Quote Originally Posted by LaoShu View Post
Originally Posted by YouKnowWho
**The name of that form should be called "18 hands". In Chinese "hand" and "elder" are prounced the same.***

Not so.
18 elders=== 十八 叟 shi2 ba1 sou3
(number signifies tone)

18 hands=== 十八 手 shi2 ba1 shou3

So the difference in the words is the SOUND ("SH"-sound, as opposed to "SSS"- sound) MEANING, and CHARACTER.
Im a student of chinese language at University level and have many native chinese speaking friends. Even though this thread is about dead, i figured I'd post this for general clarification.


Don't know where YouKnowWho learned the language. Try www.betterchinese.com

LaoShu is correct, but there´s one little detail that maybe is causing this confusion: in many mantis schools we use the cantonese language. So, in cantonese, sou (elder) and shou (hand) have the same pronunciation, sau2

Check it out:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-...l?query=%ad%ee (elder)
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-...l?query=%a4%e2 (hand)