新猜想：China及Chinese的由来？ i used to examime the origin of the word china by means of what i could find. from such established dictionaries as webster's, oxford, and cambridge to others such as the american heritage, wikipedia, and similar online resources, i had found few answers reasonable. i had to turn to my own guess or imagination. long long ago, there was some persian whose name was stealer. he was such a curious merchant about the process of making what had been called in english as pottery, porcelain or ceramic ware as general that he decided to take some trouble to learn a little from certain artisans in the original places, with his hope that he could produce his own lucrative products in his persian home. along the silk road, stealer came to shanxi and soon learned that there was a pottery workshop nearby. he happened to find that there was a pottery worker who was working his soft clay into beautiful vases. stealer was happy and asked eagerly the artisan what he was doing. understanding nothing about persian, the artisan said 'xini' , which in chinese means 'very soft clay' , to the foreigner whom he had never met before. stealer returned for his hometown with his new foundings. one day, however, he was showing his know-hows at his dinner table in front of some germany who had long exchanged goods with him. the germany learned from the persian that in the far east country the products he bought were called something like xini or chini. the word chini spread somehow by person to person orally later in the country. later, when british were so interested in the ceramic ware they bought from german or directly from persian, they gave the things a foreign name china, changing the first capital letter c with c and adding the suffix -a to the end of the word to mean that it was a thing, according to their own language custom. my imagination was triggered by a saying from the webster's, and later in i learned that "although the word china is identical in spelling to the name of the country, there are 16th- and 17th-century spellings like chiney, cheny, and cheney that reflect the borrowing into english of the persian term for this porcelain, chini. " the statement from tfd seems a little meaning, but what does the persian word chini really mean? it sounds almost the same as xini, which in chinese means 'very soft clay', only by chance? i cannot stop imagining that when some english nobels found that the name zhongguo had some arrogant or even offensive meaning to them that the country was the center of the world, they preferred to neglect angrily its original meaning, and appointed china more arrogantly as the name of the country zhongguo. from a logical point of view, the word china seems more memorizable than zhongguo, as it was the fact that our people in the past preferred to call korea as gaoli, sri lanka as xilan. but interestingly enough, only our forerunners tended to accept such a name from a foreign people. can anyone imagine if the korean ever used the name gaoli, which our ancester gave them hundreds of years ago, as their country's name? the chinese people, however, did it. and, zhongguo, equalled to, as they could imagined, china. if the word china is still imaginable, the word chinese is completely unimaginable. we know that more than 90 percent of countries in the world get their name from their own language, and if added with the suffix -an, the word(s) would mean the countries' people or their language, such as american, canadian, korean, chilean, etc. and we also know that the people of britain was called british, and spain spanish, ireland irish, turkey turkish. only china, japan, vietnam, portugal, and few other countries, were appointed a suffix -ese, which perhaps has something offensive inside. why? can you english people explain it, resonably and from the root, for us who understand your language? 本人考证过china的起源，发现依靠西方的字典（从webster's到oxford到cambridge）也帮不上什么大忙。再看看american heritage，还是觉得这些西方巨著不是点到为止，就是有意避而不谈。只好根据这些名作巨著提供的一些蛛丝马迹，进一步猜想如下： 很久以前，一个叫做stealer的persian到中国来进货。他是个很好奇的商人，特想弄清楚中国制造的、在欧洲叫做pottery和porcelain或通称为ceramic ware的日用品在原产地是怎么做出来的，打算偷学几招，回到persia自己生产。 stealer沿着丝绸之路来到陕西，终于打听到一处陶艺作坊。他到作坊一看，制陶工正在忙着和稀泥。stealer很高兴，用没几个人听懂的话比划着问制陶工。制陶工当然不是咱yeeyaners之中的成员，只能大概猜一猜这个老外想问他地上粘乎乎的东西叫做什么。制陶工不会说clay，只会说：稀泥。 stealer只记得xini，就忙着倒卖他那些用xini做成的pottery去了。有一天，他和德国人做了一笔生意，酒足饭饱之后，他向德国人炫耀他的学识渊博：其实pottery在中国叫做xini。德国人很开心，马上和他的朋友说，他知道pettery在中国原来叫做chini。 后来，对德国人一直耿耿于怀的英国人，就把chini改成china，以符合他们英文的结尾习惯，同时把德文里名词要大写的习惯也一并改掉了，于是china在英语里面就成为：high-quality porcelain or ceramic ware, originally made in china. 后来，有“博学家”经过考证，提出这样的观点：虽然china这个词和该国国名一样，但是在十六、十七世纪期间还有各种各样的叫法，如chiney、cheny及cheney，这些叫法都反映一个事实，即英语中的porcelain的含义就是波斯语的chini，这个chini后来作为外来语被借用到英语中来了。(来源：) 在我看来，这样的“博学家”或语言学家已经很不简单了，知道chini是一个“来自persia的词”。至于不知道最终来自中国，可以理解，因为再怎么博学，也不见得懂得制造china的国家的语言里把制造陶瓷的东西叫做稀泥，更不知道稀泥的拼音叫做xini，和chini是同一个意思。 再后来，英国人知道zhongguo在英文里的意思原来是the central kingdom之后，大为光火：那个只能制造china的地方怎么配得上叫这么响亮的名字，竟敢和great britain比谁是天下的中心？那个地方只能叫做china！ 到了明朝后期，中国开始走下坡路，连英国人给我们的外号也不敢修改，就这么把人家强加给我们的名字作为自己的国家名，就像人家往我们脸上吐了不知什么东西，我们也不敢伸手去抹掉一样。 ……于是，中国在外国人心目中，没有自己的名字zhongguo，或central kingdom，而是china。 这还不是最糟糕的，糟糕的还是chinese的构成。世界上除了曾经能够和英国抗衡的法国、德国、西班牙等国家，在英语里可以保留它们自己的国家名及人民、语言名外，其他的都得等英国人来“命名”。结果，中国、日本、越南、葡萄牙等让英国讨厌或愤怒的人民，都不幸分到了-ese这个后缀；大量的“二等国家”则分到了-an这个后缀，英国自己或者和英国关系密切的国家，则得到了一个表示高等的-ish。 我曾比较过智利chile和china，人家的人民或语言叫做chilean，我们本来叫做chinan即可，或者chinean，可人家偏偏要把原来的a去掉，硬生生给我们一个chinese，听起来特象“踩你死”，还不如韩国的korean。 英国人，请问能给我们懂你们语言的chinean一个合理的、根本的解释吗？！ 转摘自海词快乐英语，供朋友们分享 查看更多
第1天
关注盖德视界
添加小助手
