Re: USAGE: Dinos and dragons

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>It might also be useful to look at an etymological Chinese dictionary. In
>the modern character "long2", we can see the characters "stand",  "moon",
>and something which could be interpreted as dorsal scales or feet on a
>creature. Needless to say as I've just shown in my own fly-by-night
>analysis, without a genuine Chinese etymological expert on the characters,
>this sort of game can get very Rorschach testy around the edges (wait,
>wait,
>I think I see a head here...)

My Etymological dictionary says that in the seal character, on the right,
you have the wings contracted, then the bottom left you have the body. The
top left is a contracted form of t'ung (slave boy) used as a phonetic.Im
guessing it was an analyzing of what was supposed to be the head.