Character etymology for 是 (shì, yes, right, to be)

mandarinboy

September 27, 2008, 04:29 PM posted in General Discussion

After some sidesteps we are finally there with the character I meant to write about, 是. Very useful and frequent.

Character: 是

Traditional form: 是

Historical variant: 昰

Pinyin: shì

Meaning: yes, right, to be

Frequency: 4

Strokes: 9

Decomposition: 日 rì (sun) + 一 yī (one) + 龰zhǐ (stop)

Radical part: 日 rì

Alternative forms of radical:

Radical meaning: Sun

Stroke animation: (the strokes are drawn the direction the picture is tipping)

Etymology:

We have looked on the sub part in earlier posts:

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/3416

and

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/3402

Earlier forms of this character is just a combination of those characters.

What we see is the sun over the character for correct. There is a debate about the history behind this. To me the most plausible suggestion is that the ideograph locates the sun 日 over the character for right and correct, 正 ( this modified to the alternative form). The sun is the standard for correctness since it always on time will show up at the horizon. The sun also corrects tells us the time and the season of the year. Chinese people where very good in studying the planets and especially the sun since the agriculture where dependant on knowing when to plant and when to harvest.

Other more philosophical persons suggest that the sun is the exact reason we can exist on this planet and hence the meaning of am, are, is, right. I can see the sun, therefore I am so to say.

Link to nciku usage of the character 是 (examples, sound etc)

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%98%AF/1313883

Example words:

不是 bù shì no / is not / not

只是 zhǐ shì merely / simply / only / but

可是 kě shì but / however

不是吗 bù shì ma isn't that so?

尤其是 yóu qí shì especially

或是 huò shì or / either one or the other

也就是说 yě jiù shì shuō in other words / that is to say / so / thus

可不是 kě bu shì that's just the way it is / exactly

不幸的是 bù xìng de shì unfortunately

user76423

September 27, 2008, 01:50 PM

Only "正 correct" people qualify to live or "是 to be" under the "日 sun".

Their is quite a lot philosophy behind it ...

user76423

September 27, 2008, 01:58 PM

Just my opinion:

I would prefer to have all these character explanations, etymology, links, etc. placed not here within all the discussions, but in a wiki, where everybody can collaborate.

I am a little bit pessimistic or anxious: what will happen to all these posts if CPod makes changes to these conversations in the future or just throws them away because they are too old?

What do you think?

CPod has/had a wiki: http://wiki.chinesepod.com, but it is not actively managed and needs to be cleaned up!

mandarinboy

September 27, 2008, 04:40 PM

I can agree. Originally I did this just for me and my daughter. The question is if this is helpful or just a waste of a group. I would definitely prefer a Wiki. I can easily set one up but that would be like the forum that I find rather useless since it is outside Cpod.

One strange thing with your post however is that that it where not public yet, just a draft. Where it still visible to comment on? What is then the idea of a draft? Doesn´t really matter but I thought it where possible to start up posts and finish them later and then publish them.

user76423

September 27, 2008, 05:10 PM

Oh, it was a draft!?!

I was wondering why I could not find it via "Community".

I went to this "draft" thru one of your other "Character etymology" posts and then clicked on one of the links under "mandarinboy's other Posts", which seem to include drafts!!

Seems to be a bug, not a feature...