Uncommon vocabulary: knives
While in Taiwan last August, I stocked up on some Mandarin reading material. In Seoul, you can buy books in Chinese, but a 3元 ($0.47) paperback will have been marked up to ₩20,000 ($17.42) by the time it hits the shelves at the local Kyobo. I just can’t bring myself to spend $18 on a book that screams 50¢ on the cover.
One of the books that made it back with me was 《中日西刀工料理百科》, or “Chinese, Japanese & Western Knifework Encyclopedia”. I love it. It’s bursting with photographs and good explanations.
One problem, mine not the book’s, is that I lack some of the rather specialised vocabulary used in the text. I thought it’d be a good chance to learn some of those words so that the next time I find myself buying knives in the Mainland I can have a nice chat about what I’m buying.
The biggest problem with this sort of thing is that people will disagree on much of the terminology. See 鐔 in the image to the right. In English we’d call that the bolster. Depending on which dictionary you use, it’s pronounced xín, chán or tán. In fairness, most dictionaries (e.g. 现代汉语规范词典) would give the tán pronunciation as a family name and not as a part of a blade. Nciku gives xín in both of their sourced dictionaries, while Adsotrans (by way of Pleco) offers up chán. It may be that it’s xín in some places and chán in others. Sino-Korean at least offers 심 /ɕim/ making me think chán shouldn’t be my first choice. As usual I digress.
I was actually looking for a good translation for the tang of the blade. That is, the continuation of the blade, past the bolster and into the handle. It’s been skipped over in 《刀工料理》 and so maybe it’s not actually that important for most of the knives discussed in the book. All the Western knives have a full tang, none of the Japanese knives do, and 3/4 of the “Chinese knives” (read: cleavers) have it. So maybe it’s a given. Still I’d like to know.
Only after much searching did I fiund 茎 jīng (なかご nakago) as the Japanese term, and it looks like that goes for Mandarin as well. 中心 and 中子 also work, but again in Japanese. What I really need is an old Chinese chef that comes over to hang out and throw back Tsingtaos once a week who I can just ask all these things of. A Ming blacksmith would work too.
For those keeping track, here’s a quick knife glossary. Feel free to correct.
刀刃 － the cutting side of the blade
刀口 － the sharp edge of the cutting side of the blade
刀尖 － the pointed tip of the blade
刀背 － spine of the blade
刀尾 － back corner of the blade
刀腹 － the blade’s side surface
刀柄 － the handle
镡 － the bolster or guard, depending
柄尾 － the pommel or rear bolster
兵 － the rivet
This last one is a little odd to me. There aren’t many sources online that I can find giving 兵 as meaning rivet on a blade. 铆钉 seems to be a better fit. I’d love to hear from anyone who knows about these things.
The moral of the story: Always ask the experts.
I’m certainly not an expert, but maybe some of this will help:
The only thing that rung a bell about 兵 in this context for me was 画鋲（がびょう）, which in Japanese means “thumbtack”. Looking up 鋲 in 漢字源 I find that it refers to a nail (釘) with a large head.
There doesn’t seem to be a 金＋兵 in Chinese; the closest I could find was 金＋宾. Looking for 镔 only finds me 镔铁, which is “wrought iron” and can also be written 宾铁 according to the ABC Dictionary. Granted, 宾 != 兵, but what’s an 宀 between friends?
So, put that all in a blender, mash it all up, and out comes… I dunno.
It may be relevant that the author-chefs are Japanese. The copyright page has an English reference to the people that did the “complicated Chinese” translation. Odd though that since it’s all 繁體 anyway they didn’t just use 鋲, as I’m sure that’s what was used in the original Japanese version of the book. 铆钉 would have been fine too, I’m sure.
Good find on 鋲 by the way.
Good ol’ 包丁s!
I was reading the “explanatory” text above – “鐔，也叫做鍔” – and thinking “…uh, thanks a lot, now it all makes so much more sense!”
Yeah. Real helpful.
I was wondering myself how 刀刃的尖端 was any more descriptive than just 刀刃 or 尖端.
I looked up a couple of things at http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/ and http://tw.dictionary.yahoo.com/
鐔 is pronounced tán and defined as 劍鼻, so it has its roots in swords.
Tang, is translated as 柄腳 or the foot handle, so perhaps the handle for the base of the blade?
Translations can be messy!
Not sure I’d normally rely on Yahoo for these sorts of things, however it does give the xin pronunciation (albeit without tones). For the family name, I have no doubt that it’s pronounced tán. For the knife part, I’m not so sure. There are no shortage of words pronounced one way for a family name and another way for something else.
Qihaoming.com gives xin as well, but probably more reliable and harder to argue against is the following from a native speaker in response to a question on zhidao.baidu.com:
镡有三种读音
chan,第二声，姓。
tan,第二声，姓。
xin,第二声，⑴古代剑柄的顶端部分。⑵古代兵器，似剑而小。
参考资料：现代汉语大词典
from http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/865390
and from baike.baidu.com: http://baike.baidu.com/view/284141.htm
I looked up 镡 in the 廣韻 and the antecedents of both /tan/ and /xin/ are listed. I thought perhaps one form would have a wendu reading and the a baidu reading, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
I’ll walk to the local knife store this weekend and see what they say…
cheers. I’m pretty sure tan will end up being the name and xin the knife part. but by all means let me know what the knife guys say.