Originally Posted by
YouKnowWho
You have just saved my self confidence big time. For a while I thought I may have to go back to grade school again.
May be we should look at this from a different angle. What could the "18 elders" means? Someone said there were 18 PM masters who combined their knowledge and created that form. Could that be possible by using our simple logic?
Many confusion that caused in CMA could be our ancestors was good in CMA but may not be good in literature. The Taiwan Taiji Association had tried to figure out the meaning of "holding tiger back to mountain" for years. Why anyone want to "hold" a tiger and go back to mountain? Will he try to get himself eaten by that tiger? Never heard anyone was strong enough to pick up a full growing tiger, not even mention to carry a huge tiger and walk up hill is almost impossible task for any human being to perform.
My Taiwanese teacher said that it originally should be "18 Hands," but that some people also choose to interpret it as "18 Old Men" because the form is performed in a relatively slow, relaxed manner. Though "shou3" and "sou3" sound pretty different in Beijing Mandarin, they sound very similar if not indistinguishable in other dialects or in Mandarin as spoken by from Chinese in other regions. The "old man" interpretation of the form's name is probably just someone's later extrapolation based on mispronunciation or misinterpration of the character, I'd guess. It is true that great CMA masters aren't necessarily great men of words. One of my GMs was functionally illiterate.
Also, I believe Youknowwho is Taiwanese. The Minnan dialect spoken in Taiwan is one of the many Chinese dialects that doesn't have "zh, chi, shi" sounds. As a result most Taiwanese don't distinguish between "zh" and "z," "ch and "c" or "sh" and "s" even when speaking Mandarin (sometimes they meld "l" and "n" as well). If you ask a Taiwanese to say "44" they will most likely say what sounds like "si4 si2 si4" in mainland pinyin.
Last edited by onyomi; 12-03-2006 at 01:39 AM.
What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?
--The Orange Catholic Bible