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Thread: Help with Mandarin and Chinese Characters?

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
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    Xi'an, P.R.C.
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    Yep.

    message is too short, must add some text.

  2. #32

    Thumbs up

    Iron Monkey.

    Tit Ma Lao--> Tie Ma Liu 铁马骝.


  3. #33
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    Aug 2002
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    Xi'an, P.R.C.
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    Really? Wierd. My computer dictionary doesnt' even have that character and my regular dictionary lists it as a old word for a kind of horse.

    Why is he called that? Do you know?

  4. #34
    I heard about the legend before, but I forgot.

    The English translation is Iron Monkey.

    They called him Tit Ma Lao in Cantonese. If you reverse engineer it back to Mandarin. You then say Tie Ma Liu.

    I was just having fun with the words.

    Nothing serious.


  5. #35
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    Aug 2002
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    Xi'an, P.R.C.
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    I can read the characters just fine. What I mean is, the name is wierd. I'm not questioning it's accuracy. "tie" - sure, "iron". But "ma" = "horse" and "liu", according to my Xinhua Zidian:

    (In ancient texts) a red horse with a black mane and a black tail.
    So I'm just mystified how he got that name. Some hidden meaning there I'm not getting? I don't see "Monkey" in there anywhere.

  6. #36
    Join Date
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    Fremont, CA, U.S.A.
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    Slightly OT

    For the record, Kung Fu Tai Chi generally uses traditional characters because our publisher, Gigi Oh, is Taiwanese. However, when the article topic concerns someone from the PRC, we will defer to simplified characters.

    China should take steps to reintroduce traditional characters, says Legco pres. Jasper Tsang
    25 February 2016 11:40 Chantal Yuen

    China should “revise its character simplification policy,” and consider reintroducing certain traditional characters, suggested Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang Yok-sing in his column in the Chinese newspaper AM730 on Thursday.

    Simplified characters are a set of Chinese characters with reduced numbers of strokes, currently in widespread use in China. However, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have always maintained their use of traditional characters.

    Among his suggestions, he called for steps to “reduce multiple meanings in simplified characters and avoid having one simplified character represent many traditional ones,” and to “eliminate any simplified character which looks drastically different from its traditional counterpart.”


    File photo: Apple Daily.

    Computer technologies “have allowed simplified characters to lose most of their original functions,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer chances for people to take up a pen and write.”

    The advantages of simplified characters have been weakened, and “the disadvantages will not be alleviated through developments in society and technology,” he added.

    He said that, in the process of learning, simplified characters “do not have an absolute advantage” over their traditional counterparts. “Simplified characters have fewer strokes, but the characters look more similar, making mistaking one character for another more likely,” he said. Tsang also cited a study which said that reading in traditional characters is faster than in simplified characters because traditional characters are more easily identified.

    It is easier for those who know traditional characters to recognise simplified characters than the other way around, he said.


    Primary school students. File Photo: Apple Daily.

    Previously, Tsang has said that people who regard one form of characters as superior to another are being biased. However, he also said that the rash proposal to teach simplified Chinese characters before a mastery of the traditional form has been achieved will create confusion for schoolchildren.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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