Posted by Victor Mair

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71631&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=think-in-japanese

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71631

From Mok Ling:

Mok Ling explains:

In this short video, the Japanese teacher explains the Japanese verb (two verbs?) that mean "to think". According to him, one is a general verb "to think", and the other involves a "deeper" thinking. According to him both are pronounced identically おもう (omou), and differ only in the Kanji used to spell them: 思う for thinking general, nonspecific thoughts, and 想う for deeper and more emotional thoughts.

Surely this is bunk, right? A quick lookup on Wiktionary says おもう is one word that encompasses both meanings and that 思 and 想 are simply variations in spelling. Other spellings include 念, 懐, 憶 — all of which mean "to think" in Chinese.

I decided to ask a Japanese friend if the distinction was actually real or if this was another "鳳凰 means female phoenix and male phoenix" (see below) situation. She pointed me to this website.

As with the original video, Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs apparently prescribes the "lower-higher order thinking" distinction between 思 and 想.

Should the celebrated Chinese poet Li Bo (701-762) have xiǎng 想'd rather than sī 思'd his gùxiāng 故鄉 ("old hometown")?* Or is this standard really as bizarre as it seems to me as a Chinese speaker?

I will further perplex the reader who attempts to answer Mok Ling's question by pointing out that, in Sinitic languages, a very common word is sīxiǎng 思想 ("thought").** 

*A note on Li Bo's hyper-famous 20-syllable poem, "Jìng yè sī 靜夜思 / 静夜思" ("Thinking on a Quiet Night"), that is memorized by every Chinese elementary schoolchild.

Chuáng qián míngyuè guāng
Yí shì dìshang shuāng
Jǔtóu wàng míngyuè
Dītóu sī gùxiāng

床前明月光
疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月
低頭思故鄉

Simplified characters
床前明月光
疑是地上霜
举头望明月
低头思故乡

Thinking on a Quiet Night

Moonlight in front of my bed,
I imagine that it is frost on the ground;
Raising my head, I gaze at the moon,
Lowering my head, I think of my old hometown.

**A note on the Sino-Japanese expression M. sīxiǎng / J. shisō 思想

The two characters 思想 occurred next to each other already by the Han-Wei period (roughly 1st-3rd c.), but I wonder when this locution became a fixed expression for abstract thought.  Could it be another of one of my "round-trip words" that the Japanese picked up from China and assigned a Western concept / usage to?"'

See Victor H. Mair, "East Asian Round-Trip Words", Sino-Platonic Papers, 34 (October, 1992), p. 12 of 5-13:

思想    Middle Sinitic si-sjangX (v. "brood about") –> (Jap.) shisō (n. "thought") –> (Mand.) n. sīxiǎng ("thought")

In support of Mok Ling, a brief note on "phoenix" and other ancient disyllabic binoms

I have written endlessly on the subject of polysyllabic words in Old Sinitic, e.g., géjiè 蛤蚧("gecko"), shānhú 珊瑚 ("coral"), zhīzhū 蜘蛛 ("spider"), and so forth.  So-called "phoenix", fènghuáng 鳳凰 (it does not mean "male and female phoenixes") is one such word.

Miyake (2015) reconstructs Old Chinese pronunciation *N-prəm-s ɢʷˁɑŋ and proposes, though with uncertainty, that the mythical bird's name is the affixed form of 風皇 (“wind sovereign”).

(Wiktionary)

fēng 風 ("wind")

Possibly from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *buŋ (“wind”) (STEDT). Velar nasal final -ŋ, restored later in Middle Chinese (Schuessler, 2007), is preserved in cognates like Proto-Central Naga *m-puŋ, Jingpho mabung, nbung, Drung nvmbeung.

Pronunciations 1, 2, and 3 are all cognates; with both 2 and 3 evolving from *prəm-s, exoactive (with causative suffix -s) of *prəm (Schuessler, 2007). It is unclear how Old Chinese *prəm is related to Tibetan རླུང (rlung) and Proto-Tai *C̬.lɯmᴬ.

Korean 바람 (baram) may have been borrowed from Chinese (Zhao, 2007). The Chinese word has a wide range of extended meanings, and interestingly many of these have exact parallels in the Korean item. Compare Chinese 風流 and 風騷 with Korean 바람둥이 (baramdung'i).

Cognate with:

• • 飛廉 (OC *pɯl ɡ·rem, “wind god”)
  • 蜚蠊 (OC *pɯlʔ/bɯls ɡ·rem, “cockroach”) (note the preservation of the -r- infix in Old Chinese through disyllabification, also 嵐 (OC *b·ruːm), 葻 (OC *b·uːm))
  • 瘋 (OC *plum, “mad, insane”)
  • 諷 (OC *plums, “to mock, to advise”)
  • 帆 (OC *bom, *boms, “sail”)

The development from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese was irregular, driven by dissimilation of the initial and coda bilabial consonants.

(Wiktionary)

Selected readings

• "'Butterfly' words as a source of etymological confusion" (1/28/16)
• "Of knots, pimples, and Sinitic reconstructions" (11/12/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Another early polysyllabic Sinitic word" (9/21/21) — with ample bibliography
• "Chasing the Shaman’s Steed: The Horse in Myth from Central Asia to Scandinavia" (free pdf)

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