Chinese languages

That's like saying Microsoft invented the computer. Ok, ok, Microsoft DID invent the X Box right? Wow, what an innovation.

I think (I may be wrong) electronics can be given credit to Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric company, which basically is the grandaddy of electronic appliances. How long has Sony been around for anyway?

Sure, they've invented a lot of modern things but those are based off of previous inventions. Well maybe somebody else invented the book, a poster, or report, but the paper itself can be attributed to the Chinese. I believe the Egyptians had something similar, papyrus?, but I think that's taken directly from a plant. Hey, that word sounds awfully similar to 'paper'.

Hey, Mark I wrote you a message with a lot of questions in the Hokkien forum, but you still haven't answered for a couple weeks, wonder if you're going to get around to it?????

Ooh, sorry about that. I just haven't been here recently until yesterday, and I didn't check anything except this and a couple other threads in the Cantonese forum.

>"sushi"
>is a preserved archaic Japanese word, but unnaturally forced to be
>written in Chinese characters as 壽司.

日本語で、「鮨」です。
In Japanese, it's 鮨 and not 壽司.

Also, there's the ancient Japanese word "yamato" (やまと)大和, which is written in Harnji based on its meaning and not its sound. But this is highly irregular for Japanese words.

(Oh, YAMATO is the ancient Japanese word for "Japan", before the EVIL CHINESE came and told them "you are NIHON, the root of the sun")

Mark wrote:
> >"sushi"
> >is a preserved archaic Japanese word, but unnaturally forced
> to be
> >written in Chinese characters as 壽司.
>
> 日本語で、「鮨」です。
> In Japanese, it's 鮨 and not 壽司.

No, you are mistaken. Both 壽司 and 鮨 are both valid, and 壽司
(for the first character, use the Japanese simplified form, U+5BFF) is
actually more common--if you do a search on Google and have it return
only pages in Japanese, it's 332,000 to 77,200.


> Also, there's the ancient Japanese word "yamato"
> (やまと)大和, which is written in Harnji
> based on its meaning and not its sound. But this is highly
> irregular for Japanese words.

Irregular?? Haven't you heard of ateji?


> (Oh, YAMATO is the ancient Japanese word for "Japan", before
> the EVIL CHINESE came and told them "you are NIHON, the root
> of the sun")

Huh? The usage 日本 is Japanese in origin, from their correspondence.
The Chinese called them "yematai".


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

Thomas Chan wrote:
> Mark wrote:
> > (Oh, YAMATO is the ancient Japanese word for "Japan", before
> > the EVIL CHINESE came and told them "you are NIHON, the root
> > of the sun")
>
> Huh? The usage 日本 is Japanese in origin, from their
> correspondence.
> The Chinese called them "yematai".

Here are the characters for yematai: 耶馬台. Another name the
Chinese used was wo 倭.


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

the gab-gol characters were found to be recorded in an ancient
Korean history book called 'Chun-bu-kyung' that was published during the
Koryeo dynasty, in the late 14-th century. As the gab-gol characters were
firstly found from relicts of the Yin dynasty in 1899 AD, it is highly
unlikely that the Koryeo author in the 14-th century would have copied the
gab-gol characters from relicts of the Yin dynasty in China. This suggests
that prototype of hanja (chinese character) was indeed Korean, because
Chun-bu-kyung is the oldest history book in Korea and it recorded the
original forms of the bone and shell characters.

Since 1961, bone and shell characters have been found in bones from Korea,
but this is the first time that they are recorded in the book. No known
Chinese history book recorded the forms of bone and shell characters. It is
expected that this finding will help decipher some bone and shell characters
that have not yet deciphered.

Detailed story is published in an academic paper (korean). You can read the
paper at http://www.hanja.com/plus/board/table/n ... ejong1.pdf
(you may need Korean fonts to read, but still you can see some pictures)
This paper also compares bone and shell characters between Yin, Koryeo
(Chun-bu-kyung) and great seal, together with some pictures of bone and
shell characters included in the Koryeo history book.

and regarding the "dong I", Ta wen k'ou, Lung-shan, Shang were essentially consists of "East I", whereas
Yangshao was essentially Chinese . Even most
Chinese archaeologists agree on this. Kwang-Chih Chang (1987) The Archaeology of Ancient China. Yale Univ.

Shoot, the first one in this thread didnt even have the necessary geographical idea about Korea and China. The Palace Location for Shang Dynasty is in Anyang which is almost in the middle of China. So how come Koreans would travel so deep into China as to make the characters???this is way to stupid! I don't wanna talk more about it!

> gab-gol characters from relicts of the Yin dynasty in China.
> This suggests that prototype of hanja (chinese character) was
> indeed Korean, because Chun-bu-kyung is the oldest history
> book in Korea and it recorded the original forms of the bone
> and shell characters.


You mentioned elsewhere that Chun-bu-kyung only dates back to the 14th century. That would give 3000 or so years of unrecorded history between this point in time, and the dated artifacts found at the Yin Dynasty excavations.

The Korean peninsula state 'dynasties' began after China's Zhou dynasty, more than a thousand years after the beginning of Chinese characters.


> Since 1961, bone and shell characters have been found in bones
> from Korea, but this is the first time that they are recorded
> in the book. No known Chinese history book recorded the forms
> of bone and shell characters. It is expected that this finding
> will help decipher some bone and shell characters that have not
> yet deciphered.

> Detailed story is published in an academic paper (korean). You
> can read the paper at
> http://www.hanja.com/plus/board/table/n ... ejong1.pdf

The characters are clearly jinwen or bronze inscription characters. They are quite old, almost contemporaneous with those of the jiaguwen or oracle bone characters.

Jinwen are known throughout China, because the tradition of bronzes begin from jiaguwen era and continue to the end of the warring states. That is a 1000 year tradition of jinwen, and within a few hundred years of Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi of the early Han Dynasty.

From the site, http://www.fathom.com/feature/121782

[begin quote]
The translation of the oracle bone script was made easier by the survival of an early dictionary, Xu Shen's Shuowen jiezi (c. 120 CE). Xu Shen set out to "explain and interpret" nearly 10,000 characters, mostly from inscriptions in the "small seal" style of the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), but he also included many oracle bone graphs. At the time Xu Shen was writing, Chinese characters were written in a style that is still in use today, so his dictionary formed a bridge between the ancient past and the present.
[end quote]

As Xu Shen also included oracle bone characters, it nullifies your claim.

Dyl.

What is Xu Shen's name written in characters?

雪V

Dyl.

EVERYONE KNOW THE CHINESE HAS THE LONGEST CONTINOUS CULTURE IN THE WORLD. CHINESE CULTURES HAVE INFLUENCES MANY CULTURES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND EAST ASIA LIKE JAPAN AND KOREAN.