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230 sats \ 21 replies \ @south_korea_ln 17 Aug \ on: Parent’s Corner: 大人 vs 小人 mostly_harmless
Nice writeup. Seems like using 小 to describe people of low moral character is common: I remember learning the word for thief being 小偷 (xiao tou).
This post reminded me of your last one explaining the etymology of characters. I recently thought about another example of that (involving yet again 女).
The character 安 (an), which means "peace," is a combination of 宀 (a roof) and 女 (a woman), suggesting that peace comes when there is a woman in the house.
Thanks for such a lovely comment.
There’s also 小气鬼 - someone who is petty.
You made me wanna learn some Korean so that I can explore the similarities n differences between these two languages - and how Mandarin might have influenced the development of Korean!
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Fun fact: Korean's dictionary is twice the size of most dictionaries as both a native Korean and a Chinese version of words usually exist. The Chinese versions usually make one sound more erudite but are only used in certain formal contexts.
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Electronic dictionaries aren’t in vogue these days?
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Oh they are. Just referring to the number of entries here, regardless of the format. Electronic or paper.
To be fair, Korean in nr 2 (after Tamil) also comes from the inclusion of north Korean dialects.
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What's the story behind so many entries for Tamil?
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A very good question!
Seems like this is because Tamil is one of the oldest, in fact the second oldest after Sanskrit, has so many synonyms for every word.
I'm not from the place is where Tamil is spoken. I'm from North India and Tamil is very specific to South India only.
But, I know one or two things about Sanskrit. Let me tell you. Sanskrit is one of the richest languages in the world, it has more words than in any other language. At present, Sanskrit dictionary has “102.78 billion” 🤷words! This is possible only because there are innumerable synonyms in Sanskrit for every word. So, Sanskrit isn't spoken mother of all languages for nothing. I've studied Sanskrit in my school and I can confirm you this.
I'm surprised that Wikipedia hasn't included Sanskrit dictionary in the list.
You can confirm it here.
https://satyaagrah.com/sanatan/dharm-sanskriti/2315-sanskrit-dictionary
Link of online Sanskrit dictionary:
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Forgot to tag another SN resident Indian (I think).
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Now there are a few more as well.
@IamSINGLE @TheMorningStar
@Athena
@BitcoinGuru
@DoctorD
@Beast_Vstar
There are a few more but they haven't come to life on SN till now but I hope they would be coming once we make Stackers News very popular in India.
Most Indians speak Tamil in Singapore. I always thought it is a minor n obscure language - today, I learnt about how influential it actually is!
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It's the mother of all Dravidian group of languages. It's at least 500 BCE Old language.
I asked my Indian colleague.
He told me that in a sense, Sanskrit is actually based on a very limited number of roots (around 2,000) and that the innumerable number of words are just coming from a very systematic application of specific grammar rules to apply "inflections" and "derivations".
But he says it appeals to the nationalistic nature of people to claim it contains several millions of words (he doesn't know where the number of 100 billion words comes from)... but in reality, the actual uniqueness of words lies in the roots rather in the inflections or derivations.
This could be a reason for not including it at nr 1 in that Wikipedia page. At the same time, you are free to add it... maybe it's a simple omission.
In the end, I guess both sides are valid. It's just a disagreement on how to count a word as being truly unique. It's a matter of definition.
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Very interesting! Thank you for verifying!
It seems immature to me for people to be proud of a 100 billion word language even if the number was true. The pride comes solely from a "big number better than small number" primitive reasoning, while a language can be judged objectively superior if it's able to achieve complexity from a simple basis. Having innumerable words as derivations from a limited root and consistent grammar rules is something Sanskrit can be really proud of. I actually like English because it achieves the same effect.
Okay, so you mean to say that Tamil and Korean have that many unique words? I think they also don't have so many root words.
For Sanskrit having so many similar words of synonyms lies in the fact that it was spoken in numerous dialects. The synonyms gave come from all those dialects.
The reason for not including Sanskrit there on the may also be because Sanskrit isn't spoken anymore. It's very much like Latin!
I love how you got other stackers to chime in. SN is truly a microcosm of the world!
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The character 安 (an), which means "peace," is a combination of 宀 (a roof) and 女 (a woman), suggesting that peace comes when there is a woman in the house.
A tear almost rolls out of my eye.. my eyes did watered... that's such a compelling image, it exposes so much about our most fundamentals... I love how every kanji is a poem in itself...
Thank you so much for bringing this to us @cryotosensei and @south_korea_ln
Edit: ok one did
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You are so dramatic 😂
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I know!!! But it did got me :')
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