Really weird sinographs, part 4: hyena
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In "LOL, ROTFL, IJBO" (11/2/23), all the talk of laughter made me think of the epitome of that particular animal behavior, the hyena. Of all creatures on earth, the hyena is one of the most curious. Can you imagine going through life laughing at everything, especially when life is so full of tragedy?
Listen: here, here, here, and there are many other videos and audios of laughing hyenas online.
Hyenas are not members of the dog or cat families. Instead, they are so unique that they have a family all their own, Hyaenidae. There are four members of the Hyaenidae family: the striped hyena, the “giggly” spotted hyena, the brown hyena, and the aardwolf (it's a hyena, not a wolf).
(San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)
From pondering the nature of hyenas, I naturally wondered how to say the name of that creature in Chinese. Only one or two of my Chinese students knew the word for "hyena", liègǒu, and none of them knew how to write the first character of the word, 鬣狗 (Wiktionary).
By itself, liè 鬣 means "beard; mane; whiskers; bristles; tuft; fins; needles" (Wiktionary). It only comes to signify "hyena" when it enters into the disyllabic word liègǒu 鬣狗.
This leads to a bit of confusion, because the Chinese word for "hunting dog" is the exact homophone liègǒu 獵狗, also called lièquǎn 獵犬, a term that was recently popularized by the Korean film of that name (English title "Bloodhounds").
There is no simplified character for liè 鬣 ("beard; mane; whiskers; bristles; tuft; fins; needles"), but there is for liè 獵 ("hunting"), viz., liè 猎.
Incidentally, aside from "hunting", in ancient times (3rd c. BC) liè 獵 / 猎 also had the quite different meaning of "tortoise, turtle", particularly in the south. At first I thought that it might be another Austroasiatic word, à la Jerry Norman and Tsu-Lin Mei, but it turns out to have a good Proto-Sino-Tibetan etymology, *k-lip (“turtle, tortoise”) (STEDT, Schuessler, 2007). See there for cognates. (Wiktionary)
Finally, like the hyena, 鬣 is an ungainly looking character, with its 25 strokes (some people would argue about that) stacked / squeezed in four segments atop each other. Remember, dear friends, that all sinoglyphs — whether one stroke or 64 strokes — have to fit inside the same size SQUARE, including ⼞ (radical 31). Look closely at 鬣 and see how you would manage that neatly and clearly and proportionally at normal size, such as that which I am typing here, or even twice this large. No wonder none of my students could write it.
If there were a genuine Chinese spelling bee, 鬣 would be a good word to stump contestants on.
IJBOL
hāhāhāhāhāhāhāha 哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈
Selected readings
- "Weird characters" (7/7/13)
- "Really weird sinographs" (5/10/18)
- "Really weird sinographs, part 2" (5/11/18)
- "Really weird sinographs, part 3" (3/15/18)
- "The infinitude of Chinese characters" (9/9/20) — with an enormous bibliography
- "Mystery characters and variant characters" (7/5/13)
- "Troublesome characters" (10/14/14)
Sub-bibliography on dogs and canines
- "Dogged by an etymological shape" (9/21/23)
- "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/17/18) — very long, encyclopedic post with nearly a hundred comments
- "Pretend dog" (10/28/19) — takes up where the previous post left off
- "'Dog' in Japanese: 'inu' and 'ken'" (12/17/16) — does for Japanese what the previous two items do for Chinese
- "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
Chris Button said,
November 5, 2023 @ 2:22 pm
The PST “turtle, tortoise” form goes back to -jə- and hence requires -ja- rather than just -a- for the OC vocalism of 獵 via the ə/a ablaut. They would have given the same Middle Chinese reflex.
Chris Button said,
November 5, 2023 @ 4:11 pm
Also the OC r-, OB l- interchange is suggestive of external influence.
Jonathan Smith said,
November 5, 2023 @ 4:12 pm
students of Chinese literature should all know of the 海乙那, made famous by Lu Xun
Asuitablecase said,
November 5, 2023 @ 4:38 pm
Pleco gives the much more writable 土狼 as an alternative
Michael Watts said,
November 6, 2023 @ 1:32 am
I have spoken a bit about this with a Chinese friend; her opinion was that certain characters are just naturally vertical (e.g. 事) or horizontal (e.g. 街) and in natural writing they won't fit into a standard square. They'll be too tall, or too thin, or too wide, and will have a different bounding box than other characters in the same sentence.
Alternative for what? 土狼 "earth wolf" looks like a direct calque of aardwolf (also "earth wolf"). Hyenas in general aren't aardwolves.
Lasius said,
November 6, 2023 @ 4:02 am
To be honest, I think hyenas are very beautiful animals.
If you look at the striped hyena, the only hyena species living close to the Chinese cultural sphere, it becomes quiete apparent why they chose this signifier.
Victor Mair said,
November 6, 2023 @ 7:54 am
Rectilinear rectitude
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=61173
on the squareness of Chinese characters
Victor Mair said,
November 6, 2023 @ 10:35 am
Honest Lasius:
Can you think of an ungainly animal?
Lasius said,
November 7, 2023 @ 2:48 am
Have you ever seen a loon or a grebe walking?
Victor Mair said,
November 7, 2023 @ 7:45 am
Grebes are amazing when they walk on the beach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5eGcgNHSNk
Loons are phenomenal when they run on water:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc3UeJK1-vc
Benjamin Ernest Orsatti said,
November 7, 2023 @ 8:27 am
@VM: Homo sapiens, but he makes up for it with thumbs and patience.
Philip Taylor said,
November 7, 2023 @ 10:06 am
The walrus, perhaps ?
Chris Button said,
November 7, 2023 @ 11:55 pm
Further to my comment above about the OB l- ~ OC r- interchange, I probably wouldn't classify the Proto-Sino-Tibetan etymology as "good".
Looking at Gordon Luce's comparative wordlists from his "Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma" (1985), the apparent Burmese isolate (attested in the inscriptions) does seem to also have been attested in the Burmish language Hpun.
On the east of Burma, Luce notes broad Karen attestations. On the west of Burma, he notes the Luish languages (Sak, Ganan, Kadu). To these western ones may be added Loffler's "Contribution of Mru to PST" (1966) comparisons of Mru and the Southern Kuki-Chin language Khami, which were apparently in close contact with each other.
That seems to be it! The Chinese form "particularly in the south", compared by Luce in his "Comparative Wordlist" (1981) with Inscriptional Burmese, is therefore most likely a loan coming from Burma. As to where it came from originally, I would probably start by looking at Karen (presumably Burmese was the intermediary that took it over to the west of Burma and up into southern China) and its contacts outside of Tibeto-Burman over on that side.
Chris Button said,
November 8, 2023 @ 8:29 am
Since the Burmese form (or at least a homophone) is attested in the words for plaice and butterfly, we could perhaps be dealing with a specific name for a flat-shelled sea turtle. That then ultimately aligns with 枼 and derivatives like 鰈 plaice and (蝴)蝶 butterfly. The r- in 獵 still suggests a loan origin in Chinese though, so the relationship would be indirect, albeit ultimately from the same source.
wanda said,
November 9, 2023 @ 6:12 pm
Hyenas don't actually think things are funny.
Ungainly animals: Elephant seals. Although it turns out that they are faster than you think when they are running after you on the beach (the trick is to go sideways; they can't change direction easily*), and that they can arch their backs very far- if you sit on their back, they can arch their necks far enough to bite you.
*The other trick, before they start chasing you, is to hold up a long stick above your head. If you do that, they think you're taller than they are and won't bother you.
Victor Mair said,
November 9, 2023 @ 7:44 pm
@wanda:
"Hyenas don't actually think things are funny."
How do you know for sure? Have you ever gotten inside a hyena's head?
Some people laugh at almost everything.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
November 10, 2023 @ 8:40 am
Alternative, yet simultaneous responses to wanda's comment:
(1) I think those "Do-not-Admit" photos posted at the entrance of the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium must be of you;
(2) My metal band is going to title its next album: "Ride the Elephant Seal";
Vampyricon said,
November 10, 2023 @ 12:20 pm
Note that Wiktionary editors are in the process of retiring these "Proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstructions", as there were concerns expressed about their appropriateness. The current thinking is to move them all to "Proto-Tibeto-Burman", as STEDT claims to reconstruct, but there are also talks of removing them entirely due to the lack of demonstration of Tibeto-Burman monophyly.
Vampyricon said,
November 10, 2023 @ 12:25 pm
Apologies for the double post, but I believe 土狼 is also the common term for hyenas in Hong Kong Cantonese, at least according to Disneyland, which calls Scar's minions 土狼
Istrias said,
November 11, 2023 @ 9:58 pm
What about this one: 龘
Victor Mair said,
November 12, 2023 @ 6:35 am
"the appearance of a dragon flying"
https://zh.wiktionary.org/zh-hant/%E9%BE%98
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BE%98
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BE%98