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Interesting that there is no mention of ancient China, where money and accounting were invented. The Chinese for buy and sell are 买 and 卖 respectively, the fir
by aneth4 14y ago
Interesting that there is no mention of ancient China, where money and accounting were invented.
The Chinese for buy and sell are 买 and 卖 respectively, the first indicating spending money and the second indicating receiving money.
Granted I don't know what I'm talking about, however I do know Chinese, and I believe these characters far predate the 15th century as do most Chinese characters.
Perhaps someone can elaborate on whether this is a sound theory.
- potatolicious 14y agoBoth those characters are simplified, which is to say largely different from how they would have appeared throughout Chinese history. Buy in traditional is: 買 Sell is: 賣 Both of these would be closer to the ancient form of expressing these characters. I don't see "+" nor "-" in either of these characters.
- contingencies 14y agoFun fact: the one on the left, everything but the top part is a pictograph of a shell, which was used for a kind of status symbol or possibly something roughly equating our modern money in many early societies. When Marco Polo arrived here in southwest China in the Yuan Dynasty (ie. just post Mongol-invasion), shells were still in widespread use. In fact, Chinese literary records document special requests to the emperor to except the region from the national law requiring use of imperial money by the provincial governor they placed in the region, who was an Uzbek and son of the then-king of Bokhara who had ridden with the Mongol horde to take China. One of his father's later successors was one of the Prokudin-Gorskii images (first colour images in the region), over here: http://pratyeka.org/prokudin-gorskii/the-emir-of-bukhara-1911.jpg http://pratyeka.org/prokudin-gorskii/the-emir-of-bukhara-191...
- aneth4 14y agoI had not remembered the traditional version though, so thanks for pointing that out. Sell is 買 with a 士 radical on top. The simplified version standardized the 買 portion, but it doesn't affect the observation.