Re: Notes on Tam Wing Kwong, "The Game of Sparrow as played in

thierry.depaulis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Thierry Depaulis) writes:

> We have met these 'mo he (hu) pai' already many times. Thanks to Cofa
> and to further research we know a card game called "Mo Hu" ('he',
> actually pronounced 'hu') using 60 cards with combinations was played

I meant to ask before, could you explain this "he pronounced hu"
thing? Are you saying that the character whose pinyin representation
is "he" is actually pronounced as if its pinyin representation were
"hu"? This seems rather unlikely, since pinyin is explicitly a
representation of speech!

>>Players later added to the set 3 kinds of Aces on which
>>were printed flowers called Hwas ([hua1pai2], Flower cards), 
>
> This is absolutely new to me! It is the most intriguing part of this
> historical account.
> Julian, are the sinograms hua1pai2 printed in the text? 

Of course. As I said, I was quoting.

>>and others added four more kinds "Teens, Deis, Yuns
>>and Hwos" called Jongs ([jiang4] Generals). 
>
> I am trying to work out what these names mean. "Hwo" apparently is for
> Mandarin he2/hu. But what can be "Teens, Deis, Yuns"??

Yes, it's very irritating that just for once he doesn't write the
Chinese there. However, Teen and Dei are Heaven and Earth; one would
expect Man and Woman, perhaps. He calls the four types of scoring
counter Teen, Dei, Yun, Ngo, so that's consistent with Yun being Man.
But Hwo?