Re: Urgent list question - anyone speak Chinese….?

But is it an Expeditionary Force or is it Marine Camp/Marine Base Glenn
(Would you believe not a Marine in any of the Apollo crews?) by now?

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Robert N Bryett <rbryett@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> > On 7 Nov 2015, at 07:48, Roger Bell_West <roger@firedrake.org>
wrote:
> > It sounds weird (there's even a People's Liberation Army Naval Air
> > Force) because it's basically a mistranslation - as I understand it
> > the word used as "Liberation Army" (Jiěfàngjūn) would be closer
to
> > "military force”
>
> Yes, our English terms PLA, PLAN, PLAAF etc. are artefacts of
> not-very-wonderful literal translations. The People’s Liberation
army is
> 人民解放军 or rénmínjiěfàngjūn. To break that down, rénmín
means people in the
> sense of “We the people”, jiěfàng means liberation, and jūn
means army or
> more broadly military. The Chinese airforce adds 空军 (kōngjūn),
and their
> navy 海军 (hǎijūn), which are “air military” or “air
force”, and “sea
> military” or “sea-force” respectively. By extension, one would
expect a
> future “space force” suffix to be something like 天军
(tiānjūn) or 太空军
> (tàikōngjūn).
>
> Tàikōng is “outer space” (literally “highest sky”, and
shēnkōng is “deep
> space” (literally “deep sky”), which sort of makes sense, since
there’s no
> hard line between atmosphere and outer space. I suppose the recent
English
> coinage of “taikonaut” for a Chinese astronaut is drawn from the
first five
> letters of tàikōng.
>
> RB
>
> PS. My apologies to anyone whose e-mail client can’t render Chinese
> characters or pinyin-with-tone-marks correctly.
>