Date: January 11th, 2004
Cate: Chinese Word of the Day
Tags:

– You4 – Excellent

In Chinese, only means excellent. But in Japanese it can also mean actor. So 千年女優 – Qian1 Nian2 Nu3 You4 – Thousand Year Woman Excellent doesn’t exactly make sense when interpreted in Chinese. But as Japanese, it means Millennium Actress, which is a great movie. See it!

6 Comments

  1. January 12th, 2004
    REPLY))

  2. wow, this website iz awesome with all of the mario sheet music, keep up the good work.

    1F

  3. JohnJohn  
    January 13th, 2004
    REPLY))

  4. I need help with 持有 chi2 you3. Does it suggest ownership of something, a physical act of holding onto something, a certain mind-set, or something else? There is a controversy as to what my deceased father-in-law meant when he used this phrase in a document.

    2F

  5. January 13th, 2004
    REPLY))

  6. John: the phrase 持有 is combined with two words: 持 which means holding something in hands (You may look at the left side of the word, there is a figure of a hand , 手)and 有 which means having something. this phrase means someone haing something in his/her hands.

    3F

  7. January 13th, 2004
    REPLY))

  8. Steve: 優 also means an actress or an actor perform in a theatre in Chinese but in previous ages, such as in the Tang Dynasty (唐朝) about 1300 years ago. There were many Chinese cultures exported to Japan in the Tang Dynasty, then the language and the meaning changes, but the such a meaning is reserved by the Japanese.

    There is a term 娼 like 優, the classical meaning of 娼 was a female singer, but it means a whore in Chinese now.

    4F

  9. stevesteve  
    January 14th, 2004
    REPLY))

  10. That\’s interesting, Zonble. I like the way the Chinese character set \”forked\” all those years ago, and now has been evolving seperately in Chinese and Japanese.

    5F

  11. JohnJohn  
    January 14th, 2004
    REPLY))

  12. Zonble: Thanks for clarifying 持有 chi2 you3.

    6F

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