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]

wait, really?
I always thought the radicals to "eat" 吃 is a combintation of "mouth"口 and "beg"乞.
another word for "eat", 食，which when taken apart, can go as "person good".

which word for "eat" are you talking about? I'm really curious.

[suffire.livejournal.com]

The aforementioned biting, yao咬，can go as "mouth" "copulation". Take that as you will. hehehehehe.

[permetaform]

::giggledeath::

[permetaform]

the radical for defiance is a mouth with...er, things hanging from the bottom. That's beg I'm guessing?

the version of eat I'm looking at has a 'roof', then a 'lid' on a 'mouth'. The vertical sides of 'mouth' is extended and there's a small dash in the middle of the right leg and at the bottom of the left.

[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.