The lonely shepherd

W Brewer brewerwa at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 6 16:51:03 UTC 2013


BB: <<<Weaver Girl and the Cowherd>>>
WB:  Mandarin <Niu2-lang2 Zhi1-nyu3>, roughly 'bovine+guy' 'weave+girl'.
The sinogram <lang2> glosses as 'man, husband, boyfriend' in dictionaries,
and occurs as second member of modern binomial male given names. I recall
Taiwanese students translating the star-crossed lovers with something
like <cow boy and weaving maid>. The folktale I most frequently collected
BTW was <Tao2-tai4-lang2> 'peach+big+guy', aka 'Peach Boy', borrowed from
Japanese <Momotaro^>.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list