# 羊



## Grefsen

Moderator's Note: Split from this thread.
I have one more quick question about the Chinese basketball jersey.  On the sleeve there is a picture of a ram along with "羊" and just wanted to confirm that this is the correct Mandarin character for "ram." 

Here again is the link to a picture of the jersey:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/drp/nba/warriors/sites/default/files/2015-cnyjersey-3.jpg

谢谢！


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## fyl

Grefsen said:


> On the sleeve there is a picture of a ram along with "羊" and just wanted to confirm that this is the correct Mandarin character for "ram."


Not exactly.
羊 can mean all caprinae animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprinae), it includes sheep (绵羊), goat (山羊), ram (公羊), etc.
I actually saw discussions on internet about how to translate "the year of 羊" to English. (For example, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/world/asia/chinese-new-year-sheep-goat.html?_r=0)


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## Grefsen

fyl said:


> Not exactly.
> 羊 can mean all caprinae animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprinae), it includes sheep (绵羊), goat (山羊), ram (公羊), etc.


Thank you so much for your quick reply, *fyl. * 

So it looks like "羊" is the safe character to use to describe this new lunar year since sheep, goats, and rams are all members of the caprinae subfamily of animals. 


fyl said:


> I actually saw discussions on internet about how to translate "the year of 羊" to English. (For example, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/world/asia/chinese-new-year-sheep-goat.html?_r=0)


Ironically enough I also found this same New York Times article and was actually reading it while you were posting your reply. 

谢谢！


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## SuperXW

Grefsen said:


> I have one more quick question about the Chinese basketball jersey.  On the sleeve there is a picture of a ram along with "羊" and just wanted to confirm that this is the correct Mandarin character for "ram."
> 谢谢！


羊 is correct to be used on your jersey and for this year. The actually doubt here is: whether we should translate 羊 into "ram", or should it be "goat" or "sheep", since "ram" only means "adult male sheep".
Same questions happened on many other years, 牛: cow? buffalo? bull? ox? 鸡: chicken? cock? rooster? hen? ...  
Anyway, most people wouldn't care too much about the distinctions. But "sheep" on a jersey? Not a good idea. I would say "ram" would do just fine.


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## retrogradedwithwind

For a team, ram is obviously better than sheep and goat.


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## Youngfun

I uually hear "Year of the Goat"... and I can't access te website nytimes.... gotta "climb the wall"...


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## Skatinginbc

The character 羊 in the oracle bone script and the bronze script depicts  an animal with massive horns that curve downward or curl into full  circles--more like the sheep horns than the goat horns. 

The Chinese character for "ram" or "he-goat" is 羝.


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## Grefsen

Thanks for the help everyone! 


fyl said:


> 羊 can mean all caprinae animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprinae), it includes sheep (绵羊), goat (山羊), ram (公羊), etc.





Skatinginbc said:


> The character 羊 in the oracle bone script and the bronze script depicts  an animal with massive horns that curve downward or curl into full  circles--more like the sheep horns than the goat horns.
> 
> The Chinese character for "ram" or "he-goat" is 羝.


What is the difference in meaning between 公羊 and 羝 ?


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## SuperXW

Grefsen said:


> What is the difference in meaning between 公羊 and 羝 ?


公羊 is "male 羊", which is common and easy to be understood.
羝 I think, is the ancient character for "ram" or "he-goat". Very few people today can recognize it. 
Ancient Chinese tend to use specific characters to differentiate things. In this way the record can be much shorter than today's text.


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## Grefsen

SuperXW said:


> 公羊 is "male 羊", which is common and easy to be understood.


Last week at my local grocery store here in Southern California it was possible to buy a special "Year of the Ram 2015" six pack of beer imported from China by the Tsingtao Brewery (青岛啤酒厂). 

Here's the only link I could find to a picture of some of these commemorative packs:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd...._=1435760904_be7ab7dc0486158b62666bf88adf05cf

 I'm curious to know if the two characters just above "Year of the Ram 2015" are used to mean "Ram Year"?  I believe the second character 年 means "year," but the first character looks quite different from the other characters that have been used in this thread.  

謝謝！


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## SuperXW

Grefsen said:


> I'm curious to know if the two characters just above "Year of the Ram 2015" are used to mean "Ram Year"?  I believe the second character 年 means "year," but the first character looks quite different from the other characters that have been used in this thread.


The first character is obviously 羊, can't you recognize it?


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## Youngfun

It's written in a different font, one that imitates calligraphy, dude.


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## Grefsen

SuperXW said:


> The first character is obviously 羊 ...


Thank you for confirming this.





Youngfun said:


> It's written in a different font, one that imitates calligraphy...


謝謝！

To my untrained eyes it was difficult to know for sure that the character used by the Tsingtao Brewery that was "written in a different font" was the same as 羊.


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## Skatinginbc

I don't like "Year of the Ram", which seems so gender-biased.   Why not "Year of the Ewe"?  No baby girls are born in that year?  The animal terms in Chinese zodiac are gender non-specific.  Just  as 人 does not refer to "boys" only, so does 羊 not equate to "ram".  If  gender must be arbitrarily assigned, I would rather have "ewe" instead  because the supposedly shared personality of those 属羊的人 tends to be  stereotypically described as "feminine" (e.g., loving, not aggressive,  unassertive, gentle, artistic, etc.), far from the image of the territorial, aggressive ram.


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## Grefsen

Skatinginbc said:


> I don't like "Year of the Ram", which seems so gender-biased.   Why not "Year of the Ewe"?  No baby girls are born in that year?  The animal terms in Chinese zodiac are gender non-specific.  Just  as 人 does not refer to "boys" only, so does 羊 not equate to "ram".


Since it's extremely unlikely that "Year of the Caprinae subfamily" will end up being used very often as a translation for 羊年, then I expect that "Year of the Goat" as well as "Year of the Sheep (Ram or Ewe)" will continue to be used throughout the year.


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## Sarantai

The 羊 in the year of 羊 is actually *sheep* rather than ram or goat.


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## samiluo

For our natives, we never take it into consideration whether sheep goat or ram, lol until this year foreigners talk about it hahaa


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