Kung fu

:For the television program, see Kung Fu (TV series). For the Nintendo Entertainment System video game, see Kung Fu (video game).

Translation and usage

Nowadays, the most common use of the term kung fu is when referring to Chinese martial arts in general. Thus, when someone says they train kung fu, they likely mean they train in one of the many styles of Chinese martial arts. The original meaning of kung fu is quite different, and is hard to translate as there is no English equivalent. In short, 功夫 (gōngfu) means "achievement through great effort" or simply virtue. It combines 功 (gōng) meaning achievement or merit, and 夫 (fū) which translates into man. In Mandarin, when two "first tone" words such as gōng and fū are combined, the second word often takes a neutral tone, in this case forming gōngfu.

Related Topics:
Mandarin - Tone

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Originally, to practice kung fu did not just mean to practice Chinese martial arts. Instead, it referred to the process of one's training - the strengthening of the body and the mind, the learning and the perfection of one's skills - rather than to what was being trained. It refers to excellence achieved through long practice in any endeavor. You can say that a person's kung fu is good in cooking, or that someone has kung fu in calligraphy; saying that a person possesses kung fu in an area implies skill in that area, which they have worked hard to develop. Someone with "bad kung fu" simply has not put enough time and effort into training, or seems to lack the motivation to do so. Kung fu is also a name used for the elaborate Fujian tea ceremony (Kung-fu cha).

Related Topics:
Cooking - Calligraphy - Fujian tea ceremony

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There is a curious contemporary twist on this meaning in the hacker culture: there the fu has been generalized to a suffix, implying that the thing suffixed involves great skill or effort. For example, one may talk of "script-fu" to refer to complicated scripting. It is unknown whether this was consciously based on the original, broader meaning of the term or whether it was a simple wordplay on the less general Western notion of "kung fu".

Related Topics:
Hacker culture - Fu - Scripting

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In Japanese, the characters 工夫 are read 'kufū' and refer to a resourceful method devised to achieve a particular result. Another meaning is to engage in Buddhist training, especially Zazen. When read 'kōfu', the same characters refer to a building site laborer. The characters for Kung Fu (??) have carried over the Chinese pronunciation and is read as 'kanf?' (????), although Taiji styles are referred to as 'taikyokuken' (???????????). Chinese martial arts can also be referred to as 'Ch?gokuken'(???) or 'Ch?gokukemp?,'(????) which translates as 'Chinese boxing.'

Related Topics:
Japanese - Zazen

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In Korean, the characters are read as 'gongbu' (공부), and simply mean 'study'. The different meanings associated with the same character-based words in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean shows that, contrary to popular belief, just because you can read Chinese characters, it does not mean you can understand all three languages.

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