Chinese character studies 中文字學

August 30

58 minutes ago, 2ouvenir said:

But if you say something like 你死(咗條)心(去啦), 死心 on its own means to give up.

There, 死 is used grammatically as a verb, as in extinguish (metaphorically snuffing the life out of), not the adjective dead, given that 咗 in Cantonese† serves as a modifier that puts a verb in the past tense.

† For the benefit of @Number99: 咗 is not a word or operator in Mandarin or formal "standard" written Chinese, to the best of my knowledge.

August 30

46 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

There, 死 is used grammatically as a verb, as in extinguish (metaphorically snuffing the life out of), not the adjective dead, given that 咗 in Cantonese† serves as a modifier that puts a verb in the past tense.

It is just an expression. No offense, but nobody in their right mind would analyze it like that. 死心 as a whole is a verb, to mean "to give up"[1][2]. Moving on.

But okay, you might actually be right [3]. Half-right, okay? lol. You can still use 死心 as in "to give up". 死心 to mean the opposite is very literary and not really the common usage. Just because it is a verb does not make it any less legitimate than a noun.

What I think you might be getting at is that you think the 死 and 心 are detached in my sentence 你死(咗條)心(去啦) and not really 死心, but in fact they are really together. You can even just say 死心 to mean "give up" as a "verb." But in my mind, I don't even think of it as verb, to be honest. It would be somewhere in between a verb and a noun. A feeling, a verb-noun.

I am no linguist, but I think the distinction between verb and noun is not as rigid in Chinese as in other languages:

Quote

[...] While the distinction between verbs and nouns in Chinese is present, it's more fluid and context-dependent compared to English. Chinese speakers rely on sentence structure, context, and additional linguistic cues rather than inflectional changes to convey the function of a word. [...]

In that sense then we can rely on context to know the meaning and function of 死心, and in the "how most people use it" context, it would just mean "to give up" as a "verb".

August 30

42 minutes ago, 2ouvenir said:

Well... actually 經濟 was originally Chinese. I don't think I said anything inaccurate there, and it did originally mean governance and managing state affairs. Whether it was then influenced by other factors I did not look into, but it is quite possible as language is fluid. And I am not going to waste time arguing about this matter further as you know how things are with Chinese-Japanese relations, each side will have their own favorable story. I think I might just stick back to Chinese now to ensure I don't say anything inaccurate.

That is why I have pasted both Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia links about 和製漢語 Wasei kango.

By Chinese relations with Japan do you mean political?

Are we not discussing cultural matters?

It is sophistry to change your point of logical failure to a political issue and not to validate your error because of it.

You are explaining Chinese and Japanese while withholding the expression of your views on the 和製漢語 Wasei kango. (You should not be explaining Japanese if you are expressing a biased view.)

You should be aware that it is impossible to explain the Japanese language without ignoring the 和製漢語 Wasei kango., and that to do so without all the inconveniences would constitute a cultural insult.

That was what you once insisted to our European members.

August 30

55 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

† For the benefit of @Number99: 咗 is not a word or operator in Mandarin or formal "standard" written Chinese, to the best of my knowledge.

Yes, instead use this: 你就死了這條心吧。[1] *

Just drop it...

... is apparently the meaning. Which is what I am going to do regarding this matter.

* I am 99.9% sure you can also just say 你死心吧。in case you were wondering.

August 30

31 minutes ago, Number99 said:

That is why I have pasted both Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia links about 和製漢語 Wasei kango.

By Chinese relations with Japan do you mean political?

Are we not discussing cultural matters?

It is sophistry to change your point of logical failure to a political issue and not to validate your error because of it.

You are explaining Chinese and Japanese while withholding the expression of your views on the 和製漢語 Wasei kango. (You should not be explaining Japanese if you are expressing a biased view.)

You should be aware that it is impossible to explain the Japanese language without ignoring the 和製漢語 Wasei kango., and that to do so without all the inconveniences would constitute a cultural insult.

That was what you once insisted to our European members.

I am not sure what logical failure you are referring to. If you are here to incite argument then please do not post in my thread. This thread is about learning Chinese characters, not some debate forum for arguing about inconsequential details. You are blocked and ignored.

From now on, unless you are 100% sure I am wrong about something, please refrain from posting something about it just so you can squeeze all that I have to explain something minor. I don't appreciate people wasting my time like that.

August 30

45 minutes ago, 2ouvenir said:

What I think you might be getting at is that you think the 死 and 心 are detached in my sentence 你死(咗條)心(去啦) and not really 死心, but in fact they are really together. You can even just say 死心 to mean "give up" as a "verb."

It's a compound expression that is not atomic, in the way 發誓 is equivalent to the verb swear (or vow) in English, which can be examined similarly: 發 is the verb (for issue or speak) and 誓 is the noun (a vow or oath, as the object), even though 誓 in itself can be used as a verb as well, in a different compound expression or sentence.

On that note, I'm just gonna 收皮。