汉字; Rawr Edition.
Feb. 26th, 2026 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petsohp A couple of months ago, I declared my love for dinosaurs; especifically speaking about how their hold on cultural myths all around the world makes me really emo.
And well well well, wouldn't you know what the term for 'dinosaur' in chinese is? Its '恐龍'! (Yes, we are traditional fans here...mainly because the information nuggets of meaning in traditional are well, there...mostly). I fear (heh) the chinese got me good this time, they were miles ahead of me in that certain hypothesis.
So: '恐', means 'to fear/fearful, be afraid', and '龍', well, 'dragon' and the equivalent of the suffix of 'saur' in palentology. For example, the term Plesiosaur is translated to 蛇頸龍, 'Snake neck dinosaur'. And because we are nerds that get things correct in here, to further clarify: the term Plesiosaur is the generic term for the marine animals that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, the term 'saur' is greek for lizard/reptile; remember that when the first dinosaurs were classified, no one thought they could be birds. Which is probably why in chinese the word '恐' was allocated to this group of animals: that was the common sentiment for these creatures at the time. Ah, science!
So to continue with '恐龍'.
'恐' has the heart component (心), the worker/labour component (工), and a new one for me, 凡, meaning 'in general, ordinary/commonplace'. I'll be real with you folks, I have no idea how these three components are suppose to mean 'fear'. In fact, the only component that makese sense to me is the heart component. Truly, language of all times.
You know which character is really interesting? '龍'. According to my research, an alternative for this character was, '竜'. And well, funny thing is..that in Japan '竜' is not an ancient alternative character; its the official 'simplified' character, in the shinjitai.
Man, this one got really...loong.
And well well well, wouldn't you know what the term for 'dinosaur' in chinese is? Its '恐龍'! (Yes, we are traditional fans here...mainly because the information nuggets of meaning in traditional are well, there...mostly). I fear (heh) the chinese got me good this time, they were miles ahead of me in that certain hypothesis.
So: '恐', means 'to fear/fearful, be afraid', and '龍', well, 'dragon' and the equivalent of the suffix of 'saur' in palentology. For example, the term Plesiosaur is translated to 蛇頸龍, 'Snake neck dinosaur'. And because we are nerds that get things correct in here, to further clarify: the term Plesiosaur is the generic term for the marine animals that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, the term 'saur' is greek for lizard/reptile; remember that when the first dinosaurs were classified, no one thought they could be birds. Which is probably why in chinese the word '恐' was allocated to this group of animals: that was the common sentiment for these creatures at the time. Ah, science!
So to continue with '恐龍'.
'恐' has the heart component (心), the worker/labour component (工), and a new one for me, 凡, meaning 'in general, ordinary/commonplace'. I'll be real with you folks, I have no idea how these three components are suppose to mean 'fear'. In fact, the only component that makese sense to me is the heart component. Truly, language of all times.
You know which character is really interesting? '龍'. According to my research, an alternative for this character was, '竜'. And well, funny thing is..that in Japan '竜' is not an ancient alternative character; its the official 'simplified' character, in the shinjitai.
Man, this one got really...loong.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-01 05:16 am (UTC)I also love dinosaurs. :D
'恐' has the heart component (心), the worker/labour component (工), and a new one for me, 凡, meaning 'in general, ordinary/commonplace'. I'll be real with you folks, I have no idea how these three components are suppose to mean 'fear'. In fact, the only component that makese sense to me is the heart component. Truly, language of all times.
So the thing is, the heart component is the only one that's related to the meaning! 巩 is the phonetic component -- it tells you (roughly) how the word is pronounced (巩 = "gong"), not what the word means. You can basically think of the components of 恐 as telling you "this is the word that's pronounced [sort of] like 'gong' with a meaning that's related to heart/mind/emotions."
A lot of characters have this kind of structure, with one part telling you the meaning, and the other part telling you the sound (though often not very exactly, since the pronunciations have changed over time). I find Wiktionary really helpful for breaking down which parts of a character are semantic vs. phonetic. For instance, if you look up 恐 on Wiktionary, there's a section of the page called "Glyph origin" where it says the character is a phono-semantic compound with phonetic 巩 + semantic 心. So you know 巩 gives you the sound and 心 gives you the meaning.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-02 02:41 pm (UTC)But oh god, your comment made me remember the phonetic part of characters. I've completely forgotten that element. Pronunciation is the hardest part for me to learn in chinese, so to not detrain myself in learning, I decided that I was going to learn the meaning of characters before anything; because as you know, the 汉字 are very versatile in not only other chinese dialects, but also in the japanese kanji system. (Oh hey this very journal entry has an instance of that) so yeah, thank you for reminding me of the pure 汉 element of the 汉字 alkdjifodsfs.