{"id":21896,"date":"2022-02-01T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T14:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21896"},"modified":"2022-02-01T14:24:51","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T14:24:51","slug":"sharp-stripes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21896","title":{"rendered":"Year of the Tiger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the first day of the <strong>Year of the Tiger<\/strong> \ud83d\udc05, according to the Chinese Lunar calendar, so to anybody who celebrates this:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/chinesenewyear.jpg\" alt=\"\u606d\u559c\u767c\u8ca1 \/ \u606d\u559c\u767c\u8ca1 (Chinese New Year wishes)\" width=\"630\" height=\"200\"><\/p>\n<p>The Chinese character for tiger is \u864e, which is pronounced h\u01d4 [hu\u02e6\u02e9\u02e7] in Mandarin, fu\u00b2 [fu\u02d0\u02e7\u02e5] in Cantonese. It also means brave, fierce or vigorous, and is used as a surname. The usual word for tiger is in fact \u8001\u864e (l\u01ceoh\u01d4 \/ lou5 fu\u00b2) &#8211; the first character means old or venerable and shows respect for this dangerous animal.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how the character \u864e has changed over the past 3,500 years or so:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/writing\/tiger.gif\" alt=\"Evolution of the Chinese character for tiger (\u864e)\" width=\"646\" height=\"155\"><\/p>\n<p>The phrase \u606d\u559c\u53d1\u8d22 [\u606d\u559c\u767c\u8ca1], which means literally &#8220;congratulations, make a fortune&#8221;, is the most common way to wish someone a Happy (Lunar) New Year in Chinese. It can be followed by the phrase \u7ea2\u5305\u62ff\u6765 [\u7d05\u5305\u62ff\u4f86] (h\u00f3ngb\u0101o n\u00e1 l\u00e1i), which means &#8220;bring out the red packet&#8221;, and refers to the red envelopes containing money that are traditionally given as gifts at Lunar New Year. It was apparently first used among Cantonese speakers in the mid-19th century, and is now used by speakers of other varieties of Chinese [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/%E6%81%AD%E5%96%9C%E7%99%BC%E8%B2%A1\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Last night I was invited to celebrate Chinese New Year by my neighbours, one of whom is Chinese. We had a very enjoyable evening and some rather tasty Chinese food.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: <a href=\"https:\/\/dict.naver.com\/linedict\/zhendict\/dict.html#\/cnen\/entry\/2d04acda8c674e47aea875d178d6eea1\">LINE Dict Chinese-English<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdbg.net\/chinese\/dictionary?page=chardict&amp;cdcanoce=0&amp;cdqchi=%E8%80%81%E8%99%8E%0D%0A\">mdbg.net<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/%E8%80%81%E8%99%8E\">Wiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the first day of the Year of the Tiger \ud83d\udc05, according to the Chinese Lunar calendar, so to anybody who celebrates this: The Chinese character for tiger is \u864e, which is pronounced h\u01d4 [hu\u02e6\u02e9\u02e7] in Mandarin, fu\u00b2 [fu\u02d0\u02e7\u02e5] in Cantonese. It also means brave, fierce or vigorous, and is used as a surname. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,104,107,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21896"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21912,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21896\/revisions\/21912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}