Monday, 20 April 2020

蛙 | wā

In Mandarin Chinese, (Pinyin: 🔊) is a word for frog.

According to Wiktionary, is a phono-semantic compound of semantic (“insect; creature”) and phonetic which, in turn, is a duplication of our old friend . Now, English speakers think the frog goes “ribbit” (🔊). But this is only because of Baja California chorus frog who happen to live near Hollywood. For Dutch, frogs go “kwaak kwaak”, for Russians — “ква-ква” and for Chinese — 呱呱 (wā wā). If you remember “wā wā”, you’ll remember “” too.

Does look like a frog? Not really, not to me. Look, here’s a frog:

And here’s a sailboat pursuing, er, two smaller boats:

In Japanese, is pronounced kaeru (🔊) or, in poetry, kawazu. Here’s probably the most famous haiku ever:

古池や
飛こむ
の音
芭蕉
Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
The old pond;
A frog jumps in, —
The sound of the water.

I used the classic translation by R.H. Blyth; if you don’t like it, there are at least thirty-one others.

More photos related to frogs, calligraphy and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

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