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ghost_valley2021-06-03 09:13 pm
rekishi) wrote in ghost_valley2021-06-03 09:13 pm
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Qi Ye: Fun with linguistics and a hilarious google find
I'm currently reading "Qi Ye" (the novel focusing on Jing Beiyuan 《景北渊》, titular Qi Ye 《七爷》, and Wu Xi 《乌溪》, Da Wu 《大巫》. As this starts a good 15 years before the TYK/SHL storyline, Wu Xi is not the Great Shaman, Da Wu, yet. (Btw, fun fact, both 乌 and 巫 are Wū, first tone, so these are homophones. The 乌 in the not-family-name sense means "crow" and that is so fitting with how Wu Xi is described in the book and dressed by the costume department in SHL it's wonderful.)
Instead, he is referred to as "shamanet". While for me the meaning of this is clear with the -et syllable being commonly used in English to denote a diminutive (coronet, piglet, princelet, caulifloweret, starlet, etc). But also, I have never come across the word at all! Now I'm ESL and there will always be words like that which still make sense. Still, when I brought this up I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen it before.
trobadora and shadaras helped me with thinking and with looking up things in the Chinese version of the book. At first we thought the shaman-et derived from xiao wu (小巫), little shaman, which would make sense with how the -et syllable is usually used. In fact though (thanks, Dora!) the novel gives us 《巫童》(Wu Tong, shaman child; Chinese speakers please correct me because at least neither Yabla nor Pleco have a compound entry for this and the Baidu Baike page refers to social structures in Africa only).
This still makes sense in the way the -et syllable is usually used (caulifloweret, piglet), but it still is a fascinating neologism (if in fact it is one; disclaimer: I am not well versed enough in cultures that had/still have shamans to make that a definite statement and am open to corrections, however I did google, please see below).
While this discussion was ongoing I also googled a little and found the following:
And then there is this gem, which has brought absolute hilarity to us (original post at my DW):
(Google screenshot for a search result titled "A Poetical Epistle to His Excellency George Washington, Esq ..." with the blurb "Shidi, this is his highness crown prince jing, his highness the nan'ning prince, and his excellency the shamanet. ” kexing clasped his hands ...")
The post has nothing to do with SHL at all and just focuses solely on the George Washington epistle.
Dora google using the blurb and found the fic it belongs to on AO3, it is an A/B/O fic so I won't read it but I still find the whole things absolutely hilarious!
I have so many questions!
So, if you are reading Qi Ye, this is additional background knowledge!
(Languages are such fun.)
(Mods, can you add tags as you see appropriate? For Qi Ye maybe? Thanks!) Thanks!
ETA:
It would have helped if I had actually looked into the translator's glossary (which, in my defense, is not included in my epub so I had to look it up) and they say:
"大巫师 – Great Shaman, lit. “great wu master”
大巫 – Great Witch, lit. ‘great shaman’ (as you could guess, I couldn’t translate it like that… ‘witch’ is neutral in this sense)
巫童 – Shamanet (shaman + diminutive suffix –et; the t is silent, pronounced like the end of hey), lit. “wu child”"
(Source)
(So hey, I was right on the -et syllable!)
They also link to the wikipedia article on Wu (shaman), which probably makes translation choices a bit clearer I think.
Instead, he is referred to as "shamanet". While for me the meaning of this is clear with the -et syllable being commonly used in English to denote a diminutive (coronet, piglet, princelet, caulifloweret, starlet, etc). But also, I have never come across the word at all! Now I'm ESL and there will always be words like that which still make sense. Still, when I brought this up I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen it before.
trobadora and shadaras helped me with thinking and with looking up things in the Chinese version of the book. At first we thought the shaman-et derived from xiao wu (小巫), little shaman, which would make sense with how the -et syllable is usually used. In fact though (thanks, Dora!) the novel gives us 《巫童》(Wu Tong, shaman child; Chinese speakers please correct me because at least neither Yabla nor Pleco have a compound entry for this and the Baidu Baike page refers to social structures in Africa only).This still makes sense in the way the -et syllable is usually used (caulifloweret, piglet), but it still is a fascinating neologism (if in fact it is one; disclaimer: I am not well versed enough in cultures that had/still have shamans to make that a definite statement and am open to corrections, however I did google, please see below).
While this discussion was ongoing I also googled a little and found the following:
- "shamanet" is Albanian for "shaman" (the fully grown one)
- shamenet is Hebrew for "cream" (as in cream cheese or sour cream)
- it is a forest in Kenya
- the term shows up in some pseudo-Christian texts and also a table top RPG game (one hit each)
And then there is this gem, which has brought absolute hilarity to us (original post at my DW):
(Google screenshot for a search result titled "A Poetical Epistle to His Excellency George Washington, Esq ..." with the blurb "Shidi, this is his highness crown prince jing, his highness the nan'ning prince, and his excellency the shamanet. ” kexing clasped his hands ...")
The post has nothing to do with SHL at all and just focuses solely on the George Washington epistle.
Dora google using the blurb and found the fic it belongs to on AO3, it is an A/B/O fic so I won't read it but I still find the whole things absolutely hilarious!
I have so many questions!
So, if you are reading Qi Ye, this is additional background knowledge!
(Languages are such fun.)
ETA:
It would have helped if I had actually looked into the translator's glossary (which, in my defense, is not included in my epub so I had to look it up) and they say:
"大巫师 – Great Shaman, lit. “great wu master”
大巫 – Great Witch, lit. ‘great shaman’ (as you could guess, I couldn’t translate it like that… ‘witch’ is neutral in this sense)
巫童 – Shamanet (shaman + diminutive suffix –et; the t is silent, pronounced like the end of hey), lit. “wu child”"
(Source)
(So hey, I was right on the -et syllable!)
They also link to the wikipedia article on Wu (shaman), which probably makes translation choices a bit clearer I think.
no subject
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I also wasn't aware shaman as a term was subject to discussion, thank you for pointing that out.
ETA: I included an ETA in the post. Clearly I wasn't awake enough anymore yesterday evening to get that far in my research. Interesting that 巫 mostly used to refer to females...
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I remember seeing that glossary when I first started the book and then...promptly forgot that it included more than a character guide LOL.
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Haha! And I only ever downloaded the available epub and didn't even realize it had a glossary/character guide. XD
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I'm in some ways fascinated by the translation choice to make him a shaman at all. As
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I think for many people (me included, actually) 'witch' has a gender connotation. While I have seen a very few instances where it referred to a male protag, it generally is applied more to females.
And then there is the fact that when you google 巫童 you get a lot of hits on a very specific African practice. When you google it in English (i.e. "witch boy") you generally find either references to the musical or case reports but the Chinese hits are far more general (see also the baidu baike page I linked above, I believe this might be the wiki equivalent), and my guess is that the translator wanted to avoid the association with this specific practice.
Hence shaman it was.
ETA: I included an ETA in the post. Clearly I wasn't awake enough anymore yesterday evening to get that far in my research. It's of note that in the wiki article it says By the late Zhou Dynasty (4th to 3rd centuries BCE), wu referred mostly to female shamans or "sorceresses", while male sorcerers were named xi 覡 "male shaman; sorcerer"
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I really like that Alpha/Beta/Omega fic, which is remarkably less tropey. Not sure how it ended up on that page though.
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I don't read A/B/O so I'm not reading this one, it squicks in all the worst ways. Has nothing to do with the fic, I generally don't like the trope and always filter it out.
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To get back to what you spoke of in the post, the other thing that occurs to me is that the word "shaman" feels like it has much deeper religious/spiritual overtones to it than "sorcerer" does. Maybe its chosen because that tracks a little closer to Wuxi.