the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

cdobe wrote:

dragonprawn wrote:Say what you will about the appropriateness of the titles Master and Grandmaster but stop saying that this is an American phenomenon.

大師 Dashi: great/eldest/grand/major teacher

主 Zhu: Master/Lord

Yes, using Master for martial artists is a Western phenomenon. And John Wang's last contribution are wise words...

And 'Sifu' is what you call your plumber, TV repairman or other skilled labourer in China (師傅 shī fu).

lazyboxer wrote:

cdobe wrote:

dragonprawn wrote:Say what you will about the appropriateness of the titles Master and Grandmaster but stop saying that this is an American phenomenon.

大師 Dashi: great/eldest/grand/major teacher

主 Zhu: Master/Lord

Yes, using Master for martial artists is a Western phenomenon. And John Wang's last contribution are wise words...

And 'Sifu' is what you call your plumber, TV repairman or other skilled labourer in China (師傅 shī fu).

And Sifu 师父 (different character) is how you call your martial arts teacher...

cdobe wrote:

lazyboxer wrote:And 'Sifu' is what you call your plumber, TV repairman or other skilled labourer in China (師傅 shī fu).

And Sifu 师父 (different character) is how you call your martial arts teacher...

Not necessarily, though many do, mainly in the South. They are pronounced identically, and some teachers might prefer a different courtesy title.

yeah definitely BTDT... grandmaster klonk.

I want to be better than grandmaster. Maybe ultramaster, or ultimaster, or awesomaster!

See, foo' and Sure, foo' are not enough for me.

nianfong wrote:yeah definitely BTDT... grandmaster klonk.

Even before your recent promotion, you had more cma cred than most who call themselves like dat.

I know that some come here with axes to grind and all, but the essence is summed up like this. A real teacher advances his students; the fraud advances himself.

The last time we discussed it the chinese historians on the board admitted that before the boxer rebellion the terms grandmaster and master were used in China - so again I ask you - how is this a western phenomenon?

And a quick glance at the internet looking for chinese promotion of the terms yields hundreds of entries such as:

Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang, male, born in the original place of Tai Chi - Chen village in China, he is the 19 th generation Chen style Grandmaster of the Chen family’s Tai Chi Chuan heritage. He is a direct descendant of the legendary creator of Tai Chi, General Chen Wangting and one of "the World Best Chen Tai Chi Grandmaster"

Again, I stopped caring what people think of these terms after our last debates - but I am not going to sit quiet for this "western phenomenon" BS.

Edit: I did find support for the western phenomenon on wiki which says that US troops in WWII in the 1950s in China returned home and changed sifu to master. Damn, I'm glad we have better historians on RSF than the editors of wiki!

dragonprawn wrote:The last time we discussed it the chinese historians on the board admitted that before the boxer rebellion the terms grandmaster and master were used in China - so again I ask you - how is this a western phenomenon?

What you don't seem to understand is, that all the Chinese names, that are in question here, literally translate to teacher. The problem with the word master for MA teacher's is, that it is so ingrained in our western culture, that it has even found its way into dictionaries and influences how Asian people translate their terms into English. It is a wrong translation that has been adopted into the language. And it were the westerners who did this. These are the facts...

This has so much to do with the malleability of the English language. As has been stated before, master has multiple meanings. One of those meanings infers the relationship between a teacher and apprentice. another one of those meanings infers mastery of a trade. and yet another one infers some sort of ownership on a physical or spiritual plane. However, I am under the suspicion that in this case, master simply refers to the meaning of teacher. Having said that, people tend to confuse this with mastery in a given field and even sometimes with spiritual mastership. However, assuming that the term master merely alludes to a teacher figure, it is in fact not a mistranslation, instead, it is a misinterpretation of a correct translation.

mixjourneyman wrote:This has so much to do with the malleability of the English language. As has been stated before, master has multiple meanings. One of those meanings infers the relationship between a teacher and apprentice. another one of those meanings infers mastery of a trade. and yet another one infers some sort of ownership on a physical or spiritual plane. However, I am under the suspicion that in this case, master simply refers to the meaning of teacher. Having said that, people tend to confuse this with mastery in a given field and even sometimes with spiritual mastership. However, assuming that the term master merely alludes to a teacher figure, it is in fact not a mistranslation, instead, it is a misinterpretation of a correct translation.

If 'teacher' is meant, in Chinese as well as in English, why not say 'teacher'? I think in English no one thinks 'teacher' when he hears 'master'. To me that is a mistranslation. The Latin root magister meant teacher, but in English, I think, there has always been the idea attached to the word of a very asymmetrical relationship as far as power is concerned. How can one say that people got the meaning wrong then?

Fencing master, dancing master, riding master, these terms mean teachers of the indicated arts. But the terms are somewhat archaic.

Early in the 20th century, Japanese martial arts teachers were sometimes called "professors" in English-speaking countries, I suppose as a translation of "sensei." This usage is still encountered occasionally.

I suppose both "master" and "professor" for Asian martial arts teachers stemmed from the desire to make people's titles sound a bit better than they might, if translated otherwise. But neither is actually wrong--if you look down the list of possible definitions.

mixjourneyman wrote:This has so much to do with the malleability of the English language. As has been stated before, master has multiple meanings. One of those meanings infers the relationship between a teacher and apprentice. another one of those meanings infers mastery of a trade. and yet another one infers some sort of ownership on a physical or spiritual plane. However, I am under the suspicion that in this case, master simply refers to the meaning of teacher. Having said that, people tend to confuse this with mastery in a given field and even sometimes with spiritual mastership. However, assuming that the term master merely alludes to a teacher figure, it is in fact not a mistranslation, instead, it is a misinterpretation of a correct translation.

Excellent summary.

cdobe wrote:If 'teacher' is meant, in Chinese as well as in English, why not say 'teacher'? I think in English no one thinks 'teacher' when he hears 'master'. To me that is a mistranslation. The Latin root magister meant teacher, but in English, I think, there has always been the idea attached to the word of a very asymmetrical relationship as far as power is concerned. How can one say that people got the meaning wrong then?

Fact is, no one in China thinks "laoshi" when they hear "shifu". They both have the root character 师/teacher but the compound words have very different associations. On past threads we established that this is partly a regional habit as, in Taiwan apparantly, "laoshi" carries more respect than "shifu" but, on the mainland I get called "laoshi" all the time just because I teach esl but nobody pays their respects on new years like they do for my "shifu" and my "xuesheng"/students don't have any of the devotion or lifelong connection that "tudi"/disciples have for their shifu.

It's not a hard rule and some of Shifu's tudi even refer to Shifu as "laoshi" but anyone calling him "Shifu" is definitely making a particular kind of relationship explicit. In mainlaind China Shifu/tudi is a much closer relationship than Laoshi/xuesheng.

dragonprawn wrote:The last time we discussed it the chinese historians on the board admitted that before the boxer rebellion the terms grandmaster and master were used in China - so again I ask you - how is this a western phenomenon?

And a quick glance at the internet looking for chinese promotion of the terms yields hundreds of entries such as:

Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang, male, born in the original place of Tai Chi - Chen village in China, he is the 19 th generation Chen style Grandmaster of the Chen family’s Tai Chi Chuan heritage. He is a direct descendant of the legendary creator of Tai Chi, General Chen Wangting and one of "the World Best Chen Tai Chi Grandmaster"

Again, I stopped caring what people think of these terms after our last debates - but I am not going to sit quiet for this "western phenomenon" BS.

It's pretty silly to cite a English language promotional literature as evidence that it is not a western phenomenon.

That being said, although your evidence is completely worthless, you are still right. It's just that there is no Chinese tradition of using those terms. Using comically inflated titles though is eminently Chinese. Whenever I go to a tournament or performance, I typically come back with a new collection of business cards from the local. The wife and I always get a good laugh out of the lengths they go with creative titling. Whether it's martial arts or just ordinary business, they always make their titles sound really super impressive.

bailewen wrote:

cdobe wrote:If 'teacher' is meant, in Chinese as well as in English, why not say 'teacher'? I think in English no one thinks 'teacher' when he hears 'master'. To me that is a mistranslation. The Latin root magister meant teacher, but in English, I think, there has always been the idea attached to the word of a very asymmetrical relationship as far as power is concerned. How can one say that people got the meaning wrong then?

Fact is, no one in China thinks "laoshi" when they hear "shifu". They both have the root character 师/teacher but the compound words have very different associations. On past threads we established that this is partly a regional habit as, in Taiwan apparantly, "laoshi" carries more respect than "shifu" but, on the mainland I get called "laoshi" all the time just because I teach esl but nobody pays their respects on new years like they do for my "shifu" and my "xuesheng"/students don't have any of the devotion or lifelong connection that "tudi"/disciples have for their shifu.

It's not a hard rule and some of Shifu's tudi even refer to Shifu as "laoshi" but anyone calling him "Shifu" is definitely making a particular kind of relationship explicit. In mainlaind China Shifu/tudi is a much closer relationship than Laoshi/xuesheng.

I have explained exactly that myself a couple of times. It has little to do with the point I made. There are different words for teacher with different connotations, yet their basic meaning is teacher and not master.

Fair enough.

Those who like this kind of thing will find this the kind of thing they like: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master

See especially: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master#Translations