The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

the Japanese languages has many homophones.
It is known, that karate moved its meaning from KARA-te (Chinese Boxing) to kara te (empty hand fight). So maybe the original meaning of aikido was totally different?

I'm not very familiar with the Japanese language nad I do not know, how to create the right kanji and kana on machine. So I just do a simple start I write just the romaji and give the number of the knji I have found (first should be the official launched by the ministry, second is from Nelson's japanese English Character Dictionary)

ai- (146;2241) (opposite, two-way)
KI (135;2507) steam
DO :do: (149;4724), as we all know

this could mean that it was the way , how one could punch each other with full steam - or so.

I don't know, if my metaphor is taken well, in German steam also stands for force, since the first steam engines.

But you all can find better examples, it can also be "a i ki do". And this is the humor section, so feel free for brain storming. Nevertheless there is a chance that someone will take us serious and comes back with a historically undermined article ;)

Waiting for good and funny ideas
And if we are ready with this we can go back to further mutations, i.e. take other readings of a symbol use the other meaning and then finally find homophones to those.


Dirk

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

At the dojo where I used to train, a young Chinese American man came in laughing one day telling us his grandma had seen his tshirt and, wrinkling her nose, inquired "You practice the way of holding your breath?"

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Well, the kanji for KI is a combination of 'steam/cloud' and 'rice'. Now I don't know about you, but with enough brown rice I can, err, produce enough steam (this is the secret technique of getting more lift during koshinage).
So, the art of simultanious wind-breakage?

On a semi-serious note, an explanation from a Chinese friend of mine:
"People make the translation of 'aiki-do' much too complicated. First, the word is 'aiki', it looses its real sense when you break it up into its two parts. And 'aiki' is an everyday word, not something to do with Universal power or something very spiritual. I heard the word a lot when I was growing up from my grandmother - whenever me and my brother were fighting she would sigh and say "Can't you two try to have a little more heqi (aiki)?" "

Tim

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

I agree that people make the translation of 'aiki' much too complicated, but I disagree that 'aiki' is an everyday word in Japanese. So, your friend's Chinese grandmother was probably quite right about the lack of heqi, but I think this word would have come into Japanese as gouki (�‡‹C), but neither gouki nor aiki appear in Japanese monolingual dictionaries and none of my Japanese friends have a use for gouki in everyday Japanese. I thik the term is special to the Japanese martial arts.

Best regards,

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Thanks Peter,
please don't forget, this is the humor section, so we are just brainstorming.
kido is well known as railway track
a- can mean below or under-, sub-
i is an officer
so aikido is a corporal or sergeant of the Japanese railway system, yes?

Dirk

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Not a funny re-post here, but actually, the way the founder--and a long line of religious texts and people--used puns, is just like this. But they come with an agenda and so selectively choose which meanings they like leaving wielders of Mr. Occam's razor apoplectic at the arbitrariness of their associations. Mysticism is a dirty word in science.

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Sorry, I do not understand your reasoning, or sense of humour.

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

No jokes from my side, either, but here´s an explanation (taken from - I believe - Lowry´s book called Sword and Brush"):

The parts symbolizing rice and steam mean to show that you cannot see energy/ki in itself, but you can however see it´s effect: it boils the rice and meks the steam rise.

Regards,
Sonja

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Peter,
you don't have to be sorry, as obviously you're not the only one.

I just wanted some people who just know little Japanese or like "real humour", play around with potential (mostly absurd) meanings of aikido.

It could be fun and for some maybe improve their vocabulary with such kind of game, and some might ask good questions afterwards here or in another thread.

The starting idea was, that I learnt that many words or their chosen pronounciation are taken because of arbitrary meanings to show that their is an additional influence, one does not want to explain widespread.

I just wanted to start with "rubbish" a) just for fun -and b) to avoid discussions about "inappropriate interpretation" and disrespect. As long as it is just fun - if you don't like it just present a better one.

I like the explanations about history, frequent use of special idioms, etc. I just feared it might spoil the fun.

Obviously there haven't been too many people who share my sense of humour so there was nothing to spoil.

But when I get to other questions I will ask them in the language section.

Dirk

Re: The Original Meaning of Aikido
 

Well, if its simple sound/meaning association you are looking for, without worrying about the correct way in which aikido is written in Chinese characters, you should go to Nelson's index of characters.

There is only one character for 'ai', but there are 18 for 'A' or 'a', 71 for 'I' or 'i', 139 for 'KI' or 'ki', and 41 for 'DO' or 'do'. Exploring the possible combinations of all these would probably take you at least one lifetime and you would also learn some Japanese in the process. There might be some interesting meaning combinations as well.

Best regards,