Analyzing crazy eights for seebs

[ashibaka]

Originally posted by npetreley
I didn't say it wasn't an etymology. I said it wasn't the FULL etymology.

So, you mean, all those other 'flow'-related words have "eight" in them as well? Cooooool!

Yan, water flowing along a ravine. Qian, metal that flows in a mold/ravine, and ship which is labelled as "boat" with a phonetic.

I didn't know the Noah's Ark story had Noah & friends floating along through the Grand Canyon. Much less Noah making his ark out of a metal cast! Given the technology of the time, I think his ark would have sunk, right?

 

[seebs]

Found this on Usenet:

---
The difference between the so-called "ji" �L or the "ba" �K
over the "mouth" are insignificant variants in the typefaces
used in modern (since 200 AD or so) books. It definitely
isn't anything to so with the "ji" mentioned in previous
posts. In the oracle bone and other archaic scripts the
character yan3 the RH side of �u (the phonetic or RH side of
the boat character in question �&#65533, the upper element is
much more complex, but was gradually simplified into two
strokes resembling the modern character "ba," now used for
the number eight. In the oracle bone and pre-Han script, the
upper element is part of the word for water: water that runs
down the two sides of a ravine and turns into mud. There
absolutely is no "eight" in the word, ancient or modern --
creationist wishful thinking notwithstanding -- except to
the eye of a modern reader with no understanding of the
archaic script and the generations of scribal
simplifications that brought us to the (Han-era) graphs we
see and use today. The entire discussion is totally
irrelevant to the history of the Chinese writing system. Sad
but true.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
Found this on Usenet:

That's your defense?!?!?! Found this on usenet?!?! I can find lots of nudie pictures on the usenet, too, but that doesn't make the silicone real.

Originally posted by seebs
the upper element is much more complex, but was gradually simplified into two strokes resembling the modern character "ba," now used for the number eight.

Oh, really? So let's have a look at the ancient oracle script for the character. Pay careful attention to the upper right hand portion -- the "upper element" which is SO much more complex.

I'm not sure which is more pitiful: How oblivious you are to the truth, or watching a professing Christian so desperate to deny evidence that a story in the Bible is true.

 

[Susan]

I'm not sure which is more pitiful: How oblivious you are to the truth, or watching a professing Christian so desperate to deny evidence that a story in the Bible is true
Amen Nick. . .and seebs, stop this charade at once, for God is watching you. . .

 

[seebs]

Susan, I think you should read through this much more carefully. This "evidence" is a pathetic stretch someone invented in 1979; it contradicts everything we know about Chinese etymology. The character in question means either division or water, and has been simplified over the last thousand or more years to be similar to other characters.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by Susan
I'm not sure which is more pitiful: How oblivious you are to the truth, or watching a professing Christian so desperate to deny evidence that a story in the Bible is true
Amen Nick. . .and seebs, stop this charade at once, for God is watching you. . .

Susan, I didn't know Christians were to go looking for evidence for biblical truth in chinese orthography. Even if the correct etymology were boat+eight+mouths, how is that evidence for the truth of a Bible story?

Come on. Despite there being no physical evidence that a global flood ever happened, the impossibility of carrying all creatures on an Ark, the impossibility that all living creatures are descended from just a pair of ancestors some 4000 years ago, and the impossibility that a loving God would just up and kill just about all of humanity--men, women, children, and the unborn--despite all this, in written Chinese "boat"="vessel"+"eight"+"mouth" is evidence that the Bible story is true, reguardless of the sketchyness of the etymology. That dog won't hunt.

To me it is really sad to see you jump so quickly to attack the faith of a fellow believer. Last time I looked, God only cared whether you accept Jesus as your personal savior. If God is watching, He is probably proud that Seebs' faith is so strong that he doesn't need to worship the Bible.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
Susan, I think you should read through this much more carefully. This "evidence" is a pathetic stretch someone invented in 1979; it contradicts everything we know about Chinese etymology.

Translation: Everything HE knows about Chinese etymology, which can be summed up with "Found on the usenet".

Originally posted by seebs
The character in question means either division or water, and has been simplified over the last thousand or more years to be similar to other characters.

Yes, as the oracle script shows, it has been simplified dramatically over the ages. It went from two strokes all the way to two strokes.

 

[npetreley]

So where are all the examples of the complicated "eight" that precedes the oracle script two-stroke version? And where's that analysis of all the other Chinese characters we've been waiting for?

 

[Morat]

  Karlgren did do the etymology, Nick. I gave you the reference. And as he's a noted expert on Chinese etymology, I trust him more than you. Here, however, is a nice page showing Karlgren's treatment of it. The etymology is clear: The original phoetnic was for "marsh at the foot of the hills".

  Of course, if you're truly desperate, you can claim he's lying about Karlgren. But you better have the book in front of you when you do, Nicky-boy.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Morat
  Karlgren did do the etymology, Nick. I gave you the reference. And as he's a noted expert on Chinese etymology, I trust him more than you. Here, however, is a nice page showing Karlgren's treatment of it. The etymology is clear: The original phoetnic was for "marsh at the foot of the hills".

  Of course, if you're truly desperate, you can claim he's lying about Karlgren. But you better have the book in front of you when you do, Nicky-boy.

1. You'd trust anything which disagreed with me, regardless of its credibility. Remember, you're the guy who made claims about a radio spot without even listening to it. You just took the contrary position regardless of the evidence, so it doesn't matter how credible Karlgren is, but how much your opinion lacks any credibility whatsoever.

2. Karlgren simply stopped his etymology with the phonetic. That isn't a full etymology of the character.

 

[Morat]

  No, Kalgren didn't. Why don't you go dig up his work and find out for yourself. The web page discussed only the phonetic, because only the phonetic is at issue here!.

  Kalgren, by the way, is the best Western source for ancient Chinese, and is responsible for much of the work reconstructing it. I can't imagine a better source.

  That crow sure do taste awful, don't it? You invested a lot of time, energy, and insults, and now that people have bothered to check with the actual experts you find yourself with the short end of the stick.

 

[npetreley]

Others can judge for themselves who should be eating crow. I know what I think, and now I know what you think.

 

[Morat]

  Nick, answer me one question honestly: Why should anyone take the your opinion over Kalgren's?

  Bear in mind the following:

1) You don't speak Chinese. You don't speak Ancient Chinese, for sure. You do not have an education in ancient Chinese, are not an expert in any way, shape, or form on China, Chinese, or Chinese History.

2) Kalgren does speak Chinese. He has an extensive education in China, Chinese, and Chinese history. And, more importantly, he personally did most of the work (in the West, at least) reconstructing Ancient Chinese, which is of course the topic at hand.

   This information came directly from his work, and it simply another word he reconstructed, having no clue as to the sorts of claims people would make regarding a simple word in Ancient Chinese.

 

 

[npetreley]

At the risk of having you misinterpret my response as an indication that I think you're worth arguing with, I'll answer this last objection and then let you entertain yourself on your own. You know full well this is not a case of me vs. Karlgren. It is not my own private interpretation.

 

[Morat]

  Oh, that's right. There's also the guy at AiG who is also not a native Chinese speaker, and is also not an expert on Ancient Chinese.

  Once again, you're claiming a noted expert in the very field is wrong, and supporting yourself with the personal opinion of a man who is most certainly not a noted expert, and whose list of errors was quite a bit greater than merely making up an etyomolgy.

 

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by Morat
  Oh, that's right. There's also the guy at AiG who is also not a native Chinese speaker, and is also not an expert on Ancient Chinese.

  Once again, you're claiming a noted expert in the very field is wrong, and supporting yourself with the personal opinion of a man who is most certainly not a noted expert, and whose list of errors was quite a bit greater than merely making up an etyomolgy.

 

I asked a native speaker of Chinese, and she said it was definitely an eight.

 

[Morat]

  Souljah: Was your "native Chinese speaker" an expert on Ancient Chinese? Hmm? Did you read Kalgren's etymology? Apparantly not. Why don't you go read it, okay?



 

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by s0uljah
I asked a native speaker of Chinese, and she said it was definitely an eight.

Many native speakers of Chinese and scholars trace the phonetic back to eight+mouth. That's the etymology shown by the zhongwen web site, which lets you drill down through the etymology of characters. And here's where that web site gets its information:

This web site and its associated printed dictionary present a series of zipu or "character genealogies" which show graphically the close interconnections between over 4000 characters according to the Shuowen Jiezi and subsequent research by traditional etymologists.

So one guy allegedly disagrees, and that according to someone with zero credibility and no actual evidence that he would disagree if asked the question directly. Big deal.

 

[Morat]

  You didn't read the link I gave you, did you? You should have. You'd realize what a fool you're making of yourself. Even your site calls it "an abbrieviation for water", and it's etymology keeps popping up as "gully". I'm guessing you simply can't read your own etymologies.

 

[Morat]

  Oddly, if I click on the link you gave at the beginning, I get the phonetic yun, which is (now) eight over ravine or ditch. Kalgren traces it to ien, which is "marsh at the foot of the hills", specifically a gully and it's opening.

  You can see the change in the characters clearly. Oh, and Shouwen, by the way, is short for ShuoWen JieZi, which didn't appear until 100 BC to 121 AD. A little late for Noah, innit? And the etymology is clear.

  You seem to have a problem keeping the modern form straight from the ancient.