Problems of Words

Hermes3X · June 18, 2004, 3:47am

Can you kind folks help me out here:

Southern Praying Mantis is Jook Lum

hung gar is also hung kuen (the equivalent of hong jia quan)

Buddha Kung Fu (at least one type) is Fut Gar

Toy Gar = Choy Gar? - What exactly are these styles?

Chow Gar = jow gar? - What exactly Are these styles?

The ****ed lack of standardization in Cantonese (unlike in Mandarin where the pinyin is largely been accepted as the standard) is driving me nuts. I’m trying to figure out the style of hung gar I’m learning and I can’t do a **** thing on the internet without figuring out all the acceptable spellings of the southern styles.

Jook_Lum · June 18, 2004, 4:14am

Re:

Hello,I understand some of your confusion!Jook Lum is one branch of
spm and Chow Gar is another branch of spm. I have seen some people
call Chow Gar Jow Gar which could be a conflict in pronounciation?
There is also a seperate Chinese style called Jow Ga.

Also to add more confusion on the spm part there is Zhou Gar,
Chu Gar and Chow Gar and some people say Chow and Chu and Zhou
are either mostly common with each other just different pronounc-
iations or different teachers using the Zhou,Chow and Chu to differentiate their style.

Tong Long as you wrote usually refers to southern style praying
mantis while Tang Lang usually refers to northern style praying
mantis. So basically spm has different branches which also use
sometimes different terminology depending on each branch.

Hope this helps to clarify a little bit and not add more confusion
to your search.

David · June 18, 2004, 8:28am

lmao!

(Hermes3x - is that as in Trismegistus?)

Hermes3X · June 19, 2004, 3:38am

Originally posted by David
[B]lmao!

(Hermes3x - is that as in Trismegistus?) [/B]

indeed it is.

funnytiger · June 21, 2004, 5:04pm

Re: Re:

Been studying Jow Ga (or also pronounced Jow Gar) for well over a year. I am, by far, NOT an expert. All of these styles and different pronounciations make my head spin. But as far as I know and understand Jow Ga, and Jow Gar are one in the same style with different prounounciations. Jow Ga is definitely not a branch of SPM, and is more closely related to Hung Ga (or Hung Gar). Chow Gar is indeed some sort of Southern Mantis Style that I don’t know much about at all. Jook Lum seems to know a lot more about it so I would listen to him.

Originally posted by Jook Lum
[B]Hello,I understand some of your confusion!Jook Lum is one branch of
spm and Chow Gar is another branch of spm. I have seen some people
call Chow Gar Jow Gar which could be a conflict in pronounciation?
There is also a seperate Chinese style called Jow Ga.

Also to add more confusion on the spm part there is Zhou Gar,
Chu Gar and Chow Gar and some people say Chow and Chu and Zhou
are either mostly common with each other just different pronounc-
iations or different teachers using the Zhou,Chow and Chu to differentiate their style.

Tong Long as you wrote usually refers to southern style praying
mantis while Tang Lang usually refers to northern style praying
mantis. So basically spm has different branches which also use
sometimes different terminology depending on each branch.

Hope this helps to clarify a little bit and not add more confusion
to your search. [/B]

hasayfu · June 21, 2004, 8:28pm

Re: Problems of Words

Originally posted by Hermes3X

hung gar is also hung kuen (the equivalent of hong jia quan)

The ****ed lack of standardization in Cantonese (unlike in Mandarin where the pinyin is largely been accepted as the standard) is driving me nuts. I’m trying to figure out the style of hung gar I’m learning and I can’t do a **** thing on the internet without figuring out all the acceptable spellings of the southern styles. [/B]

Hi Hermes3x,

I feel your pain. There is no standardization of Cantonese and I don’t see one coming in the future. (especially to help you for web searching since who’s goingto re-write all their data)

That said, I am a Hung Gar nut so have lots of tribal knowledge about the art. Start you search by asking questions on this forum. There are quite a few of us on forums that can give you info.

For starters, the complete name is Hung Ga Kuen (Hung Family Fist). That can get abbreviated as Hung Kuen or Hung Ga. The Gar spelling is a result of the slight “r” sound when spoken. In pinyin, the characters are Hong Jia Quan.

A ****nym is the color Red (Hung/Hong). So you can get Hung Kuen or Hung Mun which means red fist/red door and this is not the mainstream Hung Ga Kuen.

Back to your style, what’s your lineage? Your sifu should be the first start to figure out what you are learning. From there, you can branch out to the many (and there are many) family connections.

Hermes3X · June 21, 2004, 8:59pm

Re: Re: Problems of Words

Originally posted by hasayfu
[B]

Hi Hermes3x,

I feel your pain. There is no standardization of Cantonese and I don’t see one coming in the future. (especially to help you for web searching since who’s goingto re-write all their data)

That said, I am a Hung Gar nut so have lots of tribal knowledge about the art. Start you search by asking questions on this forum. There are quite a few of us on forums that can give you info.

For starters, the complete name is Hung Ga Kuen (Hung Family Fist). That can get abbreviated as Hung Kuen or Hung Ga. The Gar spelling is a result of the slight “r” sound when spoken. In pinyin, the characters are Hong Jia Quan.

A ****nym is the color Red (Hung/Hong). So you can get Hung Kuen or Hung Mun which means red fist/red door and this is not the mainstream Hung Ga Kuen.

Back to your style, what’s your lineage? Your sifu should be the first start to figure out what you are learning. From there, you can branch out to the many (and there are many) family connections. [/B]

Cool. I’m studying under sifu jeff lang in South florida. Lang studied under Wong Ting Fong up in Buffalo in the late sixties early seventies. What I’m trying to figure out is what combination of styles Wong taught. Sifu told us that Wong knew hung Gar, toy gar and fut gar. What I’ve been trying to figure out is how Wong fits into the whole Hung gar system. If I understand correctly there are two groups - what I call the Wong Fei Hong Group and the Lam Sai Wing group. Wong Ting Fong fits into neither of these hung gar families.

David_Jamieson · June 21, 2004, 9:52pm

The tale of three hungs

Hung in “Hung Gar” is the surname “Hung” as in Hung Hei Gwun.
Also represents the Ming emperors name in Hung Gar of some lineages.

Hung also means “red” and it also means “Big”.

cheers

Fu-Pau · June 22, 2004, 2:22am

Re: Re: Re:

Originally posted by funnytiger
[B]Been studying Jow Ga (or also pronounced Jow Gar) for well over a year. I am, by far, NOT an expert. All of these styles and different pronounciations make my head spin. But as far as I know and understand Jow Ga, and Jow Gar are one in the same style with different prounounciations. Jow Ga is definitely not a branch of SPM, and is more closely related to Hung Ga (or Hung Gar). Chow Gar is indeed some sort of Southern Mantis Style that I don’t know much about at all. Jook Lum seems to know a lot more about it so I would listen to him.

[/B]

Jow Gar is also spelled Chow Gar, Chau Gar, Chow Ka in cantonese. [Not the same though as SPM Chow Gar].

mysteri · June 22, 2004, 5:38am

the beauty of chinese—>english transliteration is that phonetically, we don’t use a lot of the same sounds at all. so in this example, my sifu transliterates the phrase as “jow ga”, while fu_pau does “chow gar”, and another school in ‘OZ’ does “chow ka.”(and there are still others). the character for “jow/chow/chau” is a sound closest between ‘TS’ sound made, like at the end of “caTS” and the aspirated “CH”, as in “CHild.” so its really like an aspirated TSCHAU.

also, the “ga/gar/ka” isn’t as hard of a "G"as in the word Girl, but has like an underlying “K” sound. if u listen to anyone fluent in chinese say “gung”, u’ll here it immediately. so “gar” is close to hearing an englishmen say ciGAR, as opposed to an american pronunciation. soon enough, the technology on the forums and such will be much better so that we can have live interactive chats via audio and visual media to facilitate our communication. i’m sure our predecessors are smiling upon us that we’ll even strive to cross language and location barriers in order to preserve their and our beloved arts. (at least we’re tryin )

CFT · June 22, 2004, 5:09pm

There are formalized Cantonese romanization systems, e.g. Jyutping and Yale. The problem is in getting everyone to adopt a single system.

It would take a government to start using one consistently and for a prolonged period before it became the defacto standard.

Even Mandarin pinyin is different between the China (PRC) and Taiwan (RoC).

hasayfu · June 22, 2004, 9:24pm

Hi Hermes3x,

Doing a quick search on Wong, Ting Fong a bio with stuff you probably know already. I’ll pepper them with some of my observations. http://www.mandarinkungfu.com/wong.html

He is from toysan (BTW, my ancestors are from Toysan as are Chiu Wai and my sifu Lam, Kwong Wing).

It says he studied an art called Hung Toy Gar which is a combo of Hung Gar and Toy(Choy) Gar. That sounds like Jow Gar (Mysteri’s style) to me since they are that combination. You will have an added problem because Toysan has it’s own dialect which is close but not quite Cantonese. (Like the Toy-Choy thing).

It goes on to say that his style was augmented by Fut Gar. Fut Gar or Buddha Family is a southern way to say Monk based style. I’m no expert on Fut gar but I don’t believe there is a unified Fut Gar system. It’s more of a catch phrase and usually embodies a palm based softer system. Arthur Lee/Harlan Lee teach Fut Gar but I don’t think it’s the same system when you hear Fut gar was added to Choy Li Fut or Hung Fut.

Hung Fut is another intersting style since it is a combo of Hung Gar and Fut Gar. Sifu Tai Yim in Maryland is a good exponent of this style. Again, Hung Fut has different flavors and different levels of style integration.

You mention that Hung Gar has two camps, Wong Fei Hong and Lam Sai Wing. Slight correction. There are many camps of Hung Gar but those under Wong Fei Hong are pretty unified under the 4/5 pillar sets and is considered the main stream Hung Gar. Lam Sai Wing is just one of the more popular lineages under Wong Fei Hong.

The rest of Hung Gar has been grouped under village Hung Gar. It’s called this because the style is named Hung Gar but retains the characteristics of the local village and is usually named after the village. For instance, HaSayFu Hung Gar is very different from the Wong Fei Hong Hung Gar but shares many of the underlying principles.

My guess is that the Hung Gar of Hung Toy Gar falls into this camp. One interesting research exercise is for you to determine if Hung Toy Gar is indeed Jow Gar. It seems most Jow Gar seems to be pretty united but I’m not sure about this. Mysteri can tell you more. Assuming it is fairly consistent, you can see if your sets are linked to theirs.

Hope that gives you some new info.

hasayfu · June 22, 2004, 9:39pm

CFT,

Good call though you will hardly find things written in TongYong PinYin since Taiwan seems to prefer a *******ized WadeGiles for romanization and still heavily uses the Bopomofo/Zhuyin method for teaching pronounciation.

We also have to take into consideration the changes in manderin that putonghua is propogating as well as the simplified chinese making reading difficult.

mysteri · June 23, 2004, 2:13am

well HSF, u can jus call me stupid! i’d read over that sifu’s bio before and jus thought to myself,“oh that’s cool, another style that combines hung ga and choy ga…hm.” it never DAWNED on me that DUH(!), it could be the same jow ga that i study jow ga has a lot of nicknames, one of them bein “hung tao choy mei”(hung head, choy tail). so “hung toy gar” doesn’t sound to far off. it would surely be interesting to know whether or not this sifu learned this style. it was actually pretty popular in china for a period. maybe i can see if the chronology lines up.

one thing u mentioned that i didn’t mention earlier is that also, chinese is the number one spoken language in the world!(by sheer numbers, of course). it can be difficult enough for a city-boy like myself from southeast virginia to understand the “hill-billy” which is spoken a short few hundred miles away from here in western virginia, and vice-versa. they say “gettin hitched” and we say “droppin that rock on 'er”. but it both means "gettin married. so we can imagine with all the different accents and colloquial vernacular how hard it is for them to communicate amongst themselves in different parts of china. my simo told me that when she first met my sifu’s mother, she could barely understand her chinese b/c it was so “country”, and they’re both from south china! LOL

Hermes3X · June 23, 2004, 3:06am

Originally posted by hasayfu
[B]Hi Hermes3x,