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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by ranskaldan
In pinyin it's sheng-quan, not sheng-suan.
According to my dictionary:
Quan. (falling tone) deed, ticket, guarantee |
Hm, not sure which character to which you referred. By context it should be the one that means "calculation." My dictionary has the pinyin as suan.
quote:
Originally posted by ranskaldan
Your suggestion of Polu would sound better with a -jun. Polu means the action of defeating the barbarians. Polu-jun means the people who defeat the barbarians. |
That doesn't sound good. If I were emperor I would add the jun to the end. 
quote:
Originally posted by ranskaldan
To be truthful, i've never heard the names 'hurang' or 'hubai' in my life. And 'bai' means breaking by hand, but not in the sense of defeating someone. It means breaking open, say, corn, or something. 'hubai' sounds a bit off. |
That's by extension.
quote:
Originally posted by ranskaldan
And as for Shen-Gei, well, i've never heard that one either. 'Gei' in the sense of 'to give' is pretty colloquial and wasn't really used to name imperial armies and the like. |
*sigh*
No, it's the character that stands for "opportunity" or "machine." There are many words to one sound, you know.
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ranskaldan
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Beijing ~ Singapore ~ Toronto ~ All hail to the new Rome
Sep 2001
time: 00:15
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Urban Ranger:
quote:
Hm, not sure which character to which you referred. By context it should be the one that means "calculation." My dictionary has the pinyin as suan. |
I am refering to a character read as 'quan', falling tone, meaning guarantee, or ticket, or deed. Sheng-quan is an expression meaning the Guarantee of Victory. What you referred to was 'shen-suan', meaning God's Calculations.
I believe that 'Sheng-ch'uan' is actually sheng-quan, because sheng-ch'uan is the Wade-Giles version of pinyin sheng-quan. (Wade Giles, btw, is an alternative way to write Chinese words in the Roman alphabet, other than pinyin.)
quote:
That's by extension. |
Yes, but i'd prefer a name i've heard before. The Chinese UU is supposed to reflect history after all. And hubai really sounds too weird to be the Chinese UU.
quote:
No, it's the character that stands for "opportunity" or "machine." There are many words to one sound, you know. |
The character for opportunity is ji, not gei. The ONLY word that's read as Gei in Chinese is the word for 'give'. I know that there're are many words to one sound, but for the sound 'gei' there's only one word in the whole language.
Rakki:
Iron Cavalry or Iron Knights would be perfect.
Dimorier Maximus:
I'm sorry, but I must object... i know that translating Horse Rider into hao-si-lai-de or hau-sih-lai-to will sound pretty foreign, but to a Chinese like me, it sounds really very very weird.
EDIT: apparently I misunderstood Dimorier, so ignore this part.
Last edited by ranskaldan on 26-09-2001 at 23:22
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ranskaldan
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Beijing ~ Singapore ~ Toronto ~ All hail to the new Rome
Sep 2001
time: 00:15
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I'll take out the hyphens. The apostrophes " ' " are there, however, because they're pronounced. ti is pronounced differently from t'i. It doesn't mean a contraction.
There are actually two ways to write Chinese words in the Roman Alphabet, called the Wade-Giles and pinyin. Wade-Giles is guilty of all the apostrophes, but it promotes a more accurate pronunciation by non-Chinese. Pinyin looks 'cleaner' and it's used by most people nowadays, but the selection of letters it uses is weird.
Which one would you prefer in the poll?
For example:
Wade Giles : T'ieh-Ch'ih
Pinyin : Tieqi
Actual Pronunciation: like Wade Giles
Wade Giles : P'olu-Ch'un
Pinyin : Polujun
Acutal Pronunciation: like Wade Giles
Wade Giles : Chu-Ko-Nu
Pinyin : Zhuge Nu
Actual Pronunciation: like Wade Giles
well you get the idea... which one do you prefer?
Last edited by ranskaldan on 27-09-2001 at 00:28
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lihb
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taipei, taiwan roc
Sep 2001
time: 13:15
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i agree that the units should be named in plain english. but "chinese rider"....
i mean why don't firaxis named special unit of aztec as aztec warrior, zulu as zulu warrior, american as american fighter.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by ranskaldan
Urban Ranger:
I am refering to a character read as 'quan', falling tone, meaning guarantee, or ticket, or deed. Sheng-quan is an expression meaning the Guarantee of Victory. What you referred to was 'shen-suan', meaning God's Calculations. |
Hm. quan (short tone) is a "ticket." suan is "calculations." sheng suan is "victory through careful calculations," or "an assured victory." It doesn't mean "god's calculations."
Customarily shen suan is used, not shen quan. The latter is only used in the 4-letter proverb.
Last edited by Urban Ranger on 28-09-2001 at 06:15
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J10
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As a Chinese, I've enjoyed reading this rather amusing thread. Honestly 90% of the time I have had no idea what you guys were referring to, but that's what amused me 
We were never too good at fighting on horses, the nomad tribes from the North (including the Mongols, of cuz) were, and that's why we have the Great War to isolate us from them, because they kept raiding on small villages.
Actually quite a few interesting and unique units were invented back in the ancient time, but we'd like to focus on war strategies, battle tactics and formation more than unique units. (ex. Predict how strong and in what direction the wind will blow, then set fire at that direction; Predict where they will run and put our heavily armored vehicles and soldiers there to wait for them to run to us, then have two groups of light calvaries waiting on either side to chase and kill those who escaped).
But let's stay on topic: Since we were never too good at fighting on horses, I don't think we have a specific name for our elite calvary. Riders were simply called "Riders", and I don't think "Raiders" is very appropriate because we never raid, we always settle. A fast and heavily armored rider (+1 d m comparing to knight right?) is impossible
let's just name it the Ti'Che, which stands for the "Iron Rider". I know some Generals in ancient China like to train elite riders, equip them with the best horses and use them (Ti'Che) to cut the enemy formation in half. That's all I could suggest, sorry bout the long post
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Harlan
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Berkeley, CA, USA
Aug 2005
time: 21:15
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There has been much debate about the phrase Sheng-ch'uan. I'm no Chinese speaker. However, I have access to the book Imperial Chinese Armies: 590 - 1260 AD. I saw it today, and this book mentions that phrase.
The mention is when talking about the Sung army. Here is the reference:
"Training and drill were studied scientifically, and in the best units, men were allocated to different duties on the basis of examinations in shooting and various athletic pursuits. Units of sheng-ch'uan, or picked men, were selected for special tasks such as night assaults."
So there you have it - it is real Chinese, and actually means something (presumably, "picked men"). If real Chinese speakers don't understand it, could it be because the language has changed in the 1000 years since the Sung? If the language hasn't changed significantly since that time, then it would be just about the only one on the planet not to evolve. Certainly don't doubt the source - the book is one of the best books on the Chinese army in existence and draws most of its material from the Cambridge History of China series, which is second to none.
Given all that, it doesn't seem to refer to any kind of cavalry specifically, just elite soldiers generally. So probably not the best name replacement for Rider.
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J10
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quote:
Originally posted by Harlan
"Training and drill were studied scientifically, and in the best units, men were allocated to different duties on the basis of examinations in shooting and various athletic pursuits. Units of sheng-ch'uan, or picked men, were selected for special tasks such as night assaults." |
I believe Sheng-Ch'uan is (I) "up" "choice", means elite, or best of the pick.
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ranskaldan
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Beijing ~ Singapore ~ Toronto ~ All hail to the new Rome
Sep 2001
time: 00:15
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Harlan, your excellent historical resources are great, it seems that there was such a unit after all...
As for the Chinese language changing... well, of course, all languages change. However, the weirdness of the Chinese language is that its writing doesn't change as much as the pronunciation does. Its pronunciation changes at the pace of normal languages, but its writing is 'fossilized'.
It's as if we still write in a modified version of Old English, or Proto-Germanic, even though we speak Modern English. Thus, the 'sheng-ch'uan' would be the Modern pronunciation of a term that would have been pronounced differently in the Sung dynasty, but would have been written in the same way (well, maybe with a different font, but it's the same characters.)
For the same reason, we Chinese can still read Confucius, 3000 years ago, with the same difficulty as say, Chaucer in English, because Chinese writing is artificially preserved. But if we heard Confucius, we would not understand a single word, because the pronunciation of the words have changed much, much more, at the 'normal' pace of all human languages.
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26-09-2001 16:08
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