Full Map Of Bavaria

A lexicon so descriptive, it can scare you

Monsters aren't just scary.

They also reveal a fascinating facet of the Chinese language - that is, the descriptive, rather than terminological, character of its words.

So, the whole casting call of the monster mash bears Mandarin appellations that not only give them names but also explicitly tell you something about them.

This characteristic of Chinese is described with a term that is in itself descriptive - "biao yi ci", which literally translates as, "represent meaning words".

Even the word for "monster" - "guai wu", which literally translates as "weird creatures" - follows this inclination of the Chinese tongue.

Hence, vampires are "xi xue gui", or "suck blood ghosts", in Chinese. The word doesn't just name this variety of ghoul but also tells you something about it - in this case, that this unholy being siphons the sanguineous vital fluid of the human body like a Shop-Vac.

The same holds true for zombies - "jiang shi", which means, "stiff corpse". These living dead are so named in Chinese for their characteristic way of hobbling about with their arms rigidly extended in front of their exanimate-yet-kinetic bodies.

My personal favorite is the Chinese way of referring to the Frankenstein monster. In English, we refer to this mingle-mangle of reanimated human remains by the surname of the mad scientist whose experimentation created the creature. But in Chinese, the monster is called "ke xue gaui ren", or "technology ghost man" - again, a term that tells us something about this fiend.

The interesting thing about the Chinese word for Dr Frankenstein's creation is that it departs from the Chinese linguistic tendency to transliterate proper nouns, such as surnames, in ways that often don't make sense - but can be amusing.

This penchant can be seen in the Chinese name for the world's most celebrated xi xue gui, Dracula.

The Count's name is transliterated in Chinese as "De gu la", which literally means, "virtue ancient pull" - hardly descriptive of the superstar of the bloodsucking set. Another translation replaces the word "virtue" with "German" - even further off the mark and more nonsensical. This xi xue gui put Transylvania, not Bavaria, on the map of popular imagination and even introduced its regional accent to the global public.

But at least one of the beasts who goes bump in the night shares a literally translatable description name in Chinese and English - that is, the lang ren, or wolf man.

Road Trip - Day 4

Today we spent the whole day in Munich. we started off with a later breakfast (9.30ish). we then went and hired a bike for the rest of the day. was fun and much easier way of getting around as we were all sick of walking. it was wierd not having to wear a helmet and nice to have a bike path seperate from the road. we went to a few places on our bikes including a palace with massive gardens as far as the eye could see, an olympic arena which luky for us was the first day of summer festival and it was nice summer hot weather. we kept biking around munich and saw some parks and older buildings, we got caught in some rain in the late avo so found some cover for a bit and then had lots of fun trying to get back to the hotel. in the meantime i got told off by a german policeman for biking the wrong way down a one way street (lol). we got back to hotel and had a quick change of clothes then went back to drop bikes back off as was 5.30. from there we went on a new europe tour of Munich - a beer challenge. we went to quite a few places including a beer garden, the place where Munich has Oktoberfest, and a few pubs. i do have to say that german beer is very nice as has no additives or preservitives and doesnt make you feel any where sore in the morning apart from maybe a wee bit of a qwessy stomach. needless to say was a good a night and met lots of cool people apart from 1 stalker which steve encouraged (grrrrr).

Proceedings

Ancestry magazine

The map of Europe by treaty, showing the various political and territorial changes which have taken place since the general peace of 1814

The Map collector

Daytrips Bavaria