Wu Jen? What is it?

[Shin Okada]

wuyanei,

Thanks for your mail.

That is another possibility for sure. I know that word because that word was imported into Japan and appear in some of the old Japanese texts. We pronounce it as Fu-geki in Japanese way of reading. Today's pinyin will show it as Wu-xi or Wu-he I guess.

But I am not sure if it is likely for Chinese people to do such way of mispronunciation. In case of the right part of the second character, there are a lot of characters which use that as a part of it (radical) but pronunciation really varies.

 

[Henry]

I have sent you a private e-mail with a .jpg file of the characters wu and shi, since I do not know how to post images in the forum. If you could post the images here for everyone else -- or even better, teach me how to do so myself, I would be most grateful.

That I can help you with.

When you hit the "new reply" button at the bottom of the page, (the "quote" button in each post does this, too!) you will see "additional options below the space for typing your message. Look for the "Attach files" section, and the "Manage attachments" button. A second window should open, with a browse button as well as a path you could type the name of the file you're uploading into. Use the "browse" to find the file to attach on your computer, and then hit the OK button for each one. You can attach up to six files. Hit the "upload" button, and they should upload, to be posted along with your message.

Hope this helps!

 

[the Jester]

Only if you ask nicely

Just so you know (in case you haven't read the rules), this sort of behavior is generally frowned on here.

Please play nice.

 

[Shin Okada]

Hmm. And I start to re-think that it actually is posibble that some mistakes are involved.

Many English RPG books say Kensai, while that Japanese word should be alphabetized as Kensei, and shoud be pronounced like "ken" + "say".

 

[wuyanei]

While the 'jien' is often used as a radical, it is almost always pronounced as either 'jien' or as 'xian'. Of all the characters withthe 'xi' sound in my dictionary, the 'xi' of 'wu xi' is the ONLY character with the 'see' radical. So I do find it quite possible that a chinese person might misprounounce the word ... especially since I did so myself for a very long time, until I finally looked the character up!

Anyways, all of this is just speculation. I do not know of any chinese phrase meaning soothesayer/witch/priest that is pronounced like wu jien (although some are close), but I cannot know what the designers were actually thinking. So... please take whatever you useful, and feel free to disregard the rest!

Bye,
Yanei Wu

And... Thank you, Henry. I cannot believe I forgot that we can use attachments. Thanks for reminding me!

 

[lukelightning]

In an alternate universe in which D&D was invented in China, there are people wondering where the name of the class "wiz zard" came from in the book "Occidental Adventures."

And fanboys talk about the super-duper claymore sword, and how deadly the "hitman" class is....

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

In an alternate universe in which D&D was invented in China, there are people wondering where the name of the class "wiz zard" came from in the book "Occidental Adventures."

And fanboys talk about the super-duper claymore sword, and how deadly the "hitman" class is....

You speak beautiful words of truth.

 

[MaesterOlorin]

As other's have pointed out, it would be "wuren" in modern Mandarin. Of course, I've never heard them called "wuren" but only "wu" or "wushi" (what's "wu-shrr" not "wushee"). Or "wupo" which would be more like "witch."

The wu were spirit mediums; they would contact the world of the dead and channel ghosts and gods. They generally weren't thought of a having "active" magic (casting spells to affect things), just spirit communication.

Personally I see no reason why the wu ren class should be anything other than a wizard. There is no real justification for a separate spell list and spell mechanics other than to feed people's desire for "exotic orient" ideas. It would be much simpler to call all the wu ren spells wizard spells and say that these are the spells which are common in a fantasy China (there are already far too many categories of spells: bard spells, druid spells, cleric spells, wizard/sorc spells...ad naseum).

Ages later a voice in the wilderness said, "romanticization and fetishization, are the heart and lungs of most fantasy, written, games, or movies"

 

[MaesterOlorin]

Wu shi (wu1 shi2, or 'wuu shee'): "Of those who can see (commune with) ghosts (spirits of the ancestors), the women are called wu and the men are called shi."

However, as you can see, the right part of the character for 'shi' looks a lot like the character for 'see', which is pronounced 'jien'.

According to usual chinese pronouncation rules, you often pronounce a word as the non-meaningful part of the character. In this case, left part denotes 'wu' -- the meaning of the character -- so a chinese person who does not actually recognize this (rather uncommon) word, if forced to guess its pronouncation, would likely pronounce it as 'jien'. This is similar to an native English-speaker miss-pronouncing the french name 'Lamer (La mer)' as 'lamer' -- you guessed wrong, because in this case the normal rules do not apply.

My guess is that the designers asked a chinese friend to pronounce the word for them. The friend made a guess according to the usual character pronouncation rules, but in this special case he or she guessed wrong.

I have sent you a private e-mail with a .jpg file of the characters wu and shi, since I do not know how to post images in the forum. If you could post the images here for everyone else -- or even better, teach me how to do so myself, I would be most grateful.

Hope that helps! Bye bye!

Edit: Of course! Slaps forehead I forgot that I could just add it as an attachment. File added.

That is the kind of sophisticated reasoning you normally only get from a philologist. You really know your stuff and had the creativity to and understanding of how people think to give a real and probable insight. Hope you read this someday; Thank you

 

[Willie the Duck]

Ages later a voice in the wilderness said, "romanticization and fetishization, are the heart and lungs of most fantasy, written, games, or movies"

I am curious. You noticed that this is a 17 year old thread. What is your purpose in responding to it?