2

Ancient Chinese have a philosophy which holds that some names have substantial content, i.e., moral requirement for humans.

For example, the word human carries with it the meaning of compassion; if you want to be reckoned as a human being, you must show compassion. One fundamental expression in ancient texts of this philosophy is something like "humans ought to be (like) a 'human being'".

The basic structure of this sentence is "individuals or particulars + be + an embodiment of the species". In Chinese, the phrase is composed of two repetitive nouns. For example, maybe I shall say "a man shall act as a man" (人人) or "things shall be treated as they should be" (物物）? Do these sentences succeed in expressing a moral?

How would English phrase a statement like this one?

Kit Z. Fox
  • 27,819
benlogos
  • 1,537
  • I have had a lot of experience with the Chinese over 40 years, though I don't speak any. My immediate thought is that this will not be easy. You will need a Chinese scholar who speaks English. I will mention it to my wife, whose mother tongue is Hakka dialect, to see if she has any ideas. – WS2 Nov 29 '13 at 07:41
  • 1
    When you say that 'human' carries with it the meaning of 'compassion', that is or course the case in English too. My wife's opinion is that the word you may be looking for is 'humane', meaning compassionate. This is of course an adjective. Were you looking for a noun? We are puzzling over that at the moment. – WS2 Nov 29 '13 at 08:31
  • Do you live up to your name? – Edwin Ashworth Nov 29 '13 at 10:15
  • Thank you for your kindness, WS2, my concern is to translate the Chinese phrase which is composed of two repetitive nouns, like "official official". Given the context I gave in my old post, you may have no problem in understanding the meaning of the phrase: it means that officals shall act according to the rules which fit for their position. So how to translate it? Can I say "an official is to be an official"? or "an official is to be 'official' " ? – – benlogos Nov 29 '13 at 16:15
  • Well in English an 'official' is someone who 'holds an office'. That means they have been appointed and perhaps given a title, such as 'Tax Inspector', or 'Police Constable'. Your sentences 'An official is to be an official' and 'an official is to be official' are tautologous. That means that they simply say the same thing twice - like saying 'black is black' or 'a man is a man'. I will discuss it further with my wife and grandson over dinner! – WS2 Nov 29 '13 at 18:16
  • 1
    Yes, it sounds like a tautology. Maybe I shall say "a man shall act as a man"( "人人") and "things shall be treated as they should be" (物物）? These sentences do succeed in expressing a moral import ? – benlogos Nov 30 '13 at 04:49
  • I think you're asking for too much and in different directions. Many English words have a moral intention to them all on their own: 'humanitarian', 'devil', etc. Also, repetition of a word can in English say something more than just the single word (but that is not common). To have the special syntax -and- meaning overlap exactly as in Chinese is to expect too much. However, YOur examples ('an official is official') does work in the way you desire. – Mitch Dec 17 '13 at 01:46
  • This particular vagary of Classical Chinese is all but impossible to get through elegantly in just about any other language, I’d say. The combination of context-dependent deixis, unbelievably flexible zero-derivation, and hopelessly context-dependent, zero-marked word order is a peculiarity of CC that English cannot hope to replicate. Ever hear of 父父父 (‘father father father’)? It can be interpreted to mean among other things, “my grandfather treats my father in a manner appropriate to how a father should treat his son”, or indeed “a father should treat his father as he treats his son”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 11 '15 at 09:27

2 Answers2

1

English includes being humane and showing [some] humanity as ways of expressing the uniquely human quality compassion. But in different times and cultures, the quintessential attribute of human beings was/is identified as having an immortal soul, using tools, using symbolic language, being self-aware, among other things.

It's just a linguistic fluke that OP's human/compassionate association is reflected by [some] usages of the derived words humane/humanity. For the more general case...

quintessentially human (eptomizing whatever the writer thinks is the unique quality of humans)
quintessential feline (the same for cats)
quintessential official (someone who embodies exactly what an "official" is/should be)
etc., etc.

OED defines quintessence - the purest, most typical, or most refined of its kind.

Or, if OP particularly wants "moral approval" connotations, there's the idiomatic...

all that is best in a man (or a soldier, or a dog, or whatever)

FumbleFingers
  • 140,184
  • 45
  • 294
  • 517
0

Just FTR it's perfectly moral in English to say "he's a man's man" or "a man should act like a man". And "a real man" (the good guy, doesn't cheat on women, etc, John Wayne) is the same thing.

And of course one of our most famous poems is

a man's a man for all that.**

Indeed conversely to all this uplifting stuff, "Human, all too human" and so on.

Really I think we do pretty much the same as you, without the cool linguisto-philosophy. It's very common to "come back to" the core, real, meaning of a word to emphasise that.

** I slightly modernised the English there, achh.

Fattie
  • 10,520