Today's new word
万 wàn commonly means 10,000 (yes, a single word meaning 10,000), but often used to mean myriad or a great number
万民 Wànmín, , meaning innumerable subjects, and sometimes used in translating "people" or "nations" in the Bible.
Learning Chinese numbers for me has been a struggle for several years. I get the easy ones, up to 100, and even into the several hundreds. It is the larger numbers that get me. The word for 1,000 is 千(qiān), but the word for 10,000 is not a combination of the characters for 10 and 1,000, 十千, but rather a single character 万. What we call in English one hundred thousand, is in Chinese enumerated as ten ten-thousands, 十万. I learned these words years ago, in my first year of studying Chinese, but I still often confuse 千 and 万. I never forget that Chinese assigns a lone word for 10,000, but I continue to have difficulty keeping them straight at times.
More after the jump
I have also read over the years that often in Chinese the character 万 is used when a writer wants to describe something as uncountably large. The Great Wall is called the 万里长城, meaning the 10,000 lí Great Wall, where lí is a unit of measure roughly equal to half a kilometer. It is highly doubtful anyone actually measured the length of the Great Wall in whole or in parts when this term was coined. Rather, 万 was used to mean it was really, really long.
Two Sundays ago at Mass, our responsorial was from Psalm 98. As I glanced though the verse projected on the wall above me, I saw that I could recognize nine characters, and among them 万. I had to think a moment; was the word "ten thousand" in Psalm 98?
Psalm 98 in English reads, "The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power." In the Chinese translation we used at Mass, it is, "上主宣布了祂的救恩，将祂的正义显示给万民." Google translate takes this back to English as "The Lord declared His salvation, His righteousness will be shown to the people." Oh yes, 万 in this case must mean large something, I thought. But what? I didn't know the next character. Was it about salvation or the nations?
After I got home I was able to work through the Chinese characters, and saw that 万民 was used to mean "nations" or "people." I wondered if this was a usual translation in scripture, and that I had been missing it all these years.
I looked to Matthew 28, the Great Commission. It reads (with bold emphasis mine)
显现给十一门徒派他们往训万民
28:16 十一个门徒就往加里肋亚，到耶稣给他们所指定的山上去了。
28:17 他们一看见他，就朝拜了他，虽然有人还心中疑惑。
28:18 耶稣便上前对他们说：「天上地下的一切权柄都交给了我，
28:19 所以你们要去使万民成为门徒，因父及子及圣神之名给他们授洗，
28:20 教训他们遵守我所吩咐你们的一切。看！我同你们天天在一起，直到今世的终结。」
Oh, I have been missing 万民 all along, haven't I? Maybe this can help me from confusing 千 and 万.
万民 Wànmín, , meaning innumerable subjects, and sometimes used in translating "people" or "nations" in the Bible.
Learning Chinese numbers for me has been a struggle for several years. I get the easy ones, up to 100, and even into the several hundreds. It is the larger numbers that get me. The word for 1,000 is 千(qiān), but the word for 10,000 is not a combination of the characters for 10 and 1,000, 十千, but rather a single character 万. What we call in English one hundred thousand, is in Chinese enumerated as ten ten-thousands, 十万. I learned these words years ago, in my first year of studying Chinese, but I still often confuse 千 and 万. I never forget that Chinese assigns a lone word for 10,000, but I continue to have difficulty keeping them straight at times.
More after the jump
I have also read over the years that often in Chinese the character 万 is used when a writer wants to describe something as uncountably large. The Great Wall is called the 万里长城, meaning the 10,000 lí Great Wall, where lí is a unit of measure roughly equal to half a kilometer. It is highly doubtful anyone actually measured the length of the Great Wall in whole or in parts when this term was coined. Rather, 万 was used to mean it was really, really long.
Two Sundays ago at Mass, our responsorial was from Psalm 98. As I glanced though the verse projected on the wall above me, I saw that I could recognize nine characters, and among them 万. I had to think a moment; was the word "ten thousand" in Psalm 98?
Psalm 98 in English reads, "The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power." In the Chinese translation we used at Mass, it is, "上主宣布了祂的救恩，将祂的正义显示给万民." Google translate takes this back to English as "The Lord declared His salvation, His righteousness will be shown to the people." Oh yes, 万 in this case must mean large something, I thought. But what? I didn't know the next character. Was it about salvation or the nations?
After I got home I was able to work through the Chinese characters, and saw that 万民 was used to mean "nations" or "people." I wondered if this was a usual translation in scripture, and that I had been missing it all these years.
I looked to Matthew 28, the Great Commission. It reads (with bold emphasis mine)
显现给十一门徒派他们往训万民
28:16 十一个门徒就往加里肋亚，到耶稣给他们所指定的山上去了。
28:17 他们一看见他，就朝拜了他，虽然有人还心中疑惑。
28:18 耶稣便上前对他们说：「天上地下的一切权柄都交给了我，
28:19 所以你们要去使万民成为门徒，因父及子及圣神之名给他们授洗，
28:20 教训他们遵守我所吩咐你们的一切。看！我同你们天天在一起，直到今世的终结。」
Oh, I have been missing 万民 all along, haven't I? Maybe this can help me from confusing 千 and 万.
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