Wing Chun Terms in Chinese Characters

[Paul Skrypichayko]

Hello, are there any sites out there that list wing chun terms in Chinese characters? (example, pak sau, bong sau, etc....)

[stuartm]

Hi,

Renes book has an excellent glossary at the back which contains characters and romanized translations from many lineages. Excellent read too !

Stuart

[passing_through]

Paul,

The VTM has a resource (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/index.php) on our webpage for Wing Chun terminology. We have two searchable databases. One is for
Characters (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/characters.php) and the other is a Glossary (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/glossary.php).

From the main terminology page, there are links to :
Introduction (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/index.php)
Pronuncation Guide (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/pronounciation_guide.php)
How to search (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/search_guidelines.php)
Chinese Character Definitions (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/characters.php)
Wing Chun Glossary (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/glossary.php)
Yip Man Ving Tsun Code of Conduct (http://home.vtmuseum.org/terminology/code_of_conduct.php)

Eventual plans include adding sound files for each charater. In the databases, you can search for common spellings (pak, paak, pac), Cantonese using the Yale format, Mandarin using Hanyu pinyin, even English (American) spellings and definitions.

Any feedback is appreciated as well as terms that are not currently included. Each character is displayed as a .gif file that can be selected to display a larger .gif. These files can be copied and used for your purposes. The only thing I ask is that credit for the location of the character be given to the VTM website.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Jeremy R.

[reneritchie]

Check out http://www.vtmuseum.org. Their online resource is impressive, to say the least.

Jeremy - How are you supporting (or planning to support) the Cantonese characters (those without formal equivalents) and the sland 'sounds' without characters?

Rgds,

RR

[passing_through]

Rene,

To date, I haven't come across too many situations like this yet. I did have an issue with Chi meaning stick for chi sau but I found an online resource that gave li as a mandarin pronuncation for it.

Maybe we could off-line this if you have some ideas/information.

Thanks,
Jeremy R.

[reneritchie]

Hi Jeremy,

I found Chi in a very old wade giles book called Chinese Characters under Chi but even back then (almost 100 years I think) it seemed not commonly used in the North. I've found Jarn (elbow) almost impossible to find in Mandarin dictionaries so usually cobble it together from parts or use Zhou if I'm in a hurry. Some, like Yum (a movement similar to On, Dan, or "pressing down" palms), don't seem to have any character associated with them at all and are proving more problematic.

If I come up with anything, I'll definately off-line you.

RR

[Alpha Dog]

no one uses it, though. mistaken for Nian2 b/c it looks similar -- meaning is the same too

[reneritchie]

AD - Nian I see more often, for sure. I've even heard some talk of the PRC doing some Nian Shou competitions parallel to San Shou but focusing on Taiji, Bagua, etc. (with some Yongchun people getting involved as well).

RR

[Alpha Dog]

what I wanna know is why someone went to the trouble to use the obscure "chi" character when the common "nian" was readily available. I honestly thought it was a "po yin ze" for quite some time. Undoubtedly some sinister Hongkongese trickery at play here.

[Paul Skrypichayko]

Thanks for the replies.

Are there any sites that list all the names of all the moves for the wing chun forms ? (complete with big5 or jpeg/gif chinese characters)

[Paul Skrypichayko]

bump

[Alpha Dog]

I find that, most likely due to the different software requirements for Big5 or whatever, most sites talking about Wing Chun just use the pinyin expressions. you can look around, though; best way to nail down all the terms would probably be to visit a library or bookstore and borrow like mad.