{"id":56081,"date":"2022-09-09T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=56081"},"modified":"2022-09-09T17:11:55","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T22:11:55","slug":"the-mystery-of-song-u2aa0a-semen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=56081","title":{"rendered":"The mystery of s\u00f3ng (U+2AA0A) (\"semen\")"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Jenkins writes:<\/p>\r\n

I am hoping you'll indulge a question that's been bugging me. I\u00a0have been trying to improve my fluency by watching as many Chinese online dramas as possible,\u00a0and s\u00f3<\/span>ng<\/span>\u00a0(<\/span>U+2AA0A) comes up in show after show. But the character is always quite obviously \"cut-and-pasted\" into the subtitles. I'm (generally) familiar with the character as a simplified form of\u00a0\u379e, and that people usually write\u00a0\u6002\u00a0instead. But why<\/u> is the character practically completely absent from character sets and dictionaries? It's no more offensive than its progenitor\u00a0\u379e, but\u00a0\u379e is far easier to find in character sets.
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Jichang Lulu wrote about\u00a0\u379e on the Language Log back in March [see \"Selected readings\" below], but that post didn't include any reference to\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(<\/span>U+2AA0A). <\/span><\/p>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

If you want to see what this mysterious character looks like, you can find it here<\/a> — with some really esoteric variants (N.B.).<\/p>\r\n

Matt asks a good question about \"why<\/u> is the character practically completely absent from character sets and dictionaries?\"\u00a0 That's hard to say, especially since it's a heck of a lot simpler to write than <\/span>\u379e, which it is equal to.\u00a0 One surmise I have is that the mystery character is visually somehow reminiscent of that very nasty character \"c<\/span>\u00e0o \u808f\" (\"f*ck\") (graphically \"enter\" + \"flesh \/ meat\") as in \"c\u00e0o n\u01d0 m\u0101 \u808f\u4f60\u5abd\" (\"f*ck your mom\"), which is beyond the pale, even for all but the most hardened garbage mouth.\u00a0 Of course, one can always, and usually does, avoid \"c<\/span>\u00e0o \u808f\" by punningly writing it as c\u0101o \u64cd (\"exercise\").<\/p>\r\n

Another possibility is that \u00a0\u00a0(<\/span>U+2AA0A) echoes the shape of the notorious <\/span>b\u012b <\/span>\u5c44 (vulgar \"vulva or \/ and vagina\"), which is similarly nearly always replaced by the homophones \u903c or B.<\/p>\r\n

For whatever reason people are avoiding writing the \"real\" glyph for \u00a0 (U+2AA0A), the enigma of its being missing from character sets, dictionaries, and fonts points to an inalterable verity about the Sinographic writing system:\u00a0 it is essentially open-ended and the number of its potential discrete constituents is infinite.\u00a0 The artist X\u00fa B\u012bng<\/a> \u5f90\u51b0 <\/span>(b. 1955) proved that with his monumental, epochal installation (1988), \"Ti\u0101n sh\u016b \u5929\u66f8 \/ \u5929\u4e66<\/span><\/span><\/span>\" (\"Book from the Sky<\/a>\") and other art works (see also \"Selected readings\").\u00a0 Anyone, anywhere, anytime can create his or her very own hanzi \/ kanji \/ hanja \u6f22\u5b57 \/\u00a0 \u6c49\u5b57 (\"Sinoglyph\") — and many do.\u00a0 One can even advocate combining them with emoji.
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Selected readings<\/b><\/p>\r\n