# 獅子



## tkekte

Just curious, why is this word written with a 子 on the end. A lion hardly resembles a child )), and 獅 by itself already means "lion".


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## nichec

tkekte said:


> Just curious, why is this word written with a 子 on the end. A lion hardly resembles a child )), and 獅 by itself already means "lion".


 
Hehe, following your logic, how about 老子、蚊子、蟲子? 

It (子) has no meaning.


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## univerio

It's just common usage. You can leave it out, but that would sound weird in modern speech.


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## coconutpalm

univerio said:


> It's just common usage. You can leave it out, but that would sound weird in modern speech.


 
Unless you use in such phrases as 狮虎狗豹, or 雄狮.
I guess adding a 子after the above mentioned word makes it SOUND better.


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## burp

I think the word "*子" added next to the word about an animal makes it sound more casual: *
*狮子 豹子 虫子 *
*It is used in daily conversation.*
*while 狮, 豹(one word) appear to be more professional terms that are used only in scientific or literary context.*
*Anyway, it is just the way people say it*


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## samanthalee

Mandarin has a major problem with homophones. In speech, it is rare to use a single character for a word; we usually use 2 characters for a word to reduce homophonic misunderstanding. Even so, we sometimes still have homophone problems. For example, how do we differentiate 狮子 and 虱子?

We can leave out the 子 from 狮子 in written text. However, modern written Mandarin is a Vernacular Chinese script (we write as we speak); and the habit of dropping unnecessary characters from the written form is only preserved in some context (Burp has given the example of *scientific or literary context*)


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## tkekte

Thank you for all the answers! 
This usage of adding 子 after some words to make it sound better must be pretty ancient, because I asked this question in the Japanese forum originally (but they moved it here). I didn't know Lao-Tzu is spelled as 老子.  Is this what his name means, or just the sound of it?


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## nichec

tkekte said:


> Thank you for all the answers!
> This usage of adding 子 after some words to make it sound better must be pretty ancient, because I asked this question in the Japanese forum originally (but they moved it here). I didn't know Lao-Tzu is spelled as 老子.  Is this what his name means, or just the sound of it?


 

老子 has 2 meanings.

1. The name of a very famous person.

2. A very unpleasant way (at least to me) for a male to refer to himself.


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## palomnik

tketke, 老子 is an ancient usage and isn't really the same thing as the 子 in 狮子; Confucius is 孔子 and Mencius is 孟子.  It was a term of respect.  the Confucian Analects begin with "子曰" - usually translated as "the master said."

Mandarin Chinese has less tones than other dialects of Chinese; it has lost them over the centuries.  Also, unstressed syllables in Mandarin lose their tones, and Mandarin has arguably less phonemes than other dialects.  The end result of this has been that Mandarin has developed a number of two-syllable "words" to make up for the lack of phonemal variation, and one way of doing this is by adding 子 to the end of words.  Perhaps originally it was a diminuitive form, but it has lost that sense.


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## cheshire

palomnik said:


> tketke, 老子 is an ancient usage and isn't really the same thing as the 子 in 狮子; Confucius is 孔子 and Mencius is 孟子. It was a term of respect. the Confucian Analects begin with "子曰" - usually translated as "the master said."
> 
> Mandarin Chinese has less tones than other dialects of Chinese; it has lost them over the centuries. Also, unstressed syllables in Mandarin lose their tones, and Mandarin has arguably less phonemes than other dialects. The end result of this has been that Mandarin has developed a number of two-syllable "words" to make up for the lack of phonemal variation, and one way of doing this is by adding 子 to the end of words. Perhaps originally it was a diminuitive form, but it has lost that sense.


That's very interesting. 子 in 孔子 is a term of respect, while 子　in 獅子 might have been a diminuitive form, but it has lost that sense.

Does anybody think 子 in 獅子 is a respect, either? Since it's called the king of animals.


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## nichec

cheshire said:


> That's very interesting. 子 in 孔子 is a term of respect, while 子　in 獅子 might have been a diminuitive form, but it has lost that sense.
> 
> Does anybody think 子 in 獅子 is a respect, either? Since it's called a king of animals.


 
I think it means nothing more than 子 in 蚊子 (Do we worship mosquitos now? )


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## samanthalee

When you learn new words such as 狮子(lion)、蚊子(mosquito)、桌子(table)、柜子(chest of drawers)、厨子(chef), just treat each word as a single unit and you'll be fine. Breaking these words down to their component characters and analyzing the meaning of 子 in each of them is the stuff of a PhD thesis.

For casual learners such as us (as opposed to scholars of linguistics), it's a little like reasoning that "if a banker is someone representing a bank and a teacher is someone who teaches, then what's the relationship between a butcher and a butch"?


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## palomnik

Good point, Samantha.

Cheshire, I've often wondered how it is that some of these Chinese compounds made it into Japanese, like 帽子.  Since I think that the Chinese forms generally came into existence generally long after Japanese stopped borrowing individual words from Chinese (i.e., the nineteenth century), why did Japanese adopt them?  Do you have any opinion?


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## cheshire

Aha, you seem to think that all the two-letter words with 子 that have no meaning were created in relatively recent times.

帽子 in Japanese (pronounced ぼうし in modern Japanese, えぼし in ancient Japanese) can be found in literature as far back as 12th century (源平盛衰記). According to Japanese Text Initiative of University of Virginia, 帽子 produced 91 matches. 

I consulted _Daijigen _大字源_（Kadokawa Publishing _角川出版社）. It says 子 in 帽子 is a suffix. It also says "especially since the Tang　dynasty, 子 has been widely used as suffix to noun."
特に、唐代からは、一般に名詞接尾辞として広く用いられる。(大字源 page 462). Japanese 帽子 must have been adopted from Chinese 帽子 (mao zi) in earlier than 12th century. At least in early Heian 平安 period eboshi 烏帽子 appears in literature.


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## palomnik

cheshire said:


> Aha, you seem to think that all the two-letter words with 子 that have no meaning were created in relatively recent times.
> 
> 帽子 in Japanese (pronounced ぼうし in modern Japanese, えぼし in ancient Japanese) can be found in literature as far back as 12th century (源平盛衰記). According to Japanese Text Initiative of University of Virginia, 帽子 produced 91 matches.
> 
> I consulted _Daijigen _大字源_（Kadokawa Publishing _角川出版社）. It says 子 in 帽子 is a suffix. It also says "especially since the Tang　dynasty, 子 has been widely used as suffix to noun."
> 特に、唐代からは、一般に名詞接尾辞として広く用いられる。(大字源 page 462). Japanese 帽子 must have been adopted from Chinese 帽子 (mao zi) in earlier than 12th century. At least in early Heian 平安 period eboshi 烏帽子 appears in literature.


 
I never even suspected it!  Thanks, Cheshire.


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## glossika

Just as a reference, Chinese nouns have many suffixes and these vary from language to language and usage. In Mandarin you have the following common suffixes (sorry I can't type simplified characters):
1. 子 (common noun suffix)
2. 兒 (common noun suffix)
3. 頭 (common noun suffix)
4. 者 (like -er/-or in English)
5. 員、長(zhang3)、士 (for jobs and professions)
6. 家、師、生  (for teachers, masters, students)
7. 工、匠、手  (for laborers, the 2nd one is -smith, the 3rd -hand)
8. 主義、學、論 (-ism, -ology, theory)
9. 機、器、儀  (machines)
10. 型、形、式 (abstract for shape or manner)
11. 度、性、則 (degree, -ness/-tion/-sion, rule)
12. 廠、場、站 (for places like factories, open outside areas, stations)
13. 法 (way or method (3 kinds): e.g. 婚姻法/刑事訴訟法, 寫法/用法/寫法, 說法/想法/看法)

Differences from language to language exist even if they have the same suffixes they may be used on different words. Other suffixes that exist, for example in Gan language there is -zai (崽) and in Min there is -a (仔).
獅子 in Hakka, for comparison, is shï-ê.


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