Marriage Proposal

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
On www.mdbg.net, one can search for 峕, and it gives the pronunciation as shi2 (山 + 6 strokes), but also no meaning, unfortunately.

duaaagiii wrote:
28. 峕(should be 時)龍飛中華民國十二年六月弍(trad. 貳)日 si5 liong5-hui1 tiong1-hua5 bin5-kok4 tsap8-ji7-ni5 lak8-g(u)eh8 ji7-jit8
June 2 of the 12th year of the Republic of China (i.e., 1923)

I just did a search at http://www.chineseetymology.org/ It turns out that 峕 is really the alternate form for 時. So, Sim's reference for the pronunciation and tone "shi2" is correct, and duaaagiii's amendment of 峕 to 時 is also valid!

For your reference, the link is:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/Charact ... =Etymology
You can see from the sample characters that this alternate form dates back as far as the Seal Characters!

This is interesting, because it illustrates that in addition to variations in spoken dialects across China, there existed accepted variations in written forms - even for the commonest of characters like 時/峕.

Another example is 關. My late grand-aunt used the form 関 in writing. I tend to use the former, as some research I did suggests that it is etymologically more 'correct'. Apparently, the latter is the form used in Japanese Kanji.

I would be interested to know if other such variations in common characters exist (I am sure they do!).

[duaaagiii]

It took me some time, but I did it during my breaks.

References:
中華民國教育部《國語辭典》 http://140.111.34.46/dict/
董忠司《台灣閩南語辭典》網路版 http://edic.nict.gov.tw/mdic/
Google 台灣 http://www.google.com.tw/

The Wikipedia article for 異體字 lists a few characters and their variants: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%82% ... 3%E5%AD%97

[SimL]

Duaaagiii,

Like Mark, I too am absolutely stunned! Thank you very much! .

Mark,

Thanks for all the effort you have put into this too.

You have both helped tremendously, and my father and uncle will be immensely happy with this new information.

This is a lot of information to absorb, so it'll take me a few days, but I intend to study all this material *religiously*.

For the moment, a few easy points which come up:

1. The "chin choey" (= informal Malaysian spelling, TLPA "cin cue") system.

There have been two references to my father's family practicing cin cue, the main one is viewtopic.php?t=3338, where duaaagiii gave us the hanzi for it.

Mark's speculation about the use of 官 in this connection is interesting, but duaaagiii's translation seems to imply that it really refers to my grandmother 清妙 rather than her future husband. It does seem strange that 官 refers to a woman though...

2. 峕 instead of 時

Curiously, while looking into the meaning of 峕, I came across two webpages with the text "峕 (時)". The useable one is http://www.confuchina.com/09%20xungu/qu ... uodian.htm (search for 峕 on the page, it's quite near the end). Now of course, all these Chinese webpages are (frustratingly) just a mass of silent meaningless symbols to me, but it did very briefly cross my mind - in my sub-conscious, if you know what I mean - that they might be implying that 峕 meant 時! But my conscious mind said "No, they're just using 時 to indicate how it's pronounced".

Given all this, why does 時龍飛 mean "on the date of"? Mark's information that 龍飛 "is a metaphor for the Emperor ascending the throne" leaves me still quite puzzled.

[Mark Yong]

duaaagiii wrote:
24. ？(incorrect character; perhaps 伏)冀熊占 ?-ki3 hiong5-tsiam1
and hope that they bear a baby boy.

The character looks like a 亻radical + 宇, but I cannot generate it with the Windows XP IME Pad.

duaaagiii wrote:
21. 吉叶(should be 時)良辰 kiat4-si5 liong5-sin5
(We will choose) an auspicious date and time

The character in the scroll does show the character 叶. However, it probably is not referring to 葉. Could it be an alternate character?

[SimL]

Duaaagiii and Mark,

How do you people get the big hanzi characters? They look so much better than the default which I get.

Sim.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Sim,

In the text entry window, there is a toolbar directly above it. One of the pull-down menus allows you to set the Font Size (you can choose between Tiny, Small, Normal, Large and Huge).

Let me know if you cannot find it, and I will send you a screen grab to your e-mail address.

Cheers,
Mark

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
Given all this, why does 時龍飛 mean "on the date of"? Mark's information that 龍飛 "is a metaphor for the Emperor ascending the throne" leaves me still quite puzzled.

Here is a reply I got for an enquiry I sent out regarding the 龍飛:

"...perhaps 龍飛 is shortened from 龍飛鳳舞 (adj / n. - of swift movement of dancing or calligraphy), meaning "written (in calligraphy) on 2 June 1923"."

[duaaagiii]

An explanation for the incorrect characters is that whoever wrote the document might have been copying off of another document.

吉叶良辰: an incomplete 时 (時)
吉叶良辰 does not make sense, whereas 吉時良辰 makes complete sense.

竊幸依葭: I can see how 依 might look like 蒹

亻宇冀熊占: this character isn't in 《康熙字典》, nor is it in Unicode, so it is probably an incorrect character. 伏冀 makes sense; 佇冀 does not.

峕龍飛: dictionaries list this character as an erroneous variant of 時, although it was probably treated as a stylistic variant.


I'd interpret 龍飛 as "the reign of". Perhaps the document being copied off of had 時龍飛光緒(the emperor's reign name)﹍﹍年 on it, and so the reign name 光緒 was changed to 中華民國 for the new document without removing the 龍飛.

[Mark Yong]

duaaaagiii wrote:
18. 配為宗姪成貴者 phue3/pher3/phe3-ui5 tsong1 sing5-kui3--tsia2
to our nephew, Seng Kooi.

Hi, duaaaagiii,

I read your translation again, and I think you accidentally left out the Romanisation for 姪. Is it 'tit'? What is the tone number? (sorry, I am unable to load up the http://edic.nict.gov.tw/mdic/ webpage, so I could not look up the tone number).

It is interesting to note that especially in Penang Hokkien, the term 姪 for 'nephew' is not commonly used, rather 孫仔 'sun-a' (the same character for 'grandchild') is used.

[ong]

nothing strange,it is from other languages like zhuang in china.It happens also to yue dialect in guangxi