2/14/2023 0 Comments Why do they say t minus![]() In this case, I would propose the following chain of meanings: No one goes back and changes the character to match. The use of money in that depiction is presumably incidental.Įven when characters make sense when they're invented, language continues to change. So, the original meaning was "to carry", and the character was invented to convey that meaning. In fact, it can be traced back to before Chinese and Tibetan split! There is still a cognate word meaning "to carry" in Tibetan today. In this particular case, the original word pre-dates the entire Chinese writing system. ![]() One is a question about a writing system the other is a question about etymology and of (primarily spoken) language. It's easy to confuse the origins of Chinese characters and the origins of Chinese words. I think it's a mistake to rely too heavily on the glyph origin to interpret meanings of a Chinese morpheme. ![]()
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