merely for "amish" in the name. Sort of not many Amish around in my neighborhood: Amish Guitar, right in the middle of A Mid Life Crisis :-)

5) And there I got interested in a girl called Julia Nunes, merely because of the nice things Mr. Amish. WOW! I spent an hour or so watching all the funny and cute videos she has produced for YouTube and got totally hooked! Not only is she cute, but what talent! There are really no similarities between what she does and what Eva Cassidy did, but it's the same straight channell from heart to singing/playing. Ukulele too! No walls whatsoever! Just look at the way she treats All My Loving, The Beatles, All Love, Little Respect and Pure Fun from eine WunderMädschen!

This gal can get as far as possible. I missed her T-shirt contest in April so here are my suggestions for the next one. Since Julia is going to play in Tokyo, July 2009, and Beijing January 2010 (other dates not possible since she has to Write Essays!) she really needs to print up T-shirts in advance. Japan and China are a little bit edgy towards each other so some sort of T-shirt diplomacy will do good to:


All those bored of Japanese and Chinese should note that Julia is playing in London/UK this week, in case you are close. Go there. I would do if I was just a tiny bit closer.

I admit that the colors above are perhaps too ... ahem ..."vulgar", but you have to admit that they Really Shine! The Message Is Seen. But I really prefer Chinese characters in red on a black background; that is the incarnation of Chinese signs etc. so I made another sample using different fonts:

The Chinese font in the middle can be slightly hard to read for the Western Eye, but admit that it really impressive with tons of weight! I actually have more fonts than I can handle and even remember. The white one above was totally new when I found it today. It's fittingly cute when you zoom in:
So what about Julia's name in Japanese and Chinese? The Japanese version - top - is very easy since they use a special script for foreign names: Katakana. it simply says ju-ri-a--nu-ne-su (since there is no plain s in Japanese). Easy as apple pie. The extra -- tells us that these syllables are longer juulia nuunes (and it wouldn't surpirse me if Nunes is pronounced in some silly way so I have to remake my design!)

Names in Chinese is an entirely different matter since the use only Hanzi - Chinese Characters to write all foreign names. Here is what New York City and London look like:

These characters are not usually choose because they mean so much in common with what they are said, i.s. they are merely sounds. The first character (niǔ) means button etc. The second one means something like appoinment (yuē), but the finale means CITY. So when the Chinese say New York City they will say niǔyuēshì and most of us will just not understand -hear - what they are talking about. ("Meet Mr Butt in the City"???) London is a much more straightforward lúndūn, something that most of us Westerns will recognize when said.

We are all rather sure that Julia isn't too willing to fall into the too common trap of using characters meaning weird and "wrong" things - think crazy tattoos!!! - so I'll add links to the nciku dictionary here:

举ju - means "raise" - compare weightlifting in 举重
黎 li - means multitude (not in nciku) on it's own, but is part of 黎明, dawn
啊 a - means exactly that "ah", "oh" "aaaahhhh"

努 nu - means "make an effort", but Julia doesn't have to :-)
呢 ne - isn't really much more than a sound and a particle used for stuff like questions etc.
素 su - can mean vegetable and is part of the word for vegetarian, something Julia ought to be, if she isn't yet (all of us should stop eating meat from cows and pigs polluting the air with their farts!)

That's it. Since I choose the character more from a looking nice point of view, I very much ignored the tones, so vital in spoken Chinese. Perhaps a Chinese reader will think the name sound a bit odd, but I don't think so. The sounds are absolutely OK per se.

So now it's time folks, to dig out your calender and make room for Julia in Tokyo and Beijing! And Julia, in case you read this: Don't feel any sort of PRESSURE! (And don't start to pack your bags. Yet.) This is merely some New Year's predictions from an old star gazer. Predictions DO fail, but sometimes they are right on the spot!

Good luck!

PS I forgot:

Julia's Brand New CD "I Wrote These"
and her debut CD "Left Right Wrong" are available here

or download at