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2 votes
1 answer
158 views

Two etymologies of "天上有地下无"?

The Chinese saying "天上有,地下无" means extremely extraordinary people, which can only be found in heaven (天上有) and not on earth (地下无). Very interesting is the first one of these two etymologies ...
Lerner Zhang's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
1k views

Chinese to Chữ Nôm converter online

Why it is very hard to find the Chữ Nôm for the very common Hanzi 有 ? Maybe this Hanzi was not so used in the past ? This looks very strange, and any light on it is welcome !
faure's user avatar
  • 620
1 vote
1 answer
171 views

How come 将 is a "future marker" and a "passive marker"?

Any good logical theories on the subject? What twisted life must have 将 took to merge such functions into one glyph? For my background 将 as 把(to take) and 将 as 且(further) are queit different in ...
coobit's user avatar
  • 2,073
10 votes
6 answers
1k views

A unified theory of 就 meaning

就 always bothered me. I couldn't (and maybe still can't) get a hold of its meaning. By looking at many examples of the usage I came to realization that 就 marks a process of becoming a subject to or ...
coobit's user avatar
  • 2,073
0 votes
3 answers
150 views

What is the oldest retracable meaning for the character/word 臾?

臾 (yu2) in classical Chinese means "for a while". I assume "for a while" was not the original meaning this character was associated with in the time when it came, by what mysterious brain activity ...
meireikei's user avatar
  • 1,074
8 votes
2 answers
291 views

What happened to the Old Chinese coda -p of 拉 in Cantonese?

Baxter's Middle Chinese reconstruction has 拉 as *lop, which surprised me given that the Cantonese reflex is laai1. Other characters with the rime -op such as 合, 答 and 雜 end up with the rime -ap or -...
jogloran's user avatar
  • 1,989