AiG responds to Seebs

[RufusAtticus]

Hurrah! Seebs, you get a chocolate bunny for being the first to answer correctly.

“ye” is just a weird modern way of writing the old English “þe,” pronounced “the.” In modern English writing, “th” is used instead of “þ” and “ð,” to denote dental fricatives. However, before “thorn” left, the scribes had begun to write it without closing the loop with produced kind of slanted “y.” Later, people looking back at the old writings, thought the character was a true “y” and thus “ye” became part of our language. But how many English speakers would know that?

Now does everyone understand why simply knowing a language is not enough to determine whether the claims the historical significance of some word is valid or not, especially when speakers of the language disagree on it.

 

[seebs]

Indeed. I will bite the ears off of ye olde chocolate bunny.

 

[RufusAtticus]

I'll have ye Easter Bunny deliver it to you next spring.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Then enlighten us.

It's a thorn. Looks like you already posted that, though. If you want to play trivial pursuit, then where does the expression "sleep tight" come from? Where does the expression "pop goes the weasel" come from? And nobody answered the question about the origin of the word "glamour." And no fair looking it up on the 'net.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Now does everyone understand why simply knowing a language is not enough to determine whether the claims the historical significance of some word is valid or not, especially when speakers of the language disagree on it.

Yes, and I tried to make that point with the word "glamour." But in this case, the evidence is very strong that the word really comes from eight mouths in a vessel. It's not 100% conclusive, but the process involved in confirming it would be fairly straightforward as long as you have access to enough oracle bones to associate the changes in the characters with a rough timeline. So far it seems to match up extremely well, so if there is any evidence against it, it has yet to surface.

 

[seebs]

Finally! A Chinese person who knows more about etymology has responded:

<ajm3ks$1arbk1$1@ID-119091.news.dfncis.de>

(If you don't know what that is, try giving it to Google Groups as a message ID.)

Quoting:
BTW, the ship thing was not one of those characters you can decompose
directly in the way mentioned in most of the sites featured in this thread
and that back in May 25 2002 or there abouts.

Ship (chuan) is decomposed into left and right portions, of which the left
is the radical or signific meaning boat or vessel. The right portion is
actually a phonetic (composed of what looks to be eight + mouth), which at
the time of its invention would have rhymed or sounded close to the word
which meant 'ship', d'i<w>En. This "eight + mouth" is explained as being
"marsh at the foot of hills - [the seal depicts a gully and its <mouth>
opening: drainage, marsh] which the Sinologist Karlgren mentions in Analytic
Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese, p. 94. He gives the Old Chinese
reading *di<w>En for the gully, the initial was later lost which explains
the yan /ien/ reading in modern Mandarin
---
Neat, huh? If you look at the thing above the kou and the kou as a single glyph, it does indeed look just like that describes it.

We also have:
---
For the word to create, as { to talk + to walk } the 'to talk' character was
decomposed into earth + breath + alive, however, all Chinese sources points
to this portion of the character as being composed of cow + mouth. There
wasn't mention that that to create was written differently, in fact, with
the "vessel" signific of above next to {'cow' + 'mouth'}.
---

"cow" refers to the character niu, which the creationist sites misread as a composition of another character for "life" and shi, meaning dirt. However, it's clearly a niu; you don't keep decomposing past that.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

I finally got to ask my Chinese sister-in-law directly.&nbsp; I said "do you think of an eight when you see this picture?"

She said, "Definitely, it is an eight"

She grew up in China....

 

[seebs]

Which picture are you using? It appears that there's a font that I've seen only on creationist sites, which draws the character chuan2 differently than it is drawn in my Chinese dictionary! There's some discussion of this in talk.origins; it looks like the character is drawn two ways.

However, as noted, it is even more important to observe that the "thing over a mouth" is *ITSELF* a character, with a meaning, and that all of the evidence is that the whole thing is the component, not the rest of it.

Also, no offense, but "do you think of an eight when you see this picture" would get you thrown out of a court for leading the witness. The correct thing is to present it and say "what character is this?".

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by seebs
Which picture are you using? It appears that there's a font that I've seen only on creationist sites, which draws the character chuan2 differently than it is drawn in my Chinese dictionary! There's some discussion of this in talk.origins; it looks like the character is drawn two ways.

However, as noted, it is even more important to observe that the "thing over a mouth" is *ITSELF* a character, with a meaning, and that all of the evidence is that the whole thing is the component, not the rest of it.

Also, no offense, but "do you think of an eight when you see this picture" would get you thrown out of a court for leading the witness. The correct thing is to present it and say "what character is this?".

I am using the picture that I posted in this thread.&nbsp;

As far as the witness thing, give me a break.&nbsp; If it wasn't an 8, she would have said maybe, or kinda, or something.&nbsp; But she said plainly, it is "definitely an eight, period."

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
However, as noted, it is even more important to observe that the "thing over a mouth" is *ITSELF* a character, with a meaning, and that all of the evidence is that the whole thing is the component, not the rest of it.

This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I think you've ever said, and earns you the privilege of having all remaining assertions you make about any topic laughed off the planet.

ALL of the evidence?!?! You find one guy on the USENET who says it's only a phonetic, and that's ALL OF THE EVIDENCE?

First of all, as this fellow probably knows full well, one cannot base firm conclusions about the origins of characters strictly on phonetics because the pronunciation of any language changes dramatically over time. So unless you have a recording of the way everything was pronounced 4,000 or more years ago, any opinion you may have about phonetics will be pure conjecture.

Second, saying it's phonetic does not confirm or refute the origin of the combination of strokes as eight+mouth. It actually has NOTHING to say about the origin of the characters either way. The only way you can falsify the conclusion that it is eight+mouth is to find a case where the combination originated ELSEWHERE for other reasons, and you must eliminate the possibility that it was ever used in the context of eight+mouth prior to that origin.

Finally, you have the much more credible evidence of the "evolution" of the character for eight, which is strongly supported by the oracle script version of the word "boat." That is much more conclusive evidence than any conjecture about how some portion of the character was pronounced "once upon a time."

If all of the evidence points to anything, it points to someone who is desperately looking for a way to save face after having his foolish statements exposed.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

If all of the evidence points to anything, it points to someone who is desperately looking for a way to save face after having his foolish statements exposed.

I tend to agree. You have had two Chinese speakers confirm that it is an eight. Now, maybe you have a case about the rest of it, or maybe you don't, but the fact is that AiG was not lying or misleading people. That deserves a public notice.

 

[RufusAtticus]

I was just talking a Chinese grad student in my lab and he says it the disputed glyph means "several," not "eight." He also brought up the fact that writing was simplified about 20-30 years ago in China to remove and simplify most of the complex symbols. Maybe that is leading to the confusion among speakers.

 

[seebs]

I have heard of a couple of Chinese speakers, asked "do you think this looks like an eight", confirm that a character which is not the same as the one I have normally seen drawn, looks like an eight.

The fact remains that, in the font normally used, the character is drawn differently. The fact remains that we've seen *ZERO* support for this that didn't involve leading the witness.

Most importantly, the fact remains that the entire right side of the character is a single character, and that further decomposition is not consistent with Chinese linguistics.

And, remember, this is *just one* of the many characters under discussion. AiG did not even *respond* to the observation that, in general, some portion of a character is often pronunciation, not meaning. They did not address concerns about the choice of examples.

There are serious problems with the underlying claims made. Among them are:

1. There is no underlying reason to expect that the Chinese would have designed characters based on a story that no one in China expressed any familiarity with; it doesn't even make sense. If they remembered these things, perhaps there should have been some reference to them in their many many stories and documents.
2. The characters in question are, consistently, being drawn funny and/or misinterpreted. We have the example of the 'niu' (cow) in a character being decomposed further, with no explanation offered for why this should be relevant.
3. The sheer broadness of the claims makes them rediculous. The etymology proposed for "create" refers to God only in that they infer that the use of kou (mouth) refers to "breath from God's mouth". To call this a stretch is painful understatement.

I don't think, s0uljah, that you are entirely clear on how amazingly malleable peoples' minds are. If you announce on a bus that someone stole your radio, and ask for witnesses, you will probably get witnesses who can give a pretty good description of the thief, *EVEN IF THERE WAS NEVER ANY RADIO*.

There is a GIGANTIC difference between "What does this look like" and "is this an 8".

It also matters substantially which of the three or four different representations of that character you use... But, if you do it in context, and show it to an actual linguist, the answer you'll get is apparently "the right-hand side of the character is a phonetic component sounding a bit like wen".

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
I was just talking a Chinese grad student in my lab and he says it the disputed glyph means "several," not "eight." He also brought up the fact that writing was simplified about 20-30 years ago in China to remove and simplify most of the complex symbols. Maybe that is leading to the confusion among speakers.

Begging your pardon, but how exactly did you broach the subject? Did you show him just the corner glyph, or the whole word? How did you phrase your question? If I'm gonna come down on s0uljah for asking what sounds to me like a leading question, honesty requires that I question your methodology too.

 

[seebs]

Okay, I see the problem.

http://www.zhongwen.com/d/178/d238.htm

Note that they draw it two different ways - but most importantly, *THE ENTIRE RIGHT-HAND SIDE IS A PHONETIC*. It does not have the meaning of two separate words.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Seebs-

Your example is true, but it has nothing to do with recognizing a known character. My sister is an electrical engineer, and my brother is a mechanical engineer...ie, they both think very critically.&nbsp; Do you know a great way to get off of a jury?&nbsp; Tell them you are an engineer.

If I said to you, "is this an eight, 8" and you said yes, there is no room for interpretation...it isnt a 6, or a 7, it is an eight, period. This is ridiculous to argue...just admit you were wrong on the topic of the '8'

 

[RufusAtticus]

Seebs,

I asked him to write down "boat" and then asked if it was "ji" or "ba." He said it was a "ji," which means "many" not "eight." Furthermore, he added that it is difficult to make any conclusions about the significance of glyphs in Chinese writing without knowing their history. He said most people attempting to do so are fortune-tellers.

 

[seebs]

I'll admit that the character you showed them looks like an eight.

That character is only part of the way some people draw chuan; it is not necessarily the most correct one.

Furthermore, that character is not one of the radicals in chuan; the whole right-hand side of the word is a separate radical, consisting of two things stacked on top of each other. If you read the entry on Zhongwen, you'll see the different ways of drawing that phonetic component, which has its own meaning. (Note also that 'ba' can mean divide or separate, as well as 8, depending on context.)

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Seebs,

I asked him to write down "boat" and then asked if it was "ji" or "ba." He said it was a "ji," which means "many" not "eight." Furthermore, he added that it is difficult to make any conclusions about the significance of glyphs in Chinese writing without knowing their history. He said most people attempting to do so are fortune-tellers.

Okay. Well, according to my source, he's wrong too, because the whole thing is phonetic, but it's interesting. Which area of China did he learn his Chinese from? This is starting to look like a regional difference in drawing.

 

[seebs]

Oh, BTW, one other data point. Chinese characters were invented around 4500 years ago, and there is some historical evidence that the early forms go back more like 8000 years. 4500 is nicely documented, though, and is *before* the tower of Babel supposedly happened.