Glossary — Z

 

zhee-tel/y

resident/s; inhabitant/s (language=Rooski); describes people who belong to my direvnya or my Collective; similar to "comrade/s" or "friend/s", much like "villager/s"; in Rooski, this word is usually associated with a larger village (a selskiy) than a direvnya, but the distinction was not carried to Yeibichai

 

 

Zhongguo

nation aka China, written in Pinyin transliteration (language=Zhongwen), meaning "Middle Kingdom" (zhong=middle; guo=kingdom); however, the People's Republic of China is called "Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo," where "hua" (in "Zhonghua") is a "sort of literary way of referring to China or the Chinese people", "Renmin" means "people," and "gongheguo" means "republic." [Roger Wise, a student of Zhongwen and my nephew-in-law]

 

Zhongguo ren

the people of Zhongguo; also "Huaren" in a more literary form [Roger Wise, a student of Zhongwen and my nephew-in-law]

 

Zhongwen

the language of Zhongguo that we call "Mandarin" (zhong=middle; wen=language or literature); also "Zhongguo hua" (Hua=another way of saying "language"); also "Hanyu" ("Han" refers to the Chinese people, from the Han dynasty, the first dynasty to unify China; yu=another way of saying language); also "putong hua" ("common language") used in Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo; also "guoyu" ("national language") used in Taiwan; by the way, in Zhongwen, the word for Cantonese, the other spoken language of Zhongguo, is "Guangdong hua" (Guangdong=Canton) [Roger Wise, a student of Zhongwen and my nephew-in-law]

 

zhuhndí

true essence, true meaning (language=Zhongwen), with a robustness of meaning that includes principles and values about what is true; on Yeibichai, physically real, not virtual or imaginary; derived from "zhuhn," which means (1) true, real, genuine, (2) really, truly, indeed, or (3) clearly, unmistakably, and which forms the basis for a multitude of words revolving around the concept of reality.

Pronounced somewhat like "jzun-duh," where the "j" and "z" are pronounced simultaneously, the "un" sounds like it does in "undo," and "duh" is not the English dunce "duh," but short and more in the back-of-the-throat like the Français "de"; I used an í to remind you of this very different pronunciation (more precise notation is beyond even 8-bit ASCII[Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary; see cue/www=Merriam-Webster OnLine]. ).

Thanks to Peter Liu of Palo Alto, California, for his help with this word/concept, though he would prefer I use the whole phrase "zhuhndí zhe she jai," meaning "real world".