Talk:譬如

word boundaries in the quotation

I'm not particularly in favour of the parsing 去日 苦多, for the simple reason that the word-order in that (half-)line was clearly modified for rhyming, as was typical with late Han / Six Dynasties poetry. Other examples include the following line, 慨當以慷 (慷慨 > intra-word reversal > infixing, so that 慷 rhymes with 忘). Another example in the same vein would be 水毒秦涇/山高趙陘 (< 秦涇水毒 趙陘山高) from 庾信·哀江南賦. Since the original (ie. more grammatical) word-order was probably not intended as such, it wouldn't have been much sensible to parse 去日 and 苦多 as two separate words. That's why in the entry I use the hyphen inside {{zh-x}} to connect them (so that the Da-dum Da-dum rhythm is kept) but the word-boundary appears around each individual character. --Frigoris (talk) 18:54, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: If we're not parsing it as 去日 苦多, it doesn't make sense to have them as words in pinyin. The thing is, Guoyu Cidian does have entries for 去日 and 苦多. What would the word order be if it's not 去日苦多? (Sorry, if it seems like I'm really dumb... I am pretty ignorant of Classical Chinese.) — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:21, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, sorry, I can't speak for the ancients either ^^ Out of memory, I think that there have been multiple interpretations of the grammar in 去日苦多 - it could have been 苦 去日 多 (i.e. 苦 去日 [之] 多, to languish over [the fact that] the bygone days were [too] many), or 苦 多 去日 (similar in meaning but slightly different grammar). The problem as you can see is the "associativity" of 多: is it predicative of 去日 or a modifier for 苦 (verb)? That's why I do not feel certain about the idiomaticity of "苦多". By the Guoyu Cidian did you mean the MoE's dictionary? I just checked the pages for headwords 去日 and 苦多 in the moedict; the examples there were all from Six Dynasties poetry. I doubt if they were considered "colocative enough to warrant headword status" outside some specific genres of literature. Then again, that's just my current view about things. I'd love to see more examples! --Frigoris (talk) 16:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, when I say Guoyu Cidian, I'm referring to 重編國語辭典修訂本. So in all the possible interpretations, 去日 is still one unit, right? 漢語大詞典 also has an entry for 去日, citing the same passage along with 《憶昨行寄吳中諸故人》 by 高啟 (Ming dynasty) and 《花月痕》, so I think it should probably be treated as a word. 苦多 may be up in the air, so I'd be fine with leaving it as two separate words. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 16:53, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September–December 2020

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譬如

Rfv-sense: "to be similar to; to be just like". Tagged by @Tooironic but not listed. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Archaic sense. "譬如朝露，去日苦多。" from 曹操《短歌行》. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 15:48, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

It should be cited. @Tooironic, Huhu9001, Frigoris, please check if they're for the right sense and add/fix translations. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:23, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, I tweaked stuff. --Frigoris (talk) 09:31, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: thanks! — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 14:33, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• RFV passed. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 10:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)