Re: Some help with Latin

2007/9/27, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
>
> I did not know Mandarin allowed so much 'chi1'.  I only learned
>
>   'chi1 fan4' - 'eat rice = eat'
>   'he1  cha2' - 'drink tea'
>   'xi1  yan1' - 'suck smoke = smoke'
>   'xi1  qi1'  - 'suck air = breathe'
>
> All these can be with 'chi1' also??
>
> **Henrik
>
Usage varies from place to place, but these are generally not allowed
with chi1 in the standard except the first. My grandmother, not being
a native speaker of the standard but rather of the southern Hokkien
language, says chi1 cha2 at times, but never chi1 with the other two;
when she speaks Hokkien, though, she says [ʨjaʔ3 jɛn5] (where 5 is the
middle neutral tone), which is cognate with Mandarin chi1 yan1.

Kitsu, which in Mandarin is qi4, also means "snort", in the sense of
snorting opium and sniffing glue. A rather unfortunate semantic
overlap, given that Japanese also has the term kissa < kitsu + sa
which means "the consumption of tea". Cafés, in the early Meiji era
when newfangled concepts were still translated into Japanese rather
than loaned wholesale, were called "kissaten". Now they're just called
"kafe".

By the way "xi1 qi4" (not qi1) is "to inhale". (:

Eugene

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