Dojo?

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[carla valverde]

Does anybody knows equivalent words for "dojo", in chinese or other asian countries? Thanks!

[Mashu]

I think it's dojang in Korea.

[asiawide]

道場, 道館, etc..

[Fred Little]

道場

Which is the Chinese-language equivalent for the Sanskrit "bodhi manda."

Place of the Way = Seat/Platform of Mind/Enlightenment.

[giriasis]

Does anybody knows equivalent words for "dojo", in chinese or other asian countries? Thanks!

Kwoon for chinese.

[Josh Reyer]

Kwoon for chinese.

In Pinyin, this would be "guan" (Cantonese "gun"), whence Japanese "kan": 館. Incidently the same kan as in "Yoshinkan" and Osensei's old dojo "Kobukan".

[giriasis]

In Pinyin, this would be "guan" (Cantonese "gun"), whence Japanese "kan": 館. Incidently the same kan as in "Yoshinkan" and Osensei's old dojo "Kobukan".


I've always heard Kwoon especially from Kung Fu folks. I'm not trying to be definitive here.

[bkedelen]

I believe kan refers more to a group or association than a building or house of study.

[Mat Hill]

Kwoon for chinese.In Pinyin, this would be "guan" (Cantonese "gun"), whence Japanese "kan": 館. Incidently the same kan as in "Yoshinkan" and Osensei's old dojo "Kobukan".I've always heard Kwoon especially from Kung Fu folks.

gun = k(g)oon = kwoon

'Kwoon' comes from some other Romanisation system, that's all. It's because if Westerners read 'gun' they pronounce it like 'bang bang' kind of gun. Whereas in Cantonese the 'gun' is a slightly hard 'g' and the 'u' is long-ish like 'oo' in 'book'. Where the 'w' comes from I don't know... maybe it's to distinguish from a very long 'oo' like 'booze'.

Causes even more problems when you look at the word kwan/kuen (Cant. pronounced 'coon'ish) / ken (Jap.), 拳, meaning 'fist' or 'style'.

I believe kan refers more to a group or association than a building or house of study.In Japanese very often yes... but it's kind of like 'church' or 'school' in English. A church is where your church meets right? And a school is a place where you school is schooled!

[Josh Reyer]

I believe kan refers more to a group or association than a building or house of study.

本館 - honkan - a main building
図書館 - toshokan - library
水族館 - suizokukan - aquarium (building)
博物館 - hakubutsukan - museum
写真館 - portrait studio, photography studio
展示館 - tenjikan - exhibition pavilion
武道館 - the Budokan, martial arts arena/concert hall in Tokyo
国技館 - the Kokugikan, the sumo arena in Tokyo
参合館 - Sangokan, the building where I work
皇武館 - Kobukan, Morihei Ueshiba's first dojo (not an association)
養神館 - Yoshinkan, the name of Gozo Shioda's dojo (distinct from the Yoshinkai, which was the organization)
講道館 - Kodokan, the name of Jigoro Kano's judo dojo

Heck, one need only look at this page (http://www2.alc.co.jp/ejr/index.php?word_in=%8A%D9&word_in2=%82%A0%82%A2%82%A4%82%A6%82%A8&word_in3=PVawEWi72JXCKoa0Je) from Eijiro.

What will happen is that an organization will spring up around a building, and take the name of the building, like in the case of the Kodokan or the Yoshinkan. Or, you have Shogakukan, a publishing house, named not unlike Random House, Inc. (in this case because they were originally into educational magazines for elementary schoolers).

As Mat indicated, "kwoon" is a relic of an older romanization system, just like "kung fu". It may surprise some, but "kung fu" (like "tai chi") is not an actual Chinese word. It's "gong fu" in Mandarin Chinese, and "gung fu" in Cantonese. In Wade-Giles romanization, an apostrophe indicated an unvoiced sound, while no apostrophe meant it was voiced. So, kung = gong, T'ai Chi = tai ji. Tao = dao. Ch'i = qi (the ki of aikido). The Wade-Giles system was internally consistent, which is good, but of course most laypeople didn't know the system and just pronounced things as they saw it, and people started writing things out without the apostrophe, and pronouncing them like they were spelled, and these linguistical orphans like "kwoon", "kung fu", and "tai chi" were born, not real Chinese, but not English either...

Pinyin's a big improvement (I say, probably only because I'm more used to it :D ), but it still leads to misunderstandings. Zhang Ziyi (rough approximation: jahng zuh ee) gets called "Zang ZeeYee" more often than not.

[James Kelly]

...and people started writing things out without the apostrophe, and pronouncing them like they were spelled, and these linguistical orphans like "kwoon", "kung fu", and "tai chi" were born, not real Chinese, but not English either...In the case of ‘kung fu' and ‘tai chi', I would say absolutely English. That's how we get our words. We steal ‘em and mess ‘em up. They are in most dictionaries and so are part of the English language.

[Marnen]

As Mat indicated, "kwoon" is a relic of an older romanization system, just like "kung fu". It may surprise some, but "kung fu" (like "tai chi") is not an actual Chinese word. It's "gong fu" in Mandarin Chinese, and "gung fu" in Cantonese.

The amateur linguist in me needs to nitpick this. :) "Kwoon" and "kung fu" are indeed real Chinese words; they're just transliterated by methods not commonly used today. It is quite common for loanwords from languages using non-Roman scripts to be spelled according to whatever transliteration was in vogue when the word was borrowed. This is why we still write "Tchaikovsky", "suttee", and "yen" even though scholars today would transliterate these words as "Chaykovskiy", "sat?", and "en".

In Wade-Giles romanization, an apostrophe indicated an unvoiced sound, while no apostrophe meant it was voiced.

Not quite. To explain this, I need to explain a little about the sound systems of Mandarin and English. English stops have a voiced/voiceless contrast (b/p, g/k, j/ch, etc.), but no phonemic aspirated/unaspirated contrast. By contrast, Mandarin has an aspirated/unaspirated contrast (p'/p, k'/k, ch'/ch), but no voiced/voiceless contrast.

The apostrophe in the Wade-Giles system indicates aspiration, not voicelessness. However, in English, voiceless stops are aspirated at the beginning of a word, while voiced stops are unaspirated. So to an English-speaker, unaspirated Mandarin [k] resembles unaspirated English [g] more than it resembles aspirated English [k']. I assume it was considerations of this sort that led to the use of "b", "d", "g", "j", and "z" for unaspirated voiceless stops in Pinyin.

In other words: [k] = Wade k = Pinyin g. [k'] = Wade k' = Pinyin k.

Does that make sense? Are we far enough off-topic now? :D

[Josh Reyer]

Does that make sense? Are we far enough off-topic now? :D

I was trying to keep things relatively simple, but I understand all too well the need to linguistically nitpick. :D

I'll just note that "kung fu" and "kwoon" are indeed real, if old spellings, but that their common pronunciations outside of China are not accurate. In other words, "gong fu", pronounced more or less as spelled, is an actual Chinese word with semantical meaning. "Kung fu", with an aspirated 'k', is not. That was, of course, what I was driving at.

[Marnen]

I'll just note that "kung fu" and "kwoon" are indeed real, if old spellings, but that their common pronunciations outside of China are not accurate.

Quite so. This almost always happens with loanwords -- the sounds get adapted to what the receiving language can handle. Look at Japanese "aisukuriimu"...

[Josh Reyer]

Quite so. This almost always happens with loanwords -- the sounds get adapted to what the receiving language can handle. Look at Japanese "aisukuriimu"...

Of course, English could still handle "gong fu" and "guan", unlike Japanese and "ice cream".

[Marnen]

Not really. The sound at the beginning of "gong" and "guan" is an unaspirated k, which doesn't exist in English at the beginning of a word (it does exist in words like "sky", though). Anyway, "guan" is Mandarin and is irrelevant, since Eng. "kwoon" < Cantonese "gun", apparently. However, the initial consonant is the same in the Mandarin and Cantonese versions AFAIK.

BTW, Shanghai has a three-way distinction between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated, and voiced stops, so [k'], [k], and [g] are all different phonemes.

[Josh Reyer]

My point is, we could (or rather, could have) approximate(d) these so much better than aspirated "kung" and "kwoon". "Gong" is not quite there, but close. "Kung" (as commonly pronounced) isn't even in the ballpark. Same with "gun" and "kwoon", if you like.

[djyoung]

If im not being mistaken by the media, wasn't it Bruce Lees' fame and being on tv saying how to say these words "kung fu" or "gung fu" etc the cause of our current spelling? I cant remember which movie it was in, I think it was "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" that said something about Bruce Lee introducing the words to the western world, or if not at least to the general populace and therefore his version of it was taken by the population.

It has been a very long time since I have seen this movie, I could be terribly wrong :)

[Marnen]

I would doubt it. Wouldn't Bruce have known how to pronounce the words correctly, at least in Cantonese?

[Josh Reyer]

I know that a couple books I saw written by Bruce referred to "gung fu". I'm thinking specifically of this one (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0897501128/qid=1137687483/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/104-4810286-3318313?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)