I've watched "Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning," and now I need some time to process it. I can say it was a mix of good and godawful, and I can definitely affirm that, if the series truly goes out on this note, this will be a disappointment. But with important members of the original team now gone, it's hard to see how any further adventures might play out. There's a lot more to say, and I'll be saying it soon, so sit tight. And as So Wan Mu* would say: Hold on to your potatoes.
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*In "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," there's a scene where Indy's little sidekick Short Round (a very young Ke Huy Quan, lately making a comeback) says to Indy, "You listen to So Wan Mu!" as he advises Indy to get the hell out of India (this is before the fateful trip to Pankot Palace). All this time, I've assumed that So Wan Mu is either the kid himself or some sort of Chinese divinity or wisdom figure. I've tried to figure out whether So Wan Mu is Short Round's name in Chinese. In Sino-Korean hanja, at least, the characters for short/small and round are 小 and 環 (pronounced "so" and "hwan" in Korean, as in the expression 순환/sunhwan, a circle, loop, or ring, where hwan is visible). I have no idea what the mu might be. But I'm pretty sure that, in Mandarin Chinese, the 小 is actually pronounced "xiao," not "so." Unless so is from a different dialect, I don't think "小環" are the first two characters in Short Round's name. It could be that his nickname and his Chinese name have nothing to do with each other. Some fan sources say Short Round's real Chinese name is Wan Li. That Wan could possibly be the character pronounced as hwan in Korean as shown above (環).
Take everything with a huge grain of salt for it is based on personal observation rather than linguistic theory.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, Korean pronunciation of sino-korean hanja tends to be closer to Cantonese (or perhaps some other southern dialect) than it does to Mandarin.
Secondly, I'm not utterly convinced that the scriptwriters would A) have bothered to consult someone to get a proper name, B) Have got any sort of reasonable romanisation, or C) have it the right way round so that the surname would come first.
Thirdly, even if they did consult someone, chances are that person would have spoken a southern dialect as it seems there were far more immigrants from the South than the North, and therefore you're likely barking up the wrong tree looking at Mandarin.
When I did a cursory google search, several sources suggested the name is would be So Wah Mu rather than wan...
Anyhow, if the name was Wan, I think in Korean it is more likely to be 완, 원 or 만than 환. If it is Wah, then perhaps 화
Yeah, I agree. The more digging I did, the clearer it was that I was, as you say, barking up the wrong tree. (I saw the "So Wah Mu" thing as well in my own research, but apparently, the fan site's source for Wan Li as Short Round's Chinese name comes from the novelization of the movie. When I rewatched the scene a few minutes ago with the Apple TV subtitles on, the subtitles show "Suwamu" as the name, but I swear I'm hearing "So Wan Mu." Of course, the more times you listen to something, the more your mind tricks you until you're no longer sure what you're hearing.
DeleteOne positive from all this was that I did find an interesting site offering pronunciations of Chinese characters based on dialect. And I'd agree that hanja pronunciation skews more Cantonese than Mandarin. If I'm not mistaken, with 小, the Mandarin is more "xiao" while the Cantonese is more "siu." Another case of Hollywood being sloppy with Asian culture.
Mandarin tends towards lisping with lots of additional 'h' sounds, whereas Cantonese is really harsh. A better word for comparison is probably 'student', which is xuesheng (shwayshung) in Mandarin, and hoksaang in Cantonese. Actually, Korean Chinese loanwords have a lot of similarity with Vietnamese Chinese loanwords (student = hoc sinh)
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