慢满 A Tale of Two (or three...) Mans

 Frequently in Chinese the same phoneme has a related meaning.

吃慢点 eat slowly Chī màn diǎn
慢慢吃 eat slowly màn man chī
满意 sufficient mǎnyì
我吃报了我满意.

Here the phoneme is man4/man3
man4 means slow(ly)
man3 means sufficient(ly)

Part of disambiguating all the sound-alikes is to notice the common meanings to various phonemes, and then to think of any tone shift as a reflection of the change in basic meaning.

Here, man! is means something like "slow down!"
whereas man3 is more like "enough"

Slow down, is that sufficient?
慢点,满意吗?

满 water氵 and herbals艹 SUFFICES满 for a couple两

 

慢 hand eye/net sun heart = slow 

I felt 忄 i must slow down 慢 when my hand 又 was trapped in a net 罒 underneath the sun 日 is a false etymology. Instead it's the emotional state related / which is

 曼man4

graceful; prolonged, handsome / large / long , extended, vast; beautiful.

hand 又 over the eye 目looking at the sky 冃

Comments

Popular Posts