Coconutwheel

When I was a kid learning Chinese, there were many similar looking words that often confused me. One pair was 体 vs 休. They look very similar, don’t they? One has a horizontal line on the bottom and the other doesn’t. 休 (xiū) means to rest. is a pictogram of a person, ( is more abstract version) leaning against a tree. Doesn’t that just sound relaxing? 休 is not simplified, but 体 (tǐ), which means body or form, is.

體 is the traditional way of writing 体. You look at it and wonder, “How are they the same word?” As I have written before, the simplified form of the character isn’t completely random. There is reasoning behind the simplification. But you lose the original etymology with the switch. So let’s dig into the etymology of 體 and see what we can find.

Looking at , we can see that it can be split into left and right components and and both right and left can be split into even smaller parts, ,,. Let’s take a look at what each part is and then let’s construct the meaning as we put them back together.

丰 (fēng) is a pictogram of a plant. You can see the stem and the branches. 豆 (dòu) is a pictogram of a container on a stand. (豆 also means “bean”.) You might be able to see it better in this version: . So combined, we have . You can see that on the top is . There are actually two of them and they seem to be in their own containers. On the bottom you see .

豊 (lǐ) means a ceremonial vessel. It is a simple pictogram of plants, most likely harvested grains, placed upon a stand. As in many agricultural societies, people offered sacrifices and gifts to the gods and forces of nature for good harvests. But how does this have anything to do with the word for body or form?

骨 (gǔ) on the left side means bone. is actually a pictogram of a slab of meat, not the moon, although it closely resembles 月, whose pictogram is . You ask, how does look like meat? Take a look at this version and now at a picture of meat.

Looks similar? The part above in the character represents that to which the meat is connected. You can also see in the picture that there is bone on the far right part of the steak.

So when we combine “bone” and “ceremonial vessel”, we get body, shape or form. I’m still trying to understand why this means body or form. I have a few interpretations. First, I feel that 體 originally meant form more than body. There is another word 身, which means more directly “body” because it is a pictogram of a person , with stomach and legs. 身 is definitely more “human” and less abstract than 體. The reasons why I think 體 originally meant form is the fact that it is coupled with . So I feel that there is an element of animal sacrifice. In these ceremonies, I’m sure that the shape of the particular animal was important for the ritual. The way in which the animal was sacrificed was probably also significant. Because of these ritualistic connotations in this word, I feel that it is more abstract than 身 is.

That gives us a little background into the traditional form of the word, but what about the simplified? Let’s look at 体. It can be broken into left and right. The left part is a person, as mentioned above when describing the word 休 (xiū), meaning rest. The right side is 本 (běn), which means root, source, origin. is a pictogram of a tree with roots. You can probably see it better in this one: . So the new version of body can be interpreted as “the source or root of the person”. What makes a person a person? His or her physical body. The new character is not only easier to write and remember, but it also breaks from the “feudal” and “superstitious” past. It’s interesting that the meaning of the word hasn’t really changed, but through the simplification, it was ripped from its cultural past and redefined in modern context.

i started a chinese etymology blog about 2 years ago. today, i finally imported the posts to this website. so check it out if you’re interested. you’ll find it in the category section.

here’s another word i want to talk about. it’s the word anger: 怒 (nù). this word can be broken down without looking at the ancient scripts.

it’s broken by top and bottom, and then from the top part, left and right.
怒, nù
—奴, nú
—–女, nǘ
—–又, yòu
—心, xīn

奴 (nú), the top part means slave. it’s interesting to see the character choices for slave. it’s broken up into left and right components. 女 (nǘ), means woman. 又 (yòu), means hand, (explain here). A hand holding a woman, that was the idea of a slave in ancient china.

怒 (nù), has the character for heart, 心 (xīn) in the bottom. 心 (xīn), literally means heart, but it is often times used to mean emotions. 怒 (nù) is ultimately a pictogram describing, “the feelings of a slave.”

anger is a very powerful emotion. it’s eruptive, destructive and ugly. but in chinese society, outward expression of emotion is looked down upon. any kind of outward expression is a sign of weakness or lack of control. so one could ask, why is the word for anger associated with the “feelings of a slave?” first off, i’m sure that slaves felt anger often. but it’s also interesting to note that the heart is on the bottom, not on the left or in another position. it can be further interpreted as slavery weighing down on the heart, crushing it, leaving nothing but anger.

second, slaves were in a different social strata. this might have allowed them to express their emotions more freely, because they were not governed by the “proper” behavioral standards.

also, there is the question of “why women?” i suppose in ancient societies, after a war, the men were killed and the women were taken in. they became the first slaves.

the ancient chinese associated anger with slaves. what do you associate with anger? if you were to write a symbol for anger, what would you draw?

I work in a lab where most of the researchers are women. The head of the lab is Ann Pearson, who is not only smart and accomplished, but also young and attractive. So I’m intimidated by her on more than just one level. The post-doc I work with is spunky and a lot of fun. Two of Ann’s doctoral students are women. There is one male graduate student and I’m the only male undergraduate. Besides noticing the gender imbalance, I also noticed that a few people within the EPS department are pregnant. Some of the people I work with already have children. So I asked myself, “How is it that these women can balance both work and family?” It’s really quite remarkable, because I have a hard enough time just managing my own life, let alone someone else’s.

Talking with my friends, I also realized that some of them are thinking about marriage. I went through a phase when I thought about what it would be like to “settle down”, but that was a few years ago. Thinking about marriage now gives me a strange feeling in my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. There’s something final about marriage. Anyway, enough about me.

I talked with a sophomore girl who is a neurobio major. She wants to become a neuro-surgeon one day. But she also then proceeded to talk about how she wants a family as well. But she is conflicted because if she starts a family, she feels that the time she would have spent in med school, residency, etc would be wasted. I don’t know how it would be like to balance a professional career with raising a family, but I realized that this concern isn’t something that men have to worry about as much about as women do.

So I would like to take this opportunity to look at 2 Chinese words: 娶 and 嫁. Both mean “to marry,” but they differ for the gender of the person. This distinction occurs in Korean and I’m sure in other Asian languages as well. The reason I want to discuss these words is that the etymology of each character reveals the inherent biases toward man and woman in terms of marriage. (The word for marriage in Chinese is 婚姻 (hūnyīn), which I will not discuss now.)

Let’s start with the female version for the verb: 嫁 (jià). Let’s first break it down into its left and right components. This is one of the simple story words. The left gives the meaning and the right provides the pronunciation.

女 (nǚ) is the character for woman.
家 (jiā) is the character for house or home.

So already, we can see in its component form, the direct connection between woman and home. It’s true thousands of years ago and it’s true now: you can’t procreate without women. They are what keeps humanity going. And because of this, they are inevitably linked with family.

But what about the male version? Let’s take a look.
娶(qǔ) is broken up into top bottom, but the top is then can be broken into left and right.

娶(qǔ)
—取(qǔ)
——-耳(ěr)
——-又(yòu)
—女(nǚ)

I wrote about the word 取(qǔ) in my first post, so you can click here to read about it.

取(qǔ) means to aquire and by looking at the etymology, it implies with force. So for the man, he is aquiring a woman. So the element of taking, whether it is because the woman is unwilling, or her family is unwilling, was inevitably a reality that women faced in the past. I don’t want to over interpret the word either, but I can’t help but notice that the woman radical is on the bottom. I think it’s in bottom position because of how characters are written, but it could also imply the subordination of women and that not only do men “aquire” them but also keep them down.

There are other meanings for these two word, mainly that in traditional Chinese culture, when the woman leaves the family she becomes part of her husbands family. So 嫁 (jià) could also be seen as a woman being separated from her family. 娶(qǔ) can be seen as the husband’s family gaining a new female member.

Although it has been many thousands of years ago that these characters were created, the issues of marriage and family, male dominance and female subordinance, remain. At least for me, my experiences in the lab has been that the researchers, the smart and the most capable people are women.