It turns out that in Chinese, "niang" literally means "young woman", and in
coloquial American diologue (not sure about Aussie dialogue), females under
age twenty (or more) are sometimes called "girls."

Well, that's what I was told by someone on one of the MLs a little while
back ... or was it on raa*? But I looked up the meaning in Japanese, and
it says "daughter".

The meaning of a zimu (Chinese character) does not necessarily correspond
exactly with that of its kanji counterpart. This is due to the fact that
Japanese and Chinese are as unrelated to each other as English and Navaho.
They're unlikely to have any concepts that exactly match in common.

ie, go to the source.

Maybe it depends on how you read the Chinese? Did you look up the Mandarin
or Cantonese? (And, well, 'niang' doesn't look much like 'nyan' to me,
but then, I can't read Chinese to save my life. :p )

It's Mandarin, which happens to be what the Guide is speaking. The
nyanniichuan is rendered "niangniquan," pronounced
[nee-yahn'-nee-chyoo-ahn] and means "young woman-drown-spring," the Spring
of Drowned Young Woman (read: Drowned Girl).

Note: [n'] = a [n] that has been uvularized (tounge touches the uvula).

In Chinese, the word for piglet literally means "little pig" [xiaozhu].

Well, P-chan is a little pig. But not a piglet. :p

I'm not arguing that. It's just when the Guide says "Heixiaozhuniquan", he
litterally means "black-piglet-drown-spring," it _might_ be interpreted
either as the Spring of Drowned Black Small Pig or Spring of Drowned Black
Piglet. Except the Guide doesn't say that; he says "Hei*TUN*niquan." "Tun"
means "Suckling pig," and the only kind of pig I know of that suckles is
the piglet. Ergo, the Guide did indeed say, and mean, "Spring of Drowned
Black Piglet."

Whether he _is_ a black piglet or not is a matter of interpretation, but I
do think that Takahashi-sensei did mean a piglet and not a small pig if she
chose "tun" rather than "xiaozhu," considering that she can construct
rather clever puns in Chinese (re: Shampoo = "Mountain Chest" :)~ and
Mousse = "Eye Obstruct" 8) ), it's obvious to me that she knows _exactly_
what she's doing. QED.

That's all I have to say.



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