Chinese Etymology Short 千 "thousand"

We recently hit 1k subscribers, so here's my (hastily made) thematically appropriat commemorative video!
Thank you all so much for your support! m(_ _)m

[@justaregularslitherwing]

I feel like 千 it's just one of those characters where if writers have a meaning they want to express but are too lazy to make another character for it, they be like "Ehhhhh I'm too lazy to come up with an original character so let's take a pre-existing one, borrow it and slap a 一 on it to express this meaning" hehe Original character do not steal!!!!!

[@SwedishSinologyNerd]

Lol, Cangjie at the end of the day with like half a dozen characters left to invent be like “Fuck it: 本末未百千元 DONE!” xD

[@littlefishbigmountain]

I wonder if this “coincidence” might have worked the other way around. For example, Laozi might have been studying the Oracle Bone Script and made a proverb out of it (or retelling an older proverb of unknown source that did so), although I did find an old legend that the Oracle Bone Script form is supposed to be a man picking thousands of rice in a paddy but a different origin still doesn’t mean a proverb can’t also be born out of it. This is all just speculation at this point, but it is interesting to wonder about.

[@lyuktentiok]

千

[@SwedishSinologyNerd]

I’ll do 萬 when we reach 10k! XD

[@sallylauper8222]

千里 之行始于足下。I didn't know that was from 道德經. I just know 道可道非常道. Congratulations!

[@SwedishSinologyNerd]

Hahah, well it IS one of my most loved books of all time so I've read it a couple of times. Another good quote you can use is 玄之又玄 "mystery among mysteries" or "extremely profound", which you can use about anything deep and somewhat hard to understand, not just the Tao ^^

[@sallylauper8222]

@@SwedishSinologyNerd When I see the word "玄之又玄" I'm always reminded of the first occerence of that word 玄 in the 千字文: "天地玄黃"

[@SwedishSinologyNerd]

Semi-related (may do a poll on that later but since you mentioned it), think anyone would watch a long-form vid/video series on 千字文? It'd be fairly heavy on the classical Chinese but it's a brilliant piece of literature (and poetry) with a lot of snappy phrases one can use to elevate one's Chinese level...