Benzi/Original character

[Andrew]

Does anybody have the original meaning of this character 刣 ?

I can't find the meaning in modern mandarin dictionary or even the cantonese website.

The dictionary on this website has zhong1 meaning scrape or oppose.

[xng]

Does anybody have the original meaning of this character 刣 ?

I can't find the meaning in modern mandarin dictionary or even the cantonese website.

The dictionary on this website has zhong1 meaning scrape or oppose.

Then, I don't know why the UCLA website and others mention this is the original character for T'ai (kill) since the meaning and the sound are both wrong.

宰 has a closer meaning and sound.

Anybody can shed more light on this ?

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
湛 - Tam / Wet

The Jiyun gives 㴷. 《集韻》覃韻都含切: "㴷, 濕也。" (For those of you whose screens do not display the character correctly, it is 氵+眈.)

xng wrote:毋會 - Bay (Combination of Mm and Ay) / Cannot
毋通- Mm T'ang / Don't
毋愛 - Mai (combination of Mm and Ai) / Don't want

m-t'ang and m'ai have m- initials, but be/bue has a b- initial, which would be difficult to reconcile with 毋 as the first morpheme (in the first place, I personally avoid trying to 'force-assign' a Chinese character to the Min negative m, as some studies indicate that it may be of non-Sinitic origin... but that's a different story). On that basis, I would be more inclined to think that it is a contraction of either 不會/勿會, or 不解/勿解 (some references cite e as 解).

[xng]

xng wrote:
湛 - Tam / Wet

The Jiyun gives 㴷. 《集韻》覃韻都含切: "㴷, 濕也。" (For those of you whose screens do not display the character correctly, it is 氵+眈.)

reconcile with 毋 as the first morpheme (in the first place, I personally avoid trying to 'force-assign' a Chinese character to the Min negative m, as some studies indicate that it may be of non-Sinitic origin... but that's a different story). On that basis, I would be more inclined to think that it is a contraction of either 不會/勿會, or 不解/勿解 (some references cite e as 解).

I am not 'force assigning'.

During a contraction, the consonant might change and may have confused those 'experts' because of the consonant change. Looking at the other contractions like Mai and Mang, it is only logical that it is 毋 instead of 不 or 勿 which are used for literary purpose and not colloquail purpose. Furthermore, 不 is P and 勿 is M ? so none of these has the consonant B too.

M and B are quite close phonetically eg. 明 is pronounced Ming in some min dialect and Bing in other min dialect.

In cantonese, they use 毋會 too which went spoken in a fast manner , sound like Mui so this is the most logical original character.

We shouldn't create new characters for these exceptions just like what the cantonese did for 無 (tone change), 毋 (sound change to Mou instead of Mm).

Why is it that some dialect use 'Lang' instead of 'Gua Lang' (Guang) for we ? This is apparently another 'exception' consonant change.

Another example I can give is 'Siang' 相同, taiwanese say 'Kang' instead of 'Siang' because the consonant has changed from the original consonant 'S' which the south east asian chinese have retained. The taiwanese are now dreaming up of a false character 共 to explain the change. 共 has the wrong meaning and sound; fortunately, the overseas chinese still retain the original pronounciation.

As for 湛 or 氵+眈, this needs more research as I got 湛 from another forum which means 'wet with dew', the sound is correct but the tone could be wrong.

Is there anyway to find out the meaning, tone and sound of 氵+眈 online ?

[Andrew]

How can you justify using 毋 and 勿 for a simple negation i.e. in place of 不? In Classical Chinese 毋 was "do not ..." and 勿 was equivalent to "毋之...", although I understand that in modern Chinese 勿 means "do not ...".

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
Is there anyway to find out the meaning, tone and sound of 氵+眈 online ?

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... =%E3%B4%B7
The Unihan code for this character is U+3D37.

xng wrote:
We shouldn't create new characters for these exceptions just like what the cantonese did for 無 (tone change), 毋 (sound change to Mou instead of Mm).

I fully agree, which is why I personally am against the injudicious creation of characters like 冇 to account for the tone change in 無. What I mean is, e.g. unless I am certain that m is a contraction of 毋, I would mark that character with, say, parantheses (毋).

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
啥乜人 - Sia Mit Lang / Who

I do believe the correct pronunciation (in Amoy Hokkien) should be sim-miq-lang. Most reference texts I have seen write it as 甚物人(儂).

[xng]

xng wrote:

I fully agree, which is why I personally am against the injudicious creation of characters like 冇 to account for the tone change in 無. What I mean is, e.g. unless I am certain that m is a contraction of 毋, I would mark that character with, say, parantheses (毋).

You'll notice that the most common characters usually will deviate from their formal original tone or sound. Then after a few generations since there are no official written character for cantonese or min, the original character is lost and people start wondering whether it is sinitic or non-sinitic.

Look at 來 in cantonese, the vowel has changed to 'Lai' in HK but overseas chinese still speak 'Lei' (colloquail reading) and then the cantonese invented a new character Lai with mouth radical for this.

I am pretty sure that Bay originates from 毋 as it is very commonly used in everyday life and used for negation in other words too. The proof can be seen in some words such as 'Kang' instead of 'Siang' spoken in Taiwan.

[xng]

xng wrote:
啥乜人 - Sia Mit Lang / Who

I do believe the correct pronunciation (in Amoy Hokkien) should be sim-miq-lang. Most reference texts I have seen write it as 甚物人(儂).

There seems to be several pronounciation depending on which dialect.

I've heard of

Sim mit lang
Ha mit lang (corruption of Sia)
Sia mit lang (taiwanese shows)

Sia mit lang is confirmed in http://solution.cs.ucla.edu/~jinbo/dzl/lookup.php, enter 乜

物 is pronounced as But (literary) or Meng 物件 (colloquail) and not Mit

乜 is also used in cantonese to denote 'what'.

I've not heard of amoy hokkien to determine whether it is pronounced as Sim or Sia.

[xng]

xng wrote:
Is there anyway to find out the meaning, tone and sound of 氵+眈 online ?

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... =%E3%B4%B7
The Unihan code for this character is U+3D37.

Unfortunately, this character can't be cut and paste to check the meaning and sound on other websites.