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Re: Chinese terms, what should and shouldn't be used...From: spongebob
Subject: General
Date/Time 2005-05-17 01:12:16
Remote IP: 219.134.131.248
Messagemax is right about ancient chinese. even the most educated chinese people cannot read it and understand it. sure they can pronounce all the characters, but there's way more to it than that. i've only ever found one modern chinese person who can read the ancient texts and comprehend them. he was a taoist monk. it's like a modern english speaker trying to read beowulf in the original language. everyone studies it in school, but....
even the bible loses a lot in translation and that's translated from one indo-european language to antoher. chinese is in a completely different family.
there are a few more people than max suggests though that can read it. my one criticism of max's assessment (which is not his fault) is the use of wade-giles spellings for chinese words. the new standard, in effect sinc ethe 1950's, is pinyin romanization. the wade-giles method is useless, at least in mainland china, and even somewhat in the West since all the new dictionaries use pinyin for their alphabetical organization. i recommend that anyone who is serious about studying chinese familiarize themselves with pinyin romanization, since it also includes the proper tones, an essential since chinese is a tonal language. hsin could mean heart, new, or a host of other words, depending on the written character and tone assigned to it. thus xin(1) means heart and xin(4) means new, and so forth.
the word "tao" in pinyin is "dao," and "tao" in pinyin means several other completely unrelated things. it will take approximtaely five whole minutes to explain to them that "tao" (the acceptable englsih spelling of the chinse character meaning "way") is in fact the same as "dao" in pinyin. if they have a master's degree or higher. otherwise they may never get it or ask why englsih speakers write it the wrong way.
i'll go one step further and say that the vast majority of chinese today know less than any of us about ancient chinese culture, buddhist or taoist, and have very little interest in learing anything about it. they'd rather watch the NBA playoffs or "Titanic."
i remember asking people in china about terms i found in an eva wong book and they couldn't help me at all. in "art of the bedchamber," the author of that book also uses wade-giles, but he includes the chinese characters for reference, thus facilitating discussion between westerners and chinese. other books i have use pinyin, and even without the characters, the people i've talked to can figure out the meaning and enter into productive dialogue.
finally, if you want to see what a modern daoist from wudang has to say about methods and cultivation, you can read peter falk's recetn article about his trip to wudang at www.taobums.com, not to be confused with www.taobum.com. part three is the relevant piece.
spongin and bobbin,
sb
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