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It's not a very good choice to use "食” to represent "eat" here. In modern Chinese we say "吃", and you can see that "吃" has a square part, which is exactly "口".
by zorceta 10y ago
It's not a very good choice to use "食” to represent "eat" here. In modern Chinese we say "吃", and you can see that "吃" has a square part, which is exactly "口". And "食" also means "food", but "吃" doesn't.
Also, since ancient Chinese people thought eclipse was caused by a "dog in the sky" eating the moon, it's reasonable for them to use "食" to describe it. But modern Chinese almost always say "月食", meaning eclipse of the moon, to distinguish from eclipse of the sun, so Google Translate did this wrong. It should translate it to "eat" or "food" first.
- gleenn 10y agoIt's probably because it's a Japanese website and 食 does make sense to represent 'eat' in Japanese.
- chewxy 10y agoWhen I was younger and took chinese lessons, there was a push to use more "official" chinese. We'd be told that in official use "吃" is a verb used by ghosts (which is to say, it's impolite to use 吃, and "食" was to be used by humans. So... eh YMMV. I personally find that elitist though, but then again, in chinese history there was always a distinction between what the commoner spoke (白话文) and what the intellectual elites wrote (文言文) so I'm not surprised that this mentality has continued on EDIT: I'd also like to add that 食物 is food, which translates literally to "eat" and "thing". Put together it means "edible thing", i.e. food. The original meaning of 食 still means, "eat", not "food". It's a modern contraction that "食" means food
- zorceta 10y agoDidn't know that ghost part.. Fun to know :) I'm just suggesting from modern Chinese's perspective, because, after all, we are modern people. 文言文 (uh I don't know its English translation) is fun to read and learn, but it's like Latin since basically nobody writes it anymore.
- chewxy 10y agoProbably some stupid made up shit to scare kids into using "proper" chinese (for certain definitions of proper as defined by political agendas). I do find 文言文 to be quite elegant and terse though.
- zorceta 10y agoSo a native Chinese might have less knowledge in his language :) thanks for the added part.
- ttflee 10y agoAccording to Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典), 吃 is equivalent to 喫, which means `to eat`. Its another meaning was `stuttering`. The ghosts part was not supported. http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/KangXi/22/PWCQUYAZMEUYILAZKO.shtml http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/KangXi/22/PWCQUYAZMEUYILAZKO.sht... http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/KangXi/22/PWCQRNKOCQUYUYAB.shtml http://tool.httpcn.com/Html/KangXi/22/PWCQRNKOCQUYUYAB.shtml
- chewxy 10y agoAgreed. The ghosts bit is apocryphal. Not difficult to see where it comes from though. Mouth + Qi = spiritual nonsense.
- prewett 10y agoI had to look a bit to figure out how you got "qi" from a word pronounced "chi". 契, the right part of the character is pronounced qi4, as is the character 氣, which does have spiritual meanings. 契, however, has no such meaning (according to wiktionary), so I assume this is another one of those Chinese superstitious puns. Is a preference for 食 a Taiwanese thing? All the mainland Chinese people I've ever heard say 吃.
- 0xfaded 10y agoPutting the parts together, 吃 would mean the begging mouth. The native Japanese word for eat, kuu, was at least at one time written 喰う which I think we would all agree makes a lot of sense. Both languages underwent different simplifications, I suspect in Chinese it became 吃 and Japanese 食, so in both languages the original logic has been lost. I'm a westerner who learned Japanese as an adult. I feel its quite unfortunate how much of the meaning was lost with the Chinese simplification. I can mostly make out Taiwanese/Republic of China newspapers, but can see nothing in the simplified characters. Edit: Yay, I'm wrong, see below. Thank you internet.
- zorceta 10y agoYou can't simply take a characater apart and glue meanings of the parts together - it's more complicated. Having "乞" part doesn't necessarily mean it has the meaning of begging - it's a "sound", rather than meaning, element, which "provides" the sound of "吃". And although I don't know the "喰" character, I can tell it didn't become Chinese 吃 and Japanese 食. 食 is more "ancient", where "吃" seems only used so widely in modern time. Simplification of Chinese characters indeed started many arguments, but the "tranditional" Chinese used in Taiwan has also developed some "simplified" characters.
- mveety 10y agoYeah the Japanese version of hànzì is much more ancient (Song or Tang dynasties, I think) and have changed comparatively little since then. Also, they simplified some characters in a very different way than how the Chinese did. (I'm probably wrong but: if I remember correctly, Japanese has changed a lot, but the writing system hasn't so the sounds like part of the character isn't always correct or even close. It's a lot like Irish or English in that the language has changed much but the writing hasn't.)
- Zarel 10y agoNah, 喰 is entirely unrelated; it's one of the few characters Japan invented (most are imported and sometimes simplified from Traditional Chinese). On the other hand, you might recognize 吃 as the 喫 from 喫茶店 (café). The Chinese simplification was overall a good thing. A lot of the simplifications are from Japanese, even. Like, compare the Traditional 體 with the Simplified 体 (body) - the latter is from Japanese.
- edwinyzh 10y agoBoth Cantonese and Hakka use "食" as verb since ancient times, no doubt about it.
- FabHK 10y agoThe article is about Japanese (as you can see from the part on inflection).