of greetings, and food.

[permetaform]

sometime a couple of days ago I remember finding out that the traditional Tazanian response to the greeting, "How are you?", is, "Strong."

In some parts of China, some parts of Beijing, one of the morning greetings is, "Have you eaten?"

I am practicing the chinese radicals, and I can't help but notice that "eat" is a permutation of "defiance".

huh.

Comments

[suffire.livejournal.com]

Is it the word in my icon? Because I cannot think of any other word for eat, for a country obsessed with food, there aren't many chinese words that actually describes the very act of eating. Hm. There are many many words that describe the act of cooking, however.

[permetaform]

yup! that one!

[suffire.livejournal.com]

Yay! Mystery solved. Now I just have to figure out which "defiance" you're referring to, we are really not that much of a defiant nation. The extent of our endurance and perseverance, on the other hand, is *amazing*, we meekly let ourselves be oppressed to death, while breeding lots of kids to make up for the population. So many times through history had half our population been wiped away, and not because of some godforsaken disease, but because of war, and poverty. It's really depressing.

[permetaform]

remove the 'hat' part of your 'eat'...

[suffire.livejournal.com]

but doesn't it mean "good"? I used to get that word for my gradings. You said permutation, I've been trying to search for a word that look like Liang and yet contain the defiant meaning.

[permetaform]

o.0, in my radicals lists (traditional) it's listed under the 6 strokes column as defiance...

ie. mouth with the two 'legs', dash in the middle for the right leg, dash at the end for the left leg.