Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)

-----Original Message-----
From: DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
Date: Thursday, January 11, 2001 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)


>From: "John Cowan"
>
>> Hmm.  Does this mean that they would *mishear* it (as ke1 or whatever),
>> or that most Chinese speakers don't know how to read the ideograph?
>> I would assume the latter, but what does "mangle" mean in this context?
>
>Misread. In simplified characters as used in the mainland, the 'bow'
radical
>could easily be confused with the 'horse', especially  if you were
expecting
>the more commonly used latter radical. On the more literate side of the
>divide (don't know the emoticons for a highly sarcastic snigger), even
>there, the "qu1" (district) phonetic is only going to generate "ou1" or
>"qu1" as possible readings of this character. Mishear? No. I would stand on
>people's chests condor-like 'til they got it right (I'm not this
aggressive,
>really I'm not). This character *is* available on computer, so once I got
it
>registered into hospital and tax records, voilà, it was official. Doing
that
>on the mainland was near impossible (but then, going Japanese in Japan was
>equally undoable).
<blink>  Fascinating!  Koreans use Chinese-characters for their names (it
seems that most Korean parents, unlike ours, *have* particular Chinese
characters in mind when they name their kids, but my parents winged it with
me and ignored it entirely for my sister), especially on chops (dojang),
which until fairly recently you had to have for official documents, starting
up bank accounts, etc.--sort of how you use signatures in the U.S.  (These
days most banks use a PIN or signature.)  OC "Korean Chinese" is rather
mutilated.  <wry look>  But the "ha" in my name is, according to my mom, the
character for summer-heat or somesuch, though I was born in January, 'cause
it was January in *Houston.*

I would quail at the thought of going Japanese in Japan, but I'm Korean and
there's already ancestral bad blood, alas.  <sigh>  Still, it must be such a
lovely thing to be able to choose one's own characters.  (For the record,
summer is my *least* favourite season...)

YHL