Talk:탄

Additional definition

Is it also used (from the "ordnance" hanja) to mean playing a musical instrument? 24.29.228.33 04:16, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

That is another case of the inflected form of 타다. Tada is highly polysemous; the "playing an instrument" sense is the 21st of 22 separate senses (and 8th of 8 separate entries) given by the Naver Korean-English dictionary [1], which itself is far from comprehensive. I don't think it is tenable to go through all of them in every form-of entry. I will try to flesh out 타다 sometime soon. -- Visviva 05:55, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I just looked at the inflections; what a nightmare. So, then, 탄 doesn't have a hanja-derived meaning of "play" (an instrument)? Because that's one of the meanings of the Chinese character 彈. 24.29.228.33 06:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

It can have that meaning as a character (mostly in very obscure words like 彈琴, "zither playing"), but not as a free-standing noun AFAIK. -- Visviva 12:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be added, then, even though it's only used in conjunction with other words? There are English words like that, which usually never appear on their own, but are always used in connection with another word. 24.29.228.33 03:55, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I suppose there's no particular reason not to, but it would require subsenses (and not just for this character but almost all of them); it seems more economical to put that information, together with derivations etc., at 彈. -- Visviva 04:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)