Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
That`s a new one to me, and I studied language history and linguistics. :P
Maybe that is something that was DONE on mountains, but the word never meant that. Some seriously creative translation going on here.  |
Nyororin,
Sorry to contradict you but I just quoted the Japanese dictionary. It's not a special dictionary about mountain words or anything, it's a standard Japanese dictionary. I use the 大辞泉 (editor is 小学館) if you want to check by yourself. Here is what it says :
- for the fact that Yama refers to forest :
"日本では古来、草木が生い茂り、
さまざまな恵みをもたらす場所としてとらえる。"
- for the fact that it refer to a place "where gods live and were you go to train and put your faith to the test”, here is the next phrase in the dictionary :
"また古くは神が住む神聖な地域として、
信仰の対象や修行の場とされた"
You don't even have to go to the librairy to confirm it, the 大辞泉 dictionary is available online on Yahoo web site. Here is the page about 山 :
Yahoo!辞書 - やま【山】
MMM,
I might be "preaching to the choir". In fact I wrote this article for a mountain web site magazine first and I just put it as it was on this forum. I though it also had this place here but it sounds like a mistake. Or I should have wrote it differently...