Re: USAGE: Dinos and dragons

On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 08:32:19PM -0700, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
[snip]
> Well, "kong3long2" is the generic term for dinosaur in Chinese (I imagine
> "kyooryuu" in Japanese), "terrifying dragon". But, really, ain't this just a
> calque (dino-terrifying, saur-lizard)? I'm not a native speaker, but I
> imagine directly calquing "lizard" would be weird due to size implications.
> Run for your lives -- terrifying killer newts!!
"Lizard" in Hokkien is "sin3 tang2", something-worm. (I *think* it means
"new worm" but that sounds a bit odd). It will be VERY weird to refer to
dinosaurs as some kind of oversized worm! :-P

I'm not sure about the Mandarin term for lizards, but I seem to recall
something to do with "sher2" (snake). Although it *is* possible to derive
a term for dinosaurs from snake, it does sound odd. Basically, in Chinese
thinking, a snake is footless; anything long and slithery that has legs
and other limbs must be some kind of dragon.

[snip]
> 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...).
Hmm. I don't know the etymology of the character for "long2" but the
"stand" and "moon" parts *could* carry some interesting cultural anecdote
behind it.


T