[Tlhingan-hol] New expression: Klingon for "dim sum" revealed

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

In the spirit of bad etymologies, here I was thinking it meant, “The bone is long."

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Apr 26, 2016, at 7:54 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 26 April 2016 at 04:04, David Holt <kenjutsuka at live.com> wrote:
>> I know more about Japanese than Chinese, but I know a little about dim sum
>> (dim sam in Cantonese). My understanding of the character here pronounced
>> "dim" in Cantonese is that as a verb it means "to hint at" or "to touch on",
>> but not "to physically touch".
> 
> I'm a native Cantonese speaker. The characters for "dim sum" are 點心 in
> traditional characters, and pronounced dim2 sam1 in Jyutping notation.
> The character for "touch" is 掂 and pronounced dim1, an entirely
> different character from 點. The Internet/folk etymology claiming that
> "dim sum" means "touch the heart" is wrong, and was probably invented
> by someone who can't distinguish between different tones and doesn't
> know how to read/write the actual Chinese characters. (I can see how
> such a folk etymology might arise among Nth-generation Chinese
> Americans, because they pronounce both dim1 and dim2 like the English
> word "dim", and never see the two characters in writing.)
> 
> 點 can mean "to indicate", but in the context of a restaurant, it has a
> much more pedestrian meaning: it means "to order (place an order)". To
> order a (big or main) dish is to 點菜 dim2 coi3. In contrast, the small
> dishes are 點心. So "dim sum" means "a small dish" or "a la carte". 心 in
> this usage is short for 心意 meaning wish or intention. 點點心意 means to
> order as one wishes, i.e., picking many small items at will, rather
> than choosing a set dish. This is the meaning that anyone who is
> literate in Cantonese immediately understands.
> 
> Yes, 點 can mean point, or spot, etc., and 心 means heart (amongst other
> things). It sounds more poetic to claim that 點心 means "a spot of
> heart" or something. But the meanings of Chinese bigrams aren't formed
> by mushing together every possible meaning of the component parts
> (even though many people, including Chinese speakers, apparently
> believe this).
> 
> While I'm at it, the Chinese word for "crisis" is not composed of the
> characters for "danger" and "opportunity", either. But the folk
> etymology for "dim sum" is making basically this same kind of error:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22
> 
> That said, the word {tIq} is clearly a reference to the character 心.
> If {tIq Hom} is two words, then {Hom} probably refers to the folk
> etymology as well, since its slang meaning refers to something small
> or unimportant.
> 
>> As a noun it might translate well to "a spot
>> (of)", or "a touch (of)", or "a point (of)". The full "dim sam" might mean
>> "a little bit of heart" or "a heart that is only as big as a spot" and may
>> refer to the small size of the dishes or the supposedly lightness of the
>> meal. It may actually be a sort of pun. The character for heart is written
>> with one long curved line and three "dots". It might be comparing the long
>> line of the character to a meal and "dim sam" to the three dots of the
>> character.
>> 
>> In any case, I'm led to believe that our informant is wrong and that it is
>> one word meaning "mini-heart". We'll get the details at the qep'a' if no one
>> gets confirmation before then.
> 
> Well, in the photograph it does look like there's a space between
> {tIq} and {Hom}. The Klingon term may have been influenced as well by
> the pattern of the English (or Anglicised) term "dim sum": CVC CVC.
> 
> -- 
> De'vID
> 
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