12 ms·

Maybe because in the eclipse the moon eats the sun.

siong1987 10y ago
you are right: http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translation-yueshi_lunareclip.htm http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translat...
- andolanra 10y ago
  The link you provided has no information as to whether that's a correct etymology or not, only that 月食 yuèshí is made up of characters 月 yuè 'moon' and 食 shí 'eat'. There are numerous other explanations for why those two characters could be used: for example, perhaps 食 used to have a different meaning which dropped out of common usage, or maybe 月食 used to be written with different characters and people switched to the easier-to-write 食 from a more complicated character, or any of a number of other reasons. I don't know which of these is true, if any of them is. But your link doesn't have enough etymological information to indicate one way or another, either!
haimez 10y ago
Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinations of glyphs and conjugations thereof.
- sdrothrock 10y ago
  Thus proving that the alphabet is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires the pure memorization of all possible combinations of letters, with the lengths of such combinations becoming longer and longer as words are added to vocabulary.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    Eh. It's a "leaky abstraction". Makes things easier, until it doesn't. Much lik3 "I before E, except after C"
    - sdrothrock 10y ago
      The primary problem with people who don't know Japanese or Chinese arguing against kanji/hanji is that they use very loose comparisons that they think are 1:1. For example, when you write "inconceivable," you're not regurgitating every single letter in a line from memory. You probably remember the prefix "in," "conceive," and you know "able." You probably also know the common patterns "cei" or "eive" or "con," so the word "inconceivable" really isn't as complex as the initial length makes it look, as long as you know the blocks. Kanji/hanzi are the same way -- they look complex and inscrutable to the uneducated eye, but they're all made of common building blocks that make it easier to remember them. After all, human memory works roughly the same way all the world around; people wouldn't be able to memorize thousands of 20-stroke character if they were all completely patternless. The vocabulary utilizing kanji/hanzi works the same way. Someone could look at "inconceivable" and say "well shit, that doesn't make sense! It's long, you'd have to memorize so many letters, and the letters themselves have so many bits! Plus it has 'in' in it, which makes no sense because 'in' commonly means 'inside of something', and 'con' usually means 'to swindle someone'! This alphabet thing is completely useless." It's absurd, reductionist, and a bit offensive.
      - Margh 10y ago
        A child/foreigner can point at "inconceivable" and ask: 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' as opposed to 'what does "..." mean' A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." compare this with seeing テリヤキ
        sdrothrock 10y ago
        > 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. > A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." A child or beginner would probably be more likely to say "uh, what's that thing with the 日 and the 火, it's something ri something ki." Just because something is a symbol doesn't mean you can't describe it. Children are also very likely to just sketch out a picture of what they remember, even if it's incorrect, and you can usually figure that out.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Alternatively, it could mean that Google Translate is not very good. If I had to guess, most Japanese people aren't going to have much trouble disambiguating ‘eat’ from ‘eclipse’. (And as zorceta explains, Chinese uses different hanzi for them anyway.)
userbinator 10y ago
...and in the Eclipse, the Oracle eats the 日. (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A3#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A3#Etymology and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5#Etymology if you didn't get the admittedly horrible pun.)

siong1987 10y ago

you are right: http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translation-yueshi_lunareclip.htm http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translat...

andolanra 10y ago
The link you provided has no information as to whether that's a correct etymology or not, only that 月食 yuèshí is made up of characters 月 yuè 'moon' and 食 shí 'eat'. There are numerous other explanations for why those two characters could be used: for example, perhaps 食 used to have a different meaning which dropped out of common usage, or maybe 月食 used to be written with different characters and people switched to the easier-to-write 食 from a more complicated character, or any of a number of other reasons. I don't know which of these is true, if any of them is. But your link doesn't have enough etymological information to indicate one way or another, either!

haimez 10y ago

Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinations of glyphs and conjugations thereof.

sdrothrock 10y ago
Thus proving that the alphabet is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires the pure memorization of all possible combinations of letters, with the lengths of such combinations becoming longer and longer as words are added to vocabulary.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  Eh. It's a "leaky abstraction". Makes things easier, until it doesn't. Much lik3 "I before E, except after C"
  - sdrothrock 10y ago
    The primary problem with people who don't know Japanese or Chinese arguing against kanji/hanji is that they use very loose comparisons that they think are 1:1. For example, when you write "inconceivable," you're not regurgitating every single letter in a line from memory. You probably remember the prefix "in," "conceive," and you know "able." You probably also know the common patterns "cei" or "eive" or "con," so the word "inconceivable" really isn't as complex as the initial length makes it look, as long as you know the blocks. Kanji/hanzi are the same way -- they look complex and inscrutable to the uneducated eye, but they're all made of common building blocks that make it easier to remember them. After all, human memory works roughly the same way all the world around; people wouldn't be able to memorize thousands of 20-stroke character if they were all completely patternless. The vocabulary utilizing kanji/hanzi works the same way. Someone could look at "inconceivable" and say "well shit, that doesn't make sense! It's long, you'd have to memorize so many letters, and the letters themselves have so many bits! Plus it has 'in' in it, which makes no sense because 'in' commonly means 'inside of something', and 'con' usually means 'to swindle someone'! This alphabet thing is completely useless." It's absurd, reductionist, and a bit offensive.
    - Margh 10y ago
      A child/foreigner can point at "inconceivable" and ask: 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' as opposed to 'what does "..." mean' A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." compare this with seeing テリヤキ
      - sdrothrock 10y ago
        > 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. > A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." A child or beginner would probably be more likely to say "uh, what's that thing with the 日 and the 火, it's something ri something ki." Just because something is a symbol doesn't mean you can't describe it. Children are also very likely to just sketch out a picture of what they remember, even if it's incorrect, and you can usually figure that out.
PeCaN 10y ago
Alternatively, it could mean that Google Translate is not very good. If I had to guess, most Japanese people aren't going to have much trouble disambiguating ‘eat’ from ‘eclipse’. (And as zorceta explains, Chinese uses different hanzi for them anyway.)

userbinator 10y ago

...and in the Eclipse, the Oracle eats the 日. (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A3#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A3#Etymology and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5#Etymology if you didn't get the admittedly horrible pun.)