# 老板/闆



## Grammar Fan

The Chinese word for "boss" is "lao ban."  I have noticed, however, that two different characters are used for "ban."  Would someone please tell me which character is preferable?  Xie xie ni.


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## Lamb67

老板 is what I use .


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## vincentLi

Grammar Fan said:


> The Chinese word for "boss" is "lao ban." I have noticed, however, that two different characters are used for "ban." Would someone please tell me which character is preferable? Xie xie ni.


forgive my poor English, but I really want to tell you this!
In fact, there is only one formal boss (official?) _laoban_ in Chinese, it's 老板
but in Chinese, there is another （che）_lao ban er_ (车)老板儿which is just dialect of North, specially in Beijing. It means the richshaw puller in the old days （see http://www.lanews.com.cn/col297/article.htm1?id=891398）
or in the 80's,90's even now the owener of a vehicular which could be a manuel one （see http://www.da.gd.gov.cn/WebWWW/exhibition/ItemInfo.aspx?Title=百年广州&Path=../documents/gzbn/公共交通/人力三轮车.jpg&CurNum=0&ItemID=646）or pulled by the live stock (see http://images.google.cn/imglanding?...m=1&newwindow=1&q=牛车&um=1&newwindow=1&start=0), or even with a moto（see http://www.dffy.com/sifashijian/sw/200708/20070807192501.htm）. These kinds of vehiculars are used to transport cargos or people.

i hope it'll be helpful.


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## Tasarinan

Grammar Fan said:


> The Chinese word for "boss" is "lao ban." I have noticed, however, that two different characters are used for "ban." Would someone please tell me which character is preferable? Xie xie ni.


 
Hi,

I assume you were asking about "ban" written with the radical "wood" plus "fan" (i.e. 板) vs. "ban" written with the radical "door" and three "mouths" ("kou") inside, (i.e. 闆).

Both are correct, and I don't think one is preferable to the other. However, from what I've seen I believe that the latter character (闆) is used a lot in Taiwan, whereas in Mainland China the other character seems to be much more common.

Tasarinan


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## YangMuye

Tasarinan said:


> Hi,
> 
> I assume you were asking about "ban" written with the radical "wood" plus "fan" (i.e. 板) vs. "ban" written with the radical "door" and three "mouths" ("kou") inside, (i.e. 闆).
> 
> Both are correct, and I don't think one is preferable to the other. However, from what I've seen I believe that the latter character (闆) is used a lot in Taiwan, whereas in Mainland China the other character seems to be much more common.
> 
> Tasarinan



Right. but the 品 inside the 門 are eyes. The character means “peeping”.

Simplified Chinese do not have this character, so they use 板 instead.


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## Grammar Fan

Fei chang xie xie to the members who kindly helped.  I learned that the "three mouth" character is preferred in Taiwan while the other one is preferred in the People's Republic.  I especially liked the Beijing dialect word.  I love hearing -er at the end of words.  I'm very grateful to this website and the members for helping me in my study of zhong wen.


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## Geysere

In Cantonese there's also 老细 meaning the boss, but I've long wondered what's the origin of this word...


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## Tasarinan

YangMuye said:


> Right. but the 品 inside the 門 are eyes. The character means “peeping”.
> 
> According to the 玉篇, yes: 門中視也.
> But the 正字通 has: 門中視誤.
> And another source (漢字源流字典 by 谷衍奎, 華夏出版社) has 闆 (從門品聲), i.e. “pin” standing for the character’s sound (similar to “ban”, I suspect when the character was first invented, the similarity was even greater). “Pin”, however, is made up of three “mouths” (口) (all ancient scripts, such as 甲骨, 金, 篆, show this), and appears, in addition to being used alone, in many other characters, where to my knowledge it never signifies “eyes” or any related meaning. (And “normally”, 目 is used for “eye[s]” of course.)
> 
> It would be interesting to see an older version of this character (甲骨文, 金文 or such) to see if these were really meant to be eyes (and by extension, whether the meaning “peeping” really holds water). I couldn’t find any such older versions however—when did this character first appear?
> 
> Anyway, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just not sure you’re right about this, either. Does anybody know for sure? I’m a bit skeptical…
> 
> Simplified Chinese do not have this character, so they use 板 instead.


 
This is right. That's why this is the one you'll see in most parts of Mainland China.


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## Tasarinan

And some more on 闆.  According to this site:

http://zhongwen.com/cgi-bin/zipu.cgi?b5=%c1%f3

it means "objects 品 behind a door 門". This effectively says that 品 (at least here) means "objects".

And elsewhere (in 喦), 品 is said to mean 眾多 ("many"): 漢字源流字典, which, however, with regard to 闆 says (e.g. under its entry for 品) that it's a character that uses 品 as 聲符 (as I mentioned also in my previous post, though the quote there was from the entry 闆 itself), i.e. as far as 闆 is concerned, this source doesn't seem to consider 品 as having any semantic function at all.

So, there seem to be quite a few possible applications/explanations...


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## YangMuye

囧
Actually 品 can't be the 聲符 of 闆. Since 品 sounds like [phiem]. 闆 sounds like [pan]. also, according to 《玉篇》, 闆 is read as [phan].
The original meaning this character is unknown. I can't find it in  甲骨、金、篆. So I guess it's a 死字 until someone use it to express “老闆”. The original meaning and pronunciation is not important. 
囧 is another example of 死字.


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## Tasarinan

YangMuye said:


> 囧
> Actually 品 can't be the 聲符 of 闆. Since 品 sounds like [phiem]. 闆 sounds like [pan]. also, according to 《玉篇》, 闆 is read as [phan].
> The original meaning this character is unknown. I can't find it in 甲骨、金、篆. So I guess it's a 死字 until someone use it to express “老闆”. The original meaning and pronunciation is not important.
> 囧 is another example of 死字.


 
Well, as I wrote earlier, when the character was originally created, the sounds involved may very well have been quite different. I'm just saying that one can't judge in this matter by looking only at the modern pronunciation(s). And I don't know if the 玉篇 is the be-all and end-all of 文字學.
There are quite a few sources who clearly state that 品 serves as a phonetic element in 闆, although I admit no specific reason or more detailed explanation is given for this in any source I could find--then again, neither does the 玉篇 state its rationale for giving the meaning 門中視. 
Without further evidence (and I admit, at the moment I'm too busy to dig any deeper into this), it's difficult to determine if 品 serves as a phonetic or a semantic element in this character (or even both--after all, this is also seen in quite a number of characters).

Cheers,

Tasarinan


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## strad

Geysere said:


> In Cantonese there's also 老细 meaning the boss, but I've long wondered what's the origin of this word...



I second this question.  细 means small in Cantonese, so one can guess at the ironic origins of 老细 meaning boss, but perhaps there is no connection and it is just a case of finding a written Chinese word with the appropriate sound.  Does anyone know?


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## Jerry Chan

strad said:


> I second this question.  细 means small in Cantonese, so one can guess at the ironic origins of 老细 meaning boss, but perhaps there is no connection and it is just a case of finding a written Chinese word with the appropriate sound.  Does anyone know?



I read somewhere that it should be 老世
The term emerged when HK was under Japanese rule. 世 derives from Japanese 世帶主, the boss of a unit or a household.


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## Tsingtao

you can say "头儿".


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## Grammar Fan

I wish to thank all of the nice people who responded to my question about "boss" in Chinese.  I now have six choices from which to choose!


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## WiIIaM

Actually, what you mean by "boss" sounds like 老大 in Chinese. Northern dialect area suggestion.


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