Choepining

[icarus]

Oh hey, Linguists ahoy! Check out vamplover84's cool post: Words of the year.

Here's a fun something about how quickly foreign words get "English-ized" and folded into English derivations.

At a Buddhist temple we had some new Tibetan terms:

Choepin - (choe' pen) n. the one who performs the intensive ritual work during a Tibetan Buddhist religious practice (carrying offerings, pouring wine into scullcups and serving the practioners, carrying incense, performing ritual gestures called "mudras", etc.) Sort of like an altar boy, but way more extensive.

Umsay - (oom' say) n. the chantmaster for a Tibetan Buddhist religious practice.

Puja - (poo' jah) n. a Tibetan Buddhist tantric religious practice.

Tsog - (sok') n. a portion of a Tibetan Buddhist religious ritual where food is offered and then consumed by the practitioners; the food that is served within the Tsog ritual practice. (Tibetan makes no distinction between these words.)

Within six months, I kid you not, the Americans had adopted these terms like they'd known them all their lives. "Choepin" transformed into a verb, as in "Are you choepining tonight?" or "Who's choepining tonight - they're late! Can you choepin instead?" and "Look at this mess! Who choepined last night?"

We changed the spelling to: Chopin (chup' pen), dropping the umlauted sound.

Now Tibetan doesn't derive words like this. A noun is a noun is a noun. So when Tibetans arrived at our temple, they had no clue what chopining was. To them this "choepining" word was really wrong and weird. It just couldn't be a verb.

Interestingly, the Americans didn't create verbs out of any of the other Tibetan terms. No one "umsayed" (it was tried out, but the noun form was preferred: "Who's the umsay tonight?"), we never "pujahed" ("Are you going to puja tonight? I'm not, I've had a 12-hour day."), and we certainly didn't tsog! ("Is there a tsog tonight? I hope so, I'm starving.")

But here's something we didn't change: where Tibetan made no distinction between the ritual practice of tsog and the actual food offerings of tsog, neither did the Americans. We adopted that usage wholesale, even though normally in English we would make a distinction. This happened the exact same way we adopted the Native American term "moose" meaning both "a moose" or "a herd of moose."

Curious, isn't it? *grins*

You Are 22 Years Old

22 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Comments

There is virtually no way to separate Sanskrit words from Tibetan because of the history of Tibetan

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Puja is a Tibetan word the way Moose is an English word; obviously both were borrowed. Except puja's been in the Tibetan language longer - since 800 A.D.

Saying Puja isn't Tibetan is like saying the word "land" (and any number of words that've been part of the language for centuries) are not English. Technically "land" isn't English - it was an Anglo-Saxon word. But that doesn't mean that it isn't English now.

When Songtsen Gampo invited Vimalamitra and Padmasambhava to Tibet, they began the Nyingma translation school and an enormous number of Sanskrit words were imported. Where they couldn't import a Sanskrit word they created new compound words to describe the Buddhist concept. The scholar Sambhota (slightly before this) traveled to India and created a hybrid out of the Tibetan and Sanskrit alphabet, to produce a new Tibetan script. So even Ka-Kha-Ga-Nga (the Tibetan alphabet) is based upon Sanskrit.

Attempting to separate Sanskrit from Tibetan is impossible.

This is the way most languages are intermingled with each other. It's the structures and the morphology (the way it changes) that separate the languages. Not the lexicon. Tibetan has the structures of Mongolian family of languages, with an overlay of Sanskrit. English has the structures of Anglo-Saxon, with overlay of the latinate French.

Icarus

Not a pedantic note: inaccurate and out of context.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

When a word is picked up by another language the meaning often changes. I'm referring to the Tibetan word here, just as when you pick up the O.E.D. it's not going to define the foreign language roots or variants. That would be ridiculous given the number of variations of say CoHee and Coffee.

"Yoga" in English does not mean the same thing as it does in Tibetan and Sanskrit. So in a Tibetan dictionary you use the Tibetan definition. In an English dictionary you use the English definition.

To suggest I list all the roots and variations would be excessive, and unreasonable. To suggest I restrict the definition to just the Sanskrit and not the Tibetan usage for a Tibetan definition is illogical. To suggest that I choose only the Tibetan and Sanskrit definitions when Puja variations are present in many other languages -- how 'bout the Korean version? Why stop with Sanskrit and Tibetan?

Also, to use the Sanskrit definition of Puja which accomodates the multiplicity of Hindu schools (and you are incorrect, it does not refer to an offering practice for every single Hindu school, that's an oversimplification), Jainism and Buddhism, well, that would be inaccurate for a Tibetan word.

Tibet was a sealed society with a state religion. The meaning was set by usage. That means that there weren't a lot of religions over there, so it's not an eglatarian word in Tibetan. A Tibetan will tell you, "Oh yes, yes, the Hindus use this word too, but that's not what it means here."

Tibetan has an isolating morphology, though it does do some compounding. If you didn't know that before, I referenced it (generally) in this post. That means it's not a very flexible language.

If you were a Hindu in Tibet you would actually have to say "Hindu-Puja" to refer to anything other than the Tibetan Buddhist practice, or else people would not know what you meant.

Yes. Even though the word came from Hindu-based traditions.

You just learned a great deal about Tibetan psychology. Speak in a soft voice and assume Tibet is the center of the universe and you will get on famously with Tibetans.

If I'd defined Puja the way you suggest, well, Puja does not in Tibetan mean offering practice. That would have been inaccurate. The word for offering practice (depending on the type) is Tsog, or Ched-do, or Sang, or... you get the idea. There are so many different types of offering practice you can't use just one word for all of them. Puja in Tibetan refers to the tantric practice in its entirety.

Icarus

Not a pedantic note: inaccurate and out of context.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I do understand your point, that in America we do have multiple religions and you don't want people picking up the Tibetan variation of "Puja" and thinking that's all that it means. But I think I made my context of "Tibetan language" pretty clear here.

Icarus

Re: Not a pedantic note: inaccurate and out of context.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed at your suggestion I didn't know the meaning of the word, fpb. Them's fightin' words.

If you want to delete your comments, go ahead.

Icarus

Re: Not a pedantic note: inaccurate and out of context.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Just forget it, OK? In a few minutes, I will delete all my entries for this thread. You are mostly right and it's not worth my while arguing any of it - right now I'm busy with a fic.

I do think it's a little silly to delete them. What's the point?

Icarus