seal script

[Jake Perry]

can anybody tell me what this

character is in modern chinese?

[skylee]

It looks like a seal of two parts with the surname 李 (Lee/Li) on the left and the letters "SUSUR" on the right.

[Fun123]

Yes, that's the Zhuangti （篆体）character of "李"

[Jake Perry]

thanks guys! super fast replies!

what accent are Li and Zhuang and Ti?

how would i find out all the ways

to write it in different seal scripts?

is susur a common chinese name?

i think it might be from hong kong,

but to my ear it sounds malay

or something else indonesian...

[Fun123]

Accent？Sorry, I don't get you well. If you meant the tones, 李(Li3), 篆体(zhuan4 ti3). If you want to know how a specific simplified Chinese character is written in Zhuanti, you can check out this converter http://www.youmade.com/shufa/

I haven't seen susur as a name in mainland China. (or maybe a nickname? 苏苏儿)

For the situation in Hongkong, you can ask skylee. If I didn't take her wrong, I remember she said she was from Hongkong somewhere else.

[Jake Perry]

i was looking for Lǐ Zhuàn and Tǐ, thank you!

i call them accents because they look like it

a tone is one pitch so only accent one counts

what does 苏苏儿 mean, and how do i say it?

[skylee]

Information on the internet says that there is a famous chef in Canada called Susur Lee who is originally from Hong Kong. And you can find the seal on his website.

Personally I don't know anyone called Susur.

[Fun123]

Information on the internet says that there is a famous chef in Canada called Susur Lee

I guess everything is clear now -- that's the seal of the person, though I'm still not sure how to pronounce that even if I understand Cantonese.

[Jake Perry]

what does 苏苏儿 mean, and how do i say it?

how would i find out all the ways

to write it in different seal scripts?

susur means something in bahasi malayu.

in case the links are blocked:

SUSUR KELUAR KE = Exit to

SUSUR MASUK KE = Enter to (usually at weighing bridge)

Juruselamat dari susur galur Daud (David)

[kudra]

i call them accents because they look like it

a tone is one pitch so only accent one counts

They do look like accents when notated above the vowels, but unless you want to go through this every time( of course no one is stopping you), you should know that the standard terminology in English is "tones".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putonghua_language#Tones

[skylee]

Jake Perry, I would think that Susur does not mean anything much besides that it is a name adopted by the chef. "苏苏儿" is just Fun123's version of transliteration of the name. If you search on the internet, you would find that the name is also translated to 蘇瑟 and 斯斯爾. And the chef is also called by his real Chinese name 李國緯.

And I don't think the "SUSUR" in the seal is in seal script. It is just plain roman alphabet. I have no idea how roman alphabet can be written in seal script.

I am glad that you find indonesian meanings in the name.

[Jake Perry]

They do look like accents when notated above the vowels, but unless you want to go through this every time (of course no one is stopping you), you should know that the standard terminology in English is "tones".

i'm showing my musical upbringing here,

tone means "a sound of definite pitch and vibration"

of all branches of knowledge, linguistics

should demand the proper use of english.

that having been said, i can just hope

to graduate to not needing pinyin soon

to appease musician and linguist in me.

until then i'll call them tones...

[kudra]

tone means "a sound of definite pitch and vibration"

Thanks for the link above to Mirriam-Webster. Of the 19 entries found for "tone" strangely enough definition 5 says

2 a : a sound of definite pitch and vibration b : WHOLE STEP

3 : accent or inflection expressive of a mood or emotion

4 : the pitch of a word often used to express differences of meaning

5 : a particular pitch or change of pitch constituting an element in the intonation of a phrase or sentence

...

It's definitely a problem when the linguists at Mirriam-Webster can't agree on a meaning.

Luckily，when you

graduate to not needing pinyin

Mandarin has a word for the pitch vs. time countour characteristic of syllables in spoken Mandarin. Here is an example from the text David and Helen, chap 5. David recounting Jacques correcting David's bad oral control of pitch vs. time

这时候，他就会停下来听我念， 然后说， "不对不对， 你的四声老错。。。"

Unfortunately when you look up "声" in a Chinese dictionary like

http://www.zhongwen.com/d/193/x110.htm

it turns out the Chinese linguists can't agree on a meaning either. Even worse, possibly, is it a word in it's own right, or a morpheme appearing in other words? As 李大为，the aspiring Chinese linguitst from the text might say, "真要命！"