{"id":49247,"date":"2020-11-22T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T22:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=49247"},"modified":"2020-11-22T17:15:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T22:15:51","slug":"eat-vinegar-jesus-christ-and-middle-persian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=49247","title":{"rendered":"Eat vinegar, Jesus Christ, and Middle Persian"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've always been intrigued by the Chinese expression \"eat vinegar\" (ch\u012bc\u00f9 \u5403\u918b) meaning \"be jealous\".\u00a0 To convey the idea of \"jealous\", one can also say d\u00f9j\u00ec \u5992\u5fcc or just d\u00f9 \u5992 (note the female semantophore).\u00a0 I learned the disyllabic form with the syllables reversed, hence j\u00ecd\u00f9 \u5fcc\u5992.\u00a0 The monosyllabic form (d\u00f9 \u5992) is ancient, going back to classical times.<\/p>\r\n

I said j\u00ecd\u00f9 \u5fcc\u5992 instead of d\u00f9j\u00ec \u5992\u5fcc because the former is what all my Chinese friends and relatives said, though my impression is that the latter is more common across the Mandarin-speaking population.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I felt that saying\u00a0j\u00ecd\u00f9 \u5fcc\u5992 was awkward because, except for the tones, it is homophonous with J\u012bd\u016b \u57fa\u7763, which I always understood as some form of \"Jesus\".\u00a0 In fact, J\u012bd\u016b \u57fa\u7763 is a short form of J\u012bl\u00ecs\u012bd\u016b \u57fa\u5229\u65af\u7763, which is a transcription of \"Christ\", from Ancient Greek \u03a7\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 (Khrist\u00f3s).\u00a0 The Sinitic transcription of \"Jesus\" is Y\u0113s\u016b \u8036\u7a23, which ultimately also comes from Ancient Greek:\u00a0 \u1f38\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 (I\u0113so\u00fbs), possibly via Latin Iesus and other European languages. Doublet of Y\u012by\u012bs\u016bs\u012b \u4f0a\u4f0a\u7a4c\u65af\uff0f\u4f0a\u4f0a\u7a23\u65af.\u00a0 (source<\/a>)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Incidentally, <\/span><\/span>j\u00ec \u5fcc is a simplified form of\u00a0 \u5ac9 (\"to envy, be jealous; to hate, resent\").\u00a0 Note that this traditional form of the character, like d\u00f9 \u5992, its synonymous morpheme partner in the disyllabic word j\u00edd\u00f9 \u5ac9\u5992 (\"jealous\"), also has a female semantophore.\u00a0 Thus we get a double whammy of misogyny in j\u00edd\u00f9 \u5ac9\u5992 (\"jealous\"). \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

Back to \"eat vinegar\" (ch\u012bc\u00f9 \u5403\u918b) meaning \"be jealous\".\u00a0 There's no problem with \"eat\" for \"drink\".\u00a0 We've encountered this many times before in Mandarin, e.g., \"Don't eat the water<\/a>\" (3\/17\/15).\u00a0 As for sourness being an apt analogy for jealousy, it reminds me of Aesop's sour grapes fable.<\/p>\r\n

Since I'm writing about vinegar, I should not fail to mention that Chris Button has long wondered whether Middle Persian \"sik\" (vinegar), presumably related to Turkic \"sirke\", might have anything to do with \u918b\/\u9162?<\/p>\r\n