Spring of drowned boy

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Well, since this wasn't answered in the Ranma forum (as in: not even replied to), I figured I'd try asking here since this is relevant to a story I'm thinking about writing.

The consensus that the spring of drowned boy is the nannichuan, and the spring of drowned girl is nyannichuan, has been put into question for me. I recently looked through an online English-Chinese dictionary and it seems like the former, nannichuan, is the for spring of drowned girl, and the various words for "boy" in Chinese was something else entirely. So, I was hoping that someone could clear this up for me, since I don't know Chinese (and thus the exact pronunciation), I can't completely trust online sources, and think it wouldn't be wise to not explore a human source of information.

...help? ^^;

[Spokavriel]

In other words you need someone fluent in whichever version of Chinese that is from to help you. The thing is the Stories use Nanichuan and Nyanichuan so trying to get more accurate to reality is really a waste of time and kinda pointless anyway.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

No to the first part, and why post something counter-productive? You're basically saying, "hey, no one should bother helping this guy out because he might use different information than the majority! Who cares what this guy wants for his story, or about the possibility that the majority are wrong and need to be corrected!"

So. I'll elaborate on the first part. I just need to see if anyone is seeing the same problem as I do, whether they know some Chinese or not. I'm fairly sure that the "nichuan" part is accurate enough, by using the online English-Chinese dictionaries. (Yes, I did use more than one. Three, I think.) I get "nān" for girl (well, it's one of them, but it fits with nannichuan) and "tóng" for boy. Obviously, I've never heard of the tongnichuan. So I need to see if others get the same answer when they look it up, or know enough about Chinese to confirm it or dismiss it.

[Spokavriel]

Actually I was trying to state my theory why no one replied in the Ranma board. Sorry about the confusion.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

I have hope.

[mondu_the_fat]

My mother taught english at a chinese school.

"Ma, what does nanichuan/nyanichuan mean?"

"That's not chinese."

Given that there are a dozen or so chinese dialects, my mother might likely be wrong, though, so take that story with a grain of salt.

"So what's boy in chinese?"

"Tapo."

My sister took up chinese in college, and is a Ranma fan.

"Hey, does nanichuan really mean spring of drowned boy?"

"How the ***** should I know? It's not chinese."

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Regardless, I appreciate the input. Thanks.

[J. St.C. Patrick]

To perhaps add some more confusion ( as opposed to confucian) to the chinese question -
I have in my hand a book entitled "Beginners Mandarin" which in its index gives the translation of male as nan (with a rising accent over the 'a') (it also says that it also means difficult and south)
keeping in mind that the all three are shown in roman letters and not Chinese.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Yeah, that's weird. As far as I can tell, the character for "otoko" in Japanese (meaning "boy") is "nán" in Chinese. But I never see the Chinese character alone to designate the definition of "boy", as in all of the online dictionaries I've used it's always (at least) "nán hái." But, even if it's correct to shorten it to that one character, that doesn't explain how or why "nyan" would be used for "girl/young girl", since I can't find anything in any of the dictionaries close enough to "nyan" than "niū", and "nān" is only from the Soochow dialect.

I need one of those thought bubbles with the squiggly lines in it.

[LawOhki]

They are both presented with japanese kanji, the furigana spells out the "chinese" names.

男 - man
溺 - to be drowned
泉 - spring

For the girl spring the first character is merely replaced with 娘 - girl

The casket.
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/918/ranma38170.jpg

[Crescent Pulsar R]

So, basically, it doesn't need to be said in Chinese? I wonder how the Chinese names came into usage... I mean, did the Jusenkyo guide relay the name of the springs in Chinese or Japanese?

[Cheb]

"Kanji", when translated from Japanese, means "Chinese character(s)". It's like Latin of the Oriental world. So Japanese uses Chinese alphabet with a few custom additions. Of course, the spring name would be written identically in both languages.

So, there's the spring of drowned young girl and the spring of drowned male (which could be read from "boy" to "man"). Quite a difference
By the way, "Jusenkyou" is the Japanese reading for the place's name.

The spring of drowned male is spelled in Japanese as NANNI:TYUAN (ナンニーチュアン) The key word is "otoko" 男.
The spring of drowned young girl is spelled as NYANNI:TYUAN (ニャンニーチュアン) 　The key word is "musume" 娘 (not "onna" as you could think)

If they spelled 'em normally, these would probably be called "Otoko dekisen" and "Musume dekisen". Or something.

P.S. *always* start with kanji, not with the pronunciation.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

That makes enough sense, and "nan" checked out for "boy/man", but I couldn't find "nyan" for the other character. Other than "musume", I only saw it read as either "jou" or "nyou." Though only my IME Pad was useful for all three, since all of the Japanese-English dictionaries that I found online, and actually showed results in romaji, mostly offered "musume"; only one also came up with "jou", I think.

[Cheb]

Try using JWPce. Though you'd have to learn hiragana and katakana, at least to some degree (though the program is useful in that it allows to right-click on any character and get its detailed description).

[Crescent Pulsar R]

I'll have to look into that. Fortunately, I've become familiar enough with Katakana and Hiragana over the years.