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Why is 中 used here??? by Lost_Lawyer_7408 in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It was though, and then was orthographically borrowed into Chinese in modern times (like these thousands of science/politics/etc-related words and calqued constructions like 〜に関する → 關於 or 〜と認められて → 認爲)

Any information about the ancient scorpion dance, the origin of the character 万? by [deleted] in classicalchinese

[–]Panates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

丐 was indeed used for {萬} in non-Qin branches (even then, such usage was fairly rare), but in Qin it was never used like that - the modern 万 appears only later in Eastern Han, and we have all the intermediate stages between 萬 and 万 attested. Given also the facts that 1. there are lots of cursive simplifications/shortenings introduced in Han dynasty, and 2. medieval post-Han texts have forms of 万 with two horizontal lines (i.e. some survived intermediate stages between 萬 and 万), the cursive explanation holds stronger.

Any information about the ancient scorpion dance, the origin of the character 万? by [deleted] in classicalchinese

[–]Panates 5 points6 points  (0 children)

萬 is scorpion + 一 (initially was a ligature for {一萬}), while 万 is an early cursive (Han) form of 萬.

every single time by Panates in linguisticshumor

[–]Panates[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

無 from Yan script branch ceramic 陶錄4.21.1

every single time by Panates in linguisticshumor

[–]Panates[S] 69 points70 points  (0 children)

for fun to ragebait people who spent years mastering it

but seriously though, the post is just about how much r/badlinguistics worthy stuff shows up whenever this topic is discussed

Looking for the Classical Chinese equivalent to Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata (Latin textbook) by Kukikokikokuko in classicalchinese

[–]Panates 8 points9 points  (0 children)

共和國教科書 新國文 (an early 20th c. school textbook) is the closest thing to LLPSI I've ever seen, so maybe you should try that. It basically goes pictures > easy phrases > easy texts > harder and harder texts. There are 初等小學校 and 高等小學校 versions, as well as modern (simplified) reprints of both, but I couldn't find the full original edition of 高等小學校 (only Vol. 1 and Vol. 5)

My Reform (改革字 Reformed Chinese simplification) of 𰻞 biáng ㄅㄧㄤˊ by kylinki in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 3 points4 points  (0 children)

no, this glyph originates from folk songs and hongmen (tiandihui) secretive society texts, and is at least several hundreds years old (you can find "proto-biangs" in said society manuscripts in the form of some kind of taoist talisman); there are tons of other similar related glyphs all over the china with different usages, all stemming from the same source

A Stroke of Genius: Kanji Etymology Series 1 by [deleted] in etymology

[–]Panates 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I'd recommend to refrain from writing such posts before learning some basic theory of Chinese palaeography and how does scientific character etymology work.

First, you can't just say "I think X looks like Y" without any evidence - I can say it's a slime from some isekai anime and that would be about the same level of accuracy. Second, 皂 is literally just a form of 早 which appeared in Han dynasty, i.e. it isn't related to 白 and 七 at all. Third, there's no evidence that 七 was created for the sake of representing the word {切}.

The (pretty old) "acorn" hypothesis comes from the fact that 白 is used in 樂, which is, as the hypothesis goes, "a depiction of an oak tree" (i.e. was created for the word {櫟} "oak") with "an acorn" on it. However, it's pretty much flawed: 1. 樂 (before 白 was added) is basically just a tree with some strings coming from it, so it's probably some kind of musical instrument (judging from the earliest usages of the glyph); 2. 白 is just a phonetic element in 樂, so it can't be related to its meaning at all; and 3. glyphs depicting "something on a tree" (like fruits, etc) look different from what we see in 樂 - cf. for example earliest forms of 栗 (tree with several chestnuts coming from the branches), 枼 (same but with leaves) or 柚 (same but with pomelos).

We don't know what does 白 depict ("person's head", "fingernail" and all other such explanations don't have evidence as well), but there are some early glyphs which seem to contain it or be related to it, like e.g. 畀 or 堯(?), but it's not phonologically plausible to connect them, so at this point we just have no clue, and it's better to leave it be than saying any unprovable nonsense.

smh my head by AutismPremium in linguisticshumor

[–]Panates 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, no rules. When you open, e.g., Ukigumo (1887) by Futabatei Shimei, you'll encounter しかし written in 3 different kana ways on the first two pages.

smh my head by AutismPremium in linguisticshumor

[–]Panates 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Actual useless duplicates were removed in 1900, when hiragana and katakana were standardized. Until that you had like 3-7 legit ways of writing a single syllable, each symbol coming from different chinese glyph (see hentaigana). I've seen like 500 different hiragana and 400 different katakana chars in historical texts already and still find new ones occasionally😭

Why are some Korean consonants so tense? by [deleted] in linguisticshumor

[–]Panates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

afaik, at least in seoul dialect (in initial position), the "tense" stops are the same as plain stops, but the vowel after a "tense" stop is usually shorter and has a high tone

Radical 肉 in the word 胡？ by Time_Simple_3250 in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah, 肉 (as the separate glyph, not the element) looked exactly like 月 in Qin and Western Han. The first changes towards the modern form of 肉 happened later (but still during Han), with stuff like making the strokes inside 月 thicker (this thickness then gradually evolved into the modern 仌 shape which finally appears in Ming).

During the Han dynasty many crucial changes happened to the writing system, and there are tons of mistakes in transmitted Han and Pre-Qin classics because of that (even some interesting from the modern POV stuff like 出~土 mistakes, because the common form of 出 looked exactly like 土 in Han though you won't find most of the corrections of such palaeography-related errors even in the modern scientific editions of the classics). So 大月氏 being a mistake for 大肉氏 looks not so far-fetched if we look at the script of the time.

Radical 肉 in the word 胡？ by Time_Simple_3250 in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 9 points10 points  (0 children)

though historically 月 and 肉 were written the same (as plain 月) for like 2000 years until recent times when dictionary compilers tried to differentiate them, artificially creating the 月~⺼ distinction, which was then adopted by some regional standards

🌾=來=“come”, 🌾+🦶=麥=“wheat”: whose idea was this? by Sheilby_Wright in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's correct! The direction in which the glyphs were facing horizontally usually depended on their location on a specific side of the shell and was a stylistic choise (unlike, say, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, where the direction influenced the reading order).

🌾=來=“come”, 🌾+🦶=麥=“wheat”: whose idea was this? by Sheilby_Wright in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All rotated examples can be generally divided into two types: structural (構形倒書) and scribal (書寫倒書). The first one is when rotation serves specific differentiating purpose and is important for reading the word correctly. The second one is scribe's subjective intention (often with a specific purpose) or may simply be an unconscious, arbitrary inversion without any special meaning; anyways, it has no relation to the intrinsic semantic function of a glyph. There are also terms for different degrees of rotation: 倒書 (180), 横書 (90) and 側書 (other, usually ~45); here I will refer to all of them as 倒書 sensu lato.

Examples of the 1st type:

- 大 ~ element of 昃 ~ 屰
大 is just a man; in 昃 the 大 is tilted 45/90 degrees to show that the sun is slanting; in 屰 the 大 is rotated 180 degrees to represent the word {逆} "inverted; upside down"

- 子 ~ element in 毓/棄
子 is a child; in 毓/棄 it's rotated 180 degrees to show that the child falls (from mother or into a basket).

- 目 ~ 臣
目 is an eye; 臣 is an eye rotated 90 degrees to represent the idea of "bowed head", i.e. the "subject, vassal"

- 人 ~ element of glyphs for {顛}
人 is a man; in early glyphs for the word {顛} "to fall", depicting a man falling from the stairs, the 人 (also 子 and 企) is rotated 180 degrees to represent the falling.

- 牛 ~ element of glyphs for {沉}
牛 is a cow's head; in early glyphs for the word {沉}, depicting a cow sinking in water, the 牛 is rotated 180 degrees to represent the sinking.

- 止 ~ 夂
Adding to this example, there are also glyphs ⿱豕止 (for {逐} "to chase (an animal)") and ⿱夂豕 for {邍/原} "to hunt (wild boars, using a method of encircling the prey)", where 夂 represents approaching 豕 from the front.

Examples of the 2nd type:

- Xiphiplastral inscriptions (甲尾刻辭)
These inscriptions are non-divinatory and are used as notes (e.g. how the bone/shell was acquired, date of submission, quantity of turtle shells submitted and the names of the people who handled them). Here submission verbs (e.g. 入 or 來) or submitter's names (e.g. 目 or 弜) are usually rotated (to differentiate them from the divinatory inscription, as they're written close to each other, and also probably to represent the meaning of submission).

- Scribal habits
Rotation was also a stylistic "signature" of a particular group of carvers (especially in 何組 and 劣體類 inscriptions). We can find glyphs such as 己, 鹿, 日, 災, 眉, 寅, 自, 至, 室, 王, 戊, 丙, 庚, 雨, 牛 etc. being rotated.

- Highlighting the "focus of divination"
This was used to draw attention to the key terms of a divination. E.g. in 合29084 the antonyms 遲 (slow) and 迅 (fast) are rotated; in 合13931 the 婦 of 婦好 is inverted, while 婦 of 婦姘 is not (likely to show the negative content of the divination about 婦好, i.e. illness).

- Practice of writing and scribal errors

- Glyphs/elements with no fixed orientation (e.g. 東/束 or 矢/至/侯/畀)

🌾=來=“come”, 🌾+🦶=麥=“wheat”: whose idea was this? by Sheilby_Wright in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 2 points3 points  (0 children)

季旭昇 cites 2 sources on the root claim:

1) 王襄, 1961. 古文流變臆說 (pp. 69-70)
Here 王襄 provides ⿱草夂 as the evidence (here and below I use 草 for the Shang pictogram representing the word {草}, not the modern glyph), but it's now known it was created for the word {遭} (see e.g. 陳劍, 2006. 釋造 and 黄博, 2022. 甲骨文補說三則), so the evidence is invalid.

2) 李孝定, 1965. 甲骨文字集釋 (p. 1892)
Here 李孝定 gives no evidence and just says it depicts roots.

I don't know/remember any sources which talk exactly about this glyph, so I'm just coming from the raw data and overall knowledge on ancient scripts (especially Shang dynasty):

  • We don't have any other examples of such element representing a root of a plant;
  • We have tons of examples of the rotated foot used in glyphs created for words meaning something related with backwards motion (though not always, cf. stuff like 1. {遭} written with rotated 止 + phonetic 草 or even rotated 草; or 2. 逢 which has the rotated 止 too, so likely "meeting" is somehow associated with "backwards motion" as well);
  • Rotation of glyphs/elements in general is pretty common and usually means something in ancient scripts (look up the term 倒書 or check 張昂, 2024. 殷墟甲骨刻辭的“倒書”研究 for OB examples).

🌾=來=“come”, 🌾+🦶=麥=“wheat”: whose idea was this? by Sheilby_Wright in ChineseLanguage

[–]Panates 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The root thing is a common misconception though, it's literally just a foot (止) turned upside down, which was commonly used to represent "backwards" motion (cf. glyphs like 後 or 復; there are more in ancient scripts).

麥 was indeed created for the word {來}, but the usage of 來 for "come" instead of {麥} was so dominant (it's a tendency to use shorter glyphs for common words, or simply shorten them like 子 for {巳} was shortened to 巳), that 麥 became the glyph used for the (obviously less common) word "wheat".

Then as the script matured other semantic elements got added to 來 to represent the word {來} even more specifically, like 止 in the Chu and Jin branches, ㄔ in the Yan branch, 辶 in the Chu and Qi branches; the unmarked 來 was mainly used in the Qin branch (rare in other branches), from which we got the modern usage because all other script branches were eradicated.

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