The “universal proof” of a premise requires that that premise is valid for an arbitrarily selected situation. Yet, I can arbitrary select thousands of words while you (the world) would still not believe that I did arbitrarily. Yet, this randomness can be guaranteed if the selection is not done by me. Thus, I have asked you (the world) in my previous post to select an arbitrary word, and I will show that it is valid for our three premises below.
1. Premise one --- All (each and every) Chinese words (characters) are composed of from a set of word roots,
2. Premise two --- The meaning of all Chinese words can be read out from their faces,
3. Premise three --- The pronunciation of all Chinese words can be read out from their faces.
In order to increase the confidence level, I will accept 10 (not one) arbitrarily selected words from the world for this “Universal Proof” process. Please submit them via the “comment post” of this blog.
In the main time, I will show some special Chinese word groups. Although they are not randomly chosen, they are also examples of proving the validity of the above premises. Furthermore, they show some special principles of the Chinese language.
Group one: the reincarnation group --- when a word is “over-used” (its original meaning is lost after it acquired many other meanings and usages), a new word was constructed to regain the original meaning, and this is a reincarnated word. This belongs to the 轉 註 (synonymize) group.
Example: 「 嘗 、 嚐 」
嘗 (cháng, to taste, already, to attempt, to try, formerly) is 尚 (prefer or fashion) + 旨 (sweet taste or imperial decree). Thus, the original meaning for 嘗 is to enjoy the sweetness (or to taste). Yet, the other acquired meanings (already, to attempt, to try, formerly), now, become the dominated and the fashion meanings. Thus, a new word 嚐 was constructed (reincarnation) to regain its original meaning. Note: the imperial decree (however harsh or bitter) will eventually become sweet.
This type of reincarnated words is constructed by adding one appropriate root to the original word. The pronunciation of the new word will stay the same as the old word. The followings are more examples.
「 幸 、 倖 」 ， 「 欲 、 慾 」 ， 「 效 、 傚 」 「 伊 、 咿 」 ， 「 睿 、 叡 」 ， 「 蜋 、螂 」 , 「 付 、 附 」 ， 「 贊 、 讚 」 ， 「 志 、 誌 」 「 周 、 週 」 ， 「 咨 、 諮 」 ， 「 旨 、 恉 」 「 敝 、 弊 」 ， 「 眇 、 渺 」 ，「 禁 、 噤 」…
The second word in the bracket is the reincarnated word (「 還 原 字 」), such as, 慾 、 讚 、 渺 、 弊 … 等。
The current simplified character system has two simplifications.
1. Reducing the number of strokes of the traditional characters.
2. Eradicating all those reincarnated words. They do not know why many words have so many “not needed” synonyms, as they do not know the reason for their construction.
Tienzen (Jeh-Tween) Gong
No comments:
Post a Comment