I'm all over the place on this one

[Glenn]

I saw 禪 used in a sentence by a Taiwanese person, and at first I thought it had something to do with Zen, but that didn't seem to fit the context. I still don't know what it was supposed to mean. Here it is:

口頭禪是會被影響的，像我有時就會動不動說：「帥！」，只是用於工作順利完成的情況下！

I thought it fit in chrix's false friends thread, but it appears, according to my dictionary, that it does mean "Zen" when read chán. When read shàn it apparently means to abdicate a throne, neither of which make sense to me here. Of course, I still don't quite understand the whole of what's being said in the first place. Something about speech and being influenced seeming to make "me" unable to move for a time and could only say "cool!" and then something about using the conditions of work being completed well???

[gato]

口頭禪 might be translated as a catchphrase.

[anonymoose]

口頭禪 means "mantra".

[in_lab]

Or "pet phrase".

[Lu]

'Stopwoordje'.

動不動 means 'at the drop of a hat', 'without thinking about it', 'all the time', it doesn't really have anything to do with moving.

[zhxlier]

The phrase is related to zen in origin. From Wikipedia:

口頭禪一词来源于佛教的禅宗，本意指不去用心领悟，而把一些现成的经验挂在口头，装作有思想，被列在禅之歧途中的一种。这个词演变至今，则意指一個人習慣在有意或無意間時常講的說話語句。

[chrix]

I thought it fit in chrix's false friends thread, but it appears, according to my dictionary, that it does mean "Zen" when read chán.

Even though in the West, Zen is chiefly associated with Japan, it did originate in China (though of course most Zen schools in the West do trace back their lineage to Japanese forms of Zen)

[Glenn]

謝謝大家的幫助！ (Somebody please let me know if I screwed that up)

It helps to know that 口頭禪 (kǒutóuchán, I assume) is a set phrase (or word, even, if we could agree on a definition ) And thanks to Lu for the tip on 動不動. It's looking like (as I felt shortly after posting this) this sentence is just a bit too far out of reach for me right now.

Even though in the West, Zen is chiefly associated with Japan, it did originate in China...

I did not know that! I suppose it shouldn't surprise me too much, but I did think that Japan had developed Zen Buddhism on their own around the beginning of the last millennium.

[trien27]

Even though in the West, Zen is chiefly associated with Japan, it did originate in China (though of course most Zen schools in the West do trace back their lineage to Japanese forms of Zen)

Zen is Japanese, from "Chan" in Chinese via jhāna in Pali via "dhyāna" from Sanskrit. So, evidently, it's not from Japan or China, but rather originally from 天竺國 [name for India used since Tang times], before 印度, is adapted, which originates from the Hindu religion of Hinduism or India as it's usually translated in Modern Chinese.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhy%C4%81na

口頭禪 means "mantra".

"mantra" is actually translated as "咒語" not "口頭禪".

口頭禪 = "an empty slogan", something that seem to always be said in a phrase or saying which is always on your mind.

Edited February 26, 2010 at 03:35 AM by trien27

[chrix]

The word might come from Sanskrit, but Zen Buddhism itself did start in China, under the influence of Daoism.

[anonymoose]

"mantra" is actually translated as "咒語" not "口頭禪".

Not exclusively. Check the first two examples on this page.