Slick, Slithery and Slippery
« previous post | next post »
[myl: This is an inaugural post from Chu-Ren Huang, a new LLOG contributor.]
The 29th of January will be the first day of the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese zodiac. Of all the twelve animals representing the zodiac, the choice of the snake may seem to be dubious to our modern sensibility. Dragons and tigers are powerful and elegant, horses and bulls are strong and practical, monkeys are human-like and smart, and all others are familiar in a home or farm setting. But why was a snake chosen to be the sixth animal in the twelve-year cycle?
The perceived slick, slithery and slippery nature of the snake poses a linguistic challenge every twelve years. One of the culturally significant practices of Chinese language arts is to create new year jingles by including or inserting the name of the zodiac animal within the traditional form of a Chinese idiom. Popular motifs include soaring dragons, prancing tigers and galloping horses. One could also invoke the loyalty of dogs, perseverance of cow/water buffalos, swiftness of rabbits, and diligence to rise at the first crow of a rooster. Mice, sheep, pigs are all associated with the affluence of a household in different ways. But what are the redeeming properties of the snake?
One of the most pragmatic devices of language arts for such celebratory occasions is to append a desirable adjective. This the same device that named all film and other arts awards in greater China, e.g. Golden Flower, Golden Horse or Golden Rooster. The Oscar is translated as 'the Golden Statue Award 金像奖 jin1xiang4jiang3' which gives 'the little golden guy 小金人xiao3jin1ren2' as awards. The Chinese digital media is already inundated with expressions such as ‘Golden snakes herald happiness 金蛇报喜jin1she2bao4xi3’ or ‘Fortune snakes welcome the spring 福蛇迎春fu2she2ying2cun1’. This is an easy way to incorporate the snake into a four-character idiom but does not bring special meaning for this new year. And even though tempted by the clever and fitting pun, I very much doubt people would appreciate ‘福蛇吐信fu2she2tu3xin4’ which is a pun that has a ‘fortune snake’ literally stick out its tongue or metaphorically ‘share news, (信 xin4 stands for message, faith, or tongue, especially for snakes and lizards).
Another productive device of Chinese language arts is the substitution of (near) homophones. This approach has been especially popular in modern times, probably due to the familiarity and common uses of various romanization systems nowadays. Instead of 舍我其谁 she3wo3qi2shei2 ‘(To lead, to take on the challenge) there is no one but me’, one could use 蛇我其谁 she2wo3qi2shei2 with the near homophone of the second tone 蛇she2 instead of the original third tone 舍 she3. A very colloquial rendition clips the final ‘n’ from 什shen2 in 什么都有shen2medou1you3 ‘(we) have anything you can think of’ and use蛇么都有she2medou1you3. These expressions are cute but highly derivative and do not invoke the meaning of the snake as a zodiac animal.
There are several conventional Chinese idioms containing the word snake. The best known one is杯弓蛇影 bei1gong1sheying3‘ (mistaking) the reflection of a bow as a snake in the cup; false alarm’, which refers to the shape of a snake. An appropriate one of this year is 虚与委蛇xu1yu3wei1yi2, attributed to the philosopher ZhuangZi more than 2,000 years ago. Here the meaning of 委蛇wei1yi2 ‘bending-snake’ is to wind and bend like a snake, i.e. to be flexible. Currently, this expression is used to describe zigzag or s-bend roads. In the original story from ZhuangZi, the protagonist outwitted a know-it-all guru who came to challenge him by flowing with the changing tactics of the challenge without committing to an a priori position himself. The conventionalized meaning of the idiom is to hold no preconceptions and dynamically adapt to all changes. In modern Mandarin, however, 虚与委蛇 xu1yu3wei1yi2 is most often used to refer to insincere, perfunctory, or deceiving acts or elusive positions. This new metaphoric use invoking the slithering and slippery nature of the snake was first attested less than a hundred year ago. I suspect that this slick, slithering and slippery image of the snake was influenced by western metaphors involving snake, and not as part of the imagery of the snake as a zodiac animal. In this new year of changes and challenges, the original interpretation of ZhuangZi’s story provides a useful guidepost: by acknowledging the flexible bendy shape of the snake, we are better able to thrive in complex times through dynamic adaptation.
Victor Mair said,
January 27, 2025 @ 5:35 pm
Welcome aboard, Chu-Ren! Your initial post bodes well. You even managed to make the snake have some redeeming qualities at the beginning of the New Year.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 27, 2025 @ 6:11 pm
Aha as we prepare to greet the new year a light spring breeze stirs the musty eastern wing of the 'Log :D
Indeed, certain of the zodiac animals lend themselves less naturally to auspicious turns of phrase. A specific observation re: this post is that while the second syllable of sound-symbolic wei1yi2 'winding, etc.' can be written with "蛇", same character used for she2 'snake', 'winding' doesn't seem to reflect 'snake' per se and is written all kinds of ways: e.g. in readily available digital editions, this word as it appears within the line "it is because the river meanders that it may go far" (河以WEIYI故能遠) is written "委蛇" in Shuoyuan, "逶迆" in Wenzi, and "逶蛇" in Huainanzi. Instead, it's often suggested that 'snake' began as a euphemism related to / derived from 'winding', displacing (antecedents of) tabooed hui3 虺 (see e.g. Schuessler 2007: 455).
FWIW, Norman (e.g. 1974 etc.) constructs proto-Min 'snake' with a "softened" onset written "-dž"… what this really was in phonetic terms remains unclear, but lateral cluster is an OK guess. Oh and many think the character "它" first actually depicted a snake incidentally… just for fun, I kinda think it was a tongue and that (some?) Sinitic 'tongue' is related to the above…
Inaugurational said,
January 27, 2025 @ 6:26 pm
Welcome Prof. Huang!
Here is a couplet I composed:
龍後更添福澤
馬前先慶安康
No snake is mentioned but for those who are familiar with the zodiac cycle, they should get that snake from it.
How would you rate it?
Mark Metcalf said,
January 27, 2025 @ 7:58 pm
Welcome and well-done, Professor Huang!
Chris Button said,
January 27, 2025 @ 11:00 pm
Welcome!
I do love the analysis, but I'm not entirely sure it holds.
Although the graphic form of snake is a slippery one to pin down in the inscriptions, a common oracle-bone disaster word consists of a foot above a snake.
Qiu Xigui treats it as 害 "harm" in his 1983 "釋…" article. The interpretation might not be exactly right, but the harmful sense is without a doubt.
Philip Taylor said,
January 28, 2025 @ 4:52 am
I have handled many snakes in my time (none venomous, I should add) and while "slick" and "slithery" seem apposite, I am less certain that "slippery" is a valid descriptor (apart from sea snakes, of course). A land snake is anything but "slippery", and easily held from the perspective of friction, but of course their slick and slithery nature does sometimes enable them to escape human grasp …
Victor Mair said,
January 28, 2025 @ 5:29 am
As part of my career-long effort to demonstrate:
1. Sinitic is not a monosyllabic language
2. the sounds of Sinitic are more important than the shapes of the sinographs
etc.,
starting about half a century ago, I collected a large number of disyllabic words dating to two to three millennia ago that had more than one sinographic form.
Wēiyí ("meandering; winding; sinuous"), mentioned above, was one of my favorites. I think that I once counted a dozen variants; here are eleven: 委蛇, 蜲蛇, 逶夷, 逶迤, 逶蛇, 逶移, 委佗, 委它, 委移, 委他, 威夷 ). Neither of the syllables by itself means anything germane to this expression. It's only when the sounds are brought together that we obtain the meaning "meandering; winding; sinuous".
"Ambling, shambling, rambling, wandering, wondering: the spirit of Master Zhuang / Chuang" (7/21/21)
katarina said,
January 28, 2025 @ 2:34 pm
re. @Victor Mair.
Victor, do you know of all the sinographic forms of Wēiyí, which is the oldest ? Is it 委蛇 ?
katarina said,
January 28, 2025 @ 3:11 pm
re @Victor Mair, continued:
Prof. Mair once wrote that Sinitic words that have many sinographic forms are probably of foreign (non-Sinitic) derivation. After the above comment I looked up Wiktionary and indeed this appears to be the case with weiyi 委蛇 and its sinographic variants . Wiktionary 委蛇 quotes Axel Schuessler (2007) as noting the similarity of 委蛇, reconstructed sound *qrol lal, “winding; compliant; graceful” with Khmer *រលេ (rɔlei) “sinuously, in a twisting or wiggling manner (as a snake swimming)”. Khmer belongs to the Austroasiatic language family.
A.B. said,
January 28, 2025 @ 3:49 pm
The correct pronunciation of the 春 (chun1) of 迎春 is homophonous with 蝽 (chun1) “stinkbug”, which would be particularly unwelcome, especially in an Asian context.
Chris Button said,
January 28, 2025 @ 10:35 pm
Qiu provides an example of the foot portion being omitted to leave just the snake to represent the disaster word. Rather than being an error, he suggests that the word represented by the snake and the disaster word represented by the snake+foot could perhaps be from the same provenance.
I suppose it could be a little like the Indo-European root behind vermin and its connections with words for snakes, worms, etc.
Chu-Ren Huang said,
January 29, 2025 @ 12:09 am
Dear All:
On this new year day of CNY
Thank you very much for the warm welcome and for sharing inspiring thoughts.
Another popular euphemism is to refer to the Year of the Snake as 小龙年xiao3long2nian2 'pseudo(=little) dragon year', which also refers to the fact that it is the year that follows the Dragon Year. This in turn leads to the popular visual devise of drawing snakes like dragons for the new year.
It seem that the myth that (Ancient/Archaic) Chinese is predominantly monosyllabic simply would not go away. To support the various arguments referred to in this strand, there are three types of strong empirical evidence representing disyllabic stems: that the two characters share the same radical, that the two syllables rhymes, and that the two syllables alitterate. The orthographic clue is typically straightforward due to the reliable homomorphism of orthographic forms through the history of the language (i.e. the 'fonts' change but the component composition remains constant). The phonological clue is a bit trickier due to sound changes and the uncertain (or competing systems) of reconstruction.
Note that character 蛇 is the composition of 虫+它. A fairly straightforward account of the various facts mention can arise bases on my earlier account that the Chinese orthography is an ontological system organized by basic concepts as represented by radical, and the well received view that the other 'phonetic' part represent a phonological system. 虫 represents the kind of animals, and 它 represents the pronunciation and/or the form of the referent of the word. 虫 likely stand for a kind of snake like animals including snakes and can be used as a family emblem. For instance 大禹 da4yu3 ' the first and most famous hydraulic engineer in Chinese history has a name with the 虫 radical. And 女娲 nv3wa1has been historically depicted with a snake body. This is consistent Qiu Xigui's analysis of 害 mentioned by Jonathan. And 它 yi2/yi3 has the sound and bending form as mentioned by Jonathan and Victor. This also underlines another myth that the 'phonetic' parts stand for sound only. Chinese philological studies have come to the conclusion that they often also contribute to the meaning, again exemplified by Qiu Xiqui's analysis.
Chris Button said,
January 29, 2025 @ 8:55 am
The distinction between 虫 and 它 in the oracle bones is a challenging one. Nowadays, 虫 is more associated with insect/bug, but it seems they were both originally snakes.
For example, Qiu Xigui treats the bottom of component of the foot+snake "disaster" word as 虫 (albeit then taking it through 禹 to reach his 害 analysis). Meanwhile, Ken-ichi Takahshima treats the bottom as 它 and assigns the disaster word a functional modern reading of "tuo".
Tom Mazanec said,
January 29, 2025 @ 12:26 pm
Welcome, Prof. Huang! I look forward to learning from your posts.
This new year, I find myself wishing people 靈巧像蛇 (língqiǎo xiàng shé), "to be as shrewd as snakes." While Matthew's gospel may not be generally thought of as a traditional Chinese source, it fits the rhythmic requirements of a new year's greeting quite nicely and lends some redeeming qualities to the snake (likely based on its ability to shed its skin).
Rodger C said,
January 30, 2025 @ 11:49 am
As I'm not the first to point out, the public representatives of Christianity today are often as wise as doves and as gentle as serpents.
Philip Taylor said,
January 30, 2025 @ 12:55 pm
"as gentle as serpents" I recognise as irony, Rodger, but "as wise as doves" ?
Yves Rehbein said,
January 30, 2025 @ 6:31 pm
@ Chris Button, given the additional information I suggest the foot is a phonetic complement or an attribute, perhaps "mis-take/step"? Since "The basis of coming and going" https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=66981 I wonder all the more about the grammar.
Yves Rehbein said,
January 30, 2025 @ 8:04 pm
I am late to the party but the the saying Guten Rutsch! on new years eve applies, literally "good slide", actually most likely from Yiddish rosh hashanah "beginning of the year".
As for the notion of slippery sliders, @ Philip Taylor, dictionaries weren't tremendously helpful with Sleipnir, Odin's splendid eight legged horse, but *sleupan "to sneak, creap" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-West_Germanic/sleupan should be a good start. Lubotsky 2024 on "wagon terminology and the date of the Indo-Iranian split" explains sleds (!) before wagons, and Schürr 2019, "Wagenwörter", in a similar vein literally puts the ox-cart before the horse.
Pulleyblank's Ugaritic hypothesis well known to Language Log readers can be maintained in face of the fact that "巳 (OC s-ləʔ) displaced 子 (OC tsəʔ), the original sixth earthly branch which denoted the moon's "coming forth" stage" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/巳 if the difference between the ABCs and Halaḥams of Ugarit and later Ancient South Arabian, Ge'ez and Egyptian can be explained with respect to Latin f as the sixth letter and Egypt f a horned viper. Going by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic_alphabet#Abecedaries ʾa b g ḫ d h w … has w in seventh place. ḫ merged with h in Phoenician, Hebrew, and Akkadian, so Latin f in sixth position is derived from w somehow through Etruscan, whereas Ancient South Arabian has f in place of p. The H l ḥ m sequence has h in first position, w in sixth. Without diving too deep into the topic it looks like h) 子 associated with the first place while w) 巳 displaced 子, now the sixth position.
Chris Button said,
January 30, 2025 @ 9:20 pm
@ Yves Rehbein
My hunch is that the foot+snake character actually simply represents 它.
Several academics treat it as such, including Shima Kunio in his classic oracle-bone compendium Inkyo Bokuji Sōrui.
Its meaning as some kind of a disaster word (e.g., affliction or curse) is undeniable. So presumably there is some kind of semantic extension going on between a venomous influence and a venomous animal.
Rodger C said,
January 31, 2025 @ 2:19 pm
Philip Taylor" Cf. Konrad Lorenz for how doves actually treat one another.
Philip Taylor said,
January 31, 2025 @ 2:24 pm
Thank you for the suggestion, Roger — I will do as you suggest, but the pair of collared doves that I watch on a daily basis from my office window (they sit side-by-side on a branch of one of my many trees) appear to treat each other with idyllic love and affection.