#fun language facts

[spitesaurus]

Confession time: recently learned that voyeurism is not, in fact, a form of fortune-telling as I had previously thought

[yehoria-offical]

The polish word for that is tamten. Now, what's interesting about it is that it's a composite word. Tam means there. And ten means this. Poles say therethis to mean that.

Now ukrainian word for that is той(toy). But the polish sort of spills over into the western dialects, which also have another word: тамтой(tamtoy), which also means that, but там(tam) means there. So in western ukrainians sometimes say therethat to mean there. But it's specifically used for objects that are far away — out of reach, on the other side, etc..

And i just think that's beautiful.

And i think therethat should become a word in english.

For example: "See therethat cow?" And the cow is across the field.

[huanglaoshu]

So there's a construction in Chinese for adjectives which drives me a little nuts because when I was first learning, it wouldn't show up in the dictionaries I had access to.

I stumbled across it in MDZS just now, so I'm going to take the time to examine it a bit. It's an ABB pattern where A is the main adjective and B is a modifier of some sort. It showed up in MDZS as ways of talking about how dark it is in the saber tombs, so let's talk about the word 黑 (hei1, black).

In my physical book dictionary (Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary 3rd edition), the only ABB construction they give for 黑 is

黑油油 - jet black, shiny black. 油 by itself means oil.

Then I also use mdbg.net, where 黑油油 does not show up at all, but the following do (when I search c:黑*, i.e. black at the beginning)(there were 100 words returned for the search, and I found 6 of the construction I was looking for)

黑糊糊 (or 黑乎乎, 黑呼呼, or 黑忽忽) - black / dark / dusky / indistinct

黑沉沉 - pitch-black

黑洞洞 - pitch-dark

Which aren't even the constructions I came across in the novel, which I looked up in Pleco, and were

黑黝黝 - jet black, shiny black “洞口内黑黝黝的看不清楚”

黑魆魆 - dark “冷蓝色的剑光被黑魆魆的四周衬成了冷白色"

Readmore because this started getting long

Other ones on Pleco include

黑幽幽 - dim, dark

黑沉沉 - (same as mdbg but different meaning) gloomy, overcast (of the sky)

黑溜溜 - black and bright

黑漆漆 - pitch dark

黑蒙蒙 - (of a sky) dark and indistinct

黑魖魖 - dark

黑黢黢 - pitch dark

黑黪黪 - dark (of hair) swarthy (of skin)

Pleco wins this particular game...

(Seriously, smartphone with ability to draw characters + Pleco is so, so, so much better for this than what I had when I just started out learning Chinese) (radical/strokes and pinyin lookup takes a lot longer)

Pronunciations and meanings for the various "B" characters:

糊 (hu1)(paste/glue), 乎 (hu1)(exclamatory particle), 呼 (hu1)(exhale) and 忽 (hu1)(suddenly) all impart the same meaning when combined with 黑

黝 (you3)(black or dark green), 油 (you2)(oil), 幽 (you1)(secluded), are also variants of each other when combined with 黑

魆 (xu1)(beguile, suddenly, black, "a ghost that exhausts one's properties" (?)), 魖 (xu1)(black)

沉 (chen2)(submerge)

洞 (dong4)(hole/cave)

溜 (liu1) -- this one gets called an "Affix" "reduplicated after a monosyllabic adjective" (!!) (That is the vocabulary I needed!)(I think!) -- by itself it means slide/sneak off/glance/smooth/glossy

漆 (qi1)(paint, lacquer)

蒙 (meng2)(drizzle/cover/meet with/suffer/ignorance...)

黢 (qu1)(black, dark)

黪 (can3)(dark, dim, gloomy, bleak)

10 different sounds, 16 different characters to modify "black"...

And I'm probably going to have to run across them in context a dozen times before I figure out what to use when, because aside from some being about the sky or hair and some being shiny while other are not shiny, the dictionary definitions are basically the same.

[huanglaoshu]

I saw this post from @spaceshipoftheseus (and others) about "how is Wei Wuxian the head disciple as a teenager" (where are the adults?) and went off on an exploratory tangent about which words in Chinese mean "disciple."

Organized by parts of the book I found them in:

Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi's group of disciples who go to Mo Village are referred to as 姑苏蓝民长大的子弟, that is, "Gusu Lan's 子弟", disciples. When talking about Lan Jingyi alone, prior to introducing him, he is referred to as 那名弟子, "that 弟子", disciple.

The group are also referred to as 少年 (approximately "teenagers" as opposed to Jiang Cheng who is 青年 or a middle aged person who would be 中年) and also 小辈 (xiao3bei4), which I think the translators chose to translate as "juniors".

I mention this mostly because it's similar to the word 前辈 (qian2bei4), i.e. what Sizhui calls Wei Wuxian, ("Mo-qianbei") and it's kind of cute. ("little generation") Other related words are 后辈 (juniors) and 长辈 (seniors). 长辈 gets used when Jiang Cheng chastises Lan Jingyi for speaking to him on behalf of Lan Wangji at Dafan (the 长辈 are talking, why are you opening your mouth), which forces Sizhui to address Jin Ling when Lan Wangji continues to refuse to talk.

Uhhh... tangents, wheee!

子弟 = zi3di4 = a group of disciples

弟子 = di4zi3 = one particular disciple

Moving on to Dafan!

Speaking of Sizhui talking to Jin Ling, he says, hey don't you realize putting up a zillion nets is trapping 其他家族的修士? i.e. other family/clan's 修士, i.e. cultivators

The person who runs up to Jiang Cheng to report that all the nets have been destroyed is referred to as a 客卿

The person who runs up to Jiang Cheng in the tea house to report that shit's going down on this Dafan night hunt is referred to as a 门生

Su She is a 门生 when he is with the Lan Sect, and the people who show up to the Mingshi when the ghost arm is attacking people are 蓝家子弟与门生 (the 子弟 and 门生 of the Lan family/clan)

修士 = xiu1shi4 = cultivator (when cultivators are talking about each other)

客卿 = ke4qing1 = "archaic: person from one feudal state serving in the court of another" the first character is "guest" and the second can be a term for an official, or what an emperor might call his subjects

门生 = men2sheng1 = disciple

Other words!

When Wei Wuxian goes down to the cold springs to spy on Lan Wangji, the translation notes that female cultivators have a different part of Cloud Recesses, so there aren't a lot of guards in this section. The word that got translated as female cultivators is: 仙子们 (plural) (仙子 would be singular)(仙子 is the dog Fairy's name).

Mo-furen, when addressing the Lans, calls them 仙师

The waiter who recounts the tale of the Yueyang Chang massacre calls the cultivators 修仙

仙子 = xian1zi3 = female deity or celestial being

仙师 = xian1shi1 = the character for immortal/celestial being + the character for teacher or master

修仙 = xiu1xian1 = the dictionary says this is a verb "to cultivate to attain immortality" but it acted more like a noun in the text

Is there any conclusion?

Not really. I've mostly been noticing that a large variety of words are being used to describe people's positions in the sects, and got prodded/inspired to write down which ones were being used where. I haven't gotten to detailed descriptions of the Jiang sect yet, which is what the inspiration post was asking about, so don't really have answers to that. It's possible that you graduate from "disciple" to "cultivator" at some point, so being head "disciple" as a teenager makes sense? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[language-ofthe-elves]

Fun fact

the natural phenomenon of a ring of mushrooms on the ground known as a "Fairy circle", "Fairy ring", "Elf ring" or "Pixie ring" in english is called a witches circle in both french and dutch!

ronds de sorcières in french

and

heksen cirkel in dutch (though i may have gotten the words wrong for this one)

[dragonofthestone]

[Thing I just discovered

while the spelling is different the pronunciation for Dragonfly in both Greek and Spanish are incredibly similar]

[huanglaoshu]

Reading MDZS in Chinese, part the next

They've found the legs! And then Wei Wuxian says (to Lan Wangji, but seriously, Nie Huaisang is right there)

“这位仁兄看样子是被五马分尸啊。不光分尸了还被到处扔”

EXR translation: "Looks like our dear friend here was cut to pieces. And, not only that, the parts were scattered all over the place"

Commentary below the cut, due to the original is slightly more graphic.

Interesting detail in bold #1: (word for word) "was by five horses divide corpse" which means what you may think it means, that is, putting it gently, "was quartered" from "drawn and quartered"

Interesting detail in bold #2: 扔 (reng1) is the word you use when you talk about throwing away trash (扔垃圾)

Anyway, I was like, that's a really disrespectful way of talking about Nie Huaisang's Dage! And he knows you're talking about his Dage! He knows who the corpse is! And then Wei Wuxian is like "hope he wasn't chopped into pieces that are too small!!1!1!!"

(Does it actually read as callous if you're a native speaker? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Is 五马分尸 less graphic if it's a familiar idiom so you don't visualize it word by word? Probably.)

[huanglaoshu]

MDZS in Chinese, observations part whatever, the scene where they hear Fairy barking near Xinglu Ridge

Line 1: Wei Wuxian having heard Fairy bark, darts behind Lan Wangji and grabs his waist, crouches/squats down and curls up in a ball: 缩成一团 - suo1cheng2yi1tuan2 means curl up in a ball, and I like the phrase, it's nice.

Line 2: Lan Wangji says "still in a distant place (远处, 遠處) [I am trying to get better at recognizing the traditional version of both those characters. They're very common! And very different in simplified!] what are you hiding for"

Line 3: This, together with line 7, is the reason I took a picture of this! Wei Wuxian repeats 先 (xian1, first) seven times! So nervous! Also interesting that he uses the pronoun 牠 for Fairy (I might have assumed 它). (Wei Wuxian says: First hide, then talk. Where is it, where is it?)

Line 4: Lan Wangji listens and identifies the mystery dog as Jin Ling's 黑发灵犬 - black haired spirit dog. Which is the phrase used to describe Fairy every time they've appeared so far. Interesting thing is that they use the word 犬 (quan3) for dog rather than 狗 (gou3). I looked it up and 犬 seems to be either more formal/written, or for dogs that are larger. Fairy is described as 半人高 half-person-tall, so is definitely a large dog. When people are scared of Fairy in Qinghe, they describe Fairy as a 恶狗, so that backs up the 狗 is spoken, 犬 is formal, and possibly you don't say 灵狗, only 灵犬, because spirit dogs are special? Also, the traditional version is 靈犬, and the characters are so different!!! Ah!!!

Line 5 & 6: Wei Wuxian hears Jin Ling's name and stands up, but then hears the 犬吠 (quan3fei4, dog bark) and squats down again [吠 means bark because its components are "mouth" + "dog" and I love it], and then Lan Wangji says the spirit dog must be barking because there's a problem.

Line 7: So Wei Wuxian 叫苦不迭 (jiao4ku3budie2) shouts/calls-bitter-not-repeatedly, which means "complain endlessly", but manages to stand up again on trembling legs, and repeats 那 (na4, that/in that case/then) seven times before managing to say "In that case, let's go see!"

Line 8 & 9: Wei Wuxian is like, Hanguang Jun, why aren't you moving? If you don't move, what am I supposed to do, and Lan Wangji is like, ... you should let go of me first. No particular language things to point out, it's just a cute exchange.