Talk:Typhon
From Academic Kids
I wonder what the etymology of this word could be... typhon is Chinese for big wind which westerners call typhoons... were the greeks wrestling for control with the chinese? on the seas maybe?
I've also heard this name used for a creature with the front half of a donkey, latter half of a rattlesnake, with dragon wings.. which breathes fire and, more significantly, a great wind. this might be just some fantasy thing, but it sounded mythological and had the same wind-connection. wouldn't the chinese be like tai fun or something? all modern spellings look pretty ambiguous to me, not really greekish.
Typhoon
The Chinese phrase "颱風" ("tái fēng") means exactly "typhoon", the tropical cyclone. The second character "風" means "wind", while the first character "颱" is a radical-phonetic compounds (Chinese_character#Classification); it has the sound of "台" (tái) and the meaning of "風". According to the [Central Weather Bureau of Republic of China (http://e-service.cwb.gov.tw/docs/V3.0/knowledge/dict/021.htm)], the most probable origination of the phrase might be the Min phrase of "風篩" (fēng shāi). The following is a quotation from 《台灣縣志》, re-proofread by 魯鼎梅：「所云颱者，乃土人見颶風挾雨四面環至，空中旋舞如篩。」("What is called a 'tái' is, the aboriginals saw hurricanes which brought rains from every direction, eddying and dancing like a sieve.") The character "颱" was subsequently invented to serve the specific meaning of typhoon, and since then the phrase "風颱" is what the Min speakers used to called the nature weather phenomenon. The Mandarin Chinese has a habit of turning a phrase head over heels, so when the phrase "風颱" reached to Mandarin speakers in Northern China where typhoons seldom comes, it changed to "颱風". Given to its etymology, the resemblance between Typhon and tái fēng seems to be a mere coincidence, because the Chinese phrase originated from "fēng shāi" and could hardly have any real linguistic connection with the Greek word "Typhon". Still, the theory I said above about the origination of the Chinese phrase "颱風" is just one of the probable theory I know of. There might be other theories which support the view that the phrase "颱風" was originated from the word "Typhon", or even the word "Typhon" was originated from the phrase "颱風". --G.S.K.Lee 10:01, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
