oh, i thought you were suggesting that (/tet/) [was] offensive, that he forgot the Tet Offensive
Iām just going to start calling it āXin Nianā and people I talk to that donāt live here can get over it.
My Jewish friends celebrate Rosh HaShanah, not āJewish New Yearā. If theyāre using the Hebrew name for the holiday, why arenāt we using the Chinese name for the Chinese holiday? (Especially since Vietnam isnāt using English either) Lots of people get up in arms about how āDragon Boat Festivalā is and should only be called āDuanwu Festivalā because it āshouldnāt be translated. Itās the festivalās name you moronsā. Is anyone else thinking itās time we call āNongli Xin Nianā by its name?
They still had the Moon though.
Iād wager the āTheā preceding Lunar New Year came from the west differentiating the two calendars.
But ā¦ we donāt call the Vietnamese one Chinese New Year. We call it Tet.
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And Jews call it Rosh Hashanah. Down with Anglicizing Chinese holiday names!
Or maybe Israeli New Year?
Really the problem is how āChineseā, depending on context, can be doing similar work to āIām Canadianā, āIām from the western cultural heritageā, āI speak Englishā, āIām whiteā, āMy ancestors are Europeanā, āI majored in Canadian literatureā, āWe used to be part of the British Empireā, and so on.
Iāve been saying Lunar New year more to disassociate with modern day China. Itās amazing a country that sought to destroy their entire culture now wants to claim anything as theirs to own.
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How can you say that? The Chinese invented the Earth, the sun, the moon and Einstein. They even invented the Big Bang! You disrespect millions of years of culture? This hurts the feelings of the Chinese people.
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I should mention first that I do not mean anyone any disrespect if I mention aspects of their culture that should not be talked of in public. If anyone wishes for this post to be deleted, I apologise in advance and would be willing to continue the conversation in private or cease altogether. I am aware of where our word ātabooā comes from.
The Cook Islands Maori have their own biodynamic lunar calendar called the arapo. I lived there for 6 months and once saw an old man in a neighbouring village planting some cut off maniota stems in the ground outside his house. He confidently stated that the tide was (the high or low one, I canāt remember) at the tiny island harbour at that exact moment, so it was the best time to plant. Something to do with the pull, or gravitational effect, of the moon being strongest at that moment.
More than you knowā¦
Actually, wow. 
In Israel somewhere on a little Kibbutz is a Japanese Born Again Christian group. They take on a lot of the Jewish traditions in their worship including Hebrew.
They also participated in our kibbutz Ulpon. They told us that Hebrew and Japanese have a lot in common.
I have some video to dig up. L
Like Olympic athletes born and raised in the US
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No no no! It was clearly the Russians. Our American elementary school had a set of encyclopedias that shared the Russian contribution. Always remember the name of the set of encyclopedias.
Seriously letās get off our racist high horse. Every culture thinks they invented the sun earth and moon. Just enjoy the differences.
It can go on forever and itās fun to see how wacky the stereotypes get.
If someone presents you with a racial stereotype of your culture, just laugh and then present them racial stereotype from your culture of their culture.
Iāll see your two, Iāll raise you three.
Now, would anybody like to see some World war II era cartoons from Japan depicting stupid evil American soldiers?
Actually, Mickey mouse was appropriated and joined the Japanese side.
We are all just everyday people with both racist and altruistic tendencies. We just have to embrace the good and try to overcome the bad.
England didnāt traditionally invade English-speaking countries. They invaded non English speaking countries and got them to speak English. More jobs for English teachersā¦
But if you threaten to change the language, what other names could you call the English languageā¦ American? How about åčŖ? Or å¤åčŖ
If Iām not mistaken, maniota is just cassava, the main ingredients of tapioca. Itās also a plant native to the Americas and only introduced to Polynesia by Europeans. Maniota is probably a loanword from the French or Spanish mandioca or manioc, which came from the Old Tupi word manioka.
Here in Taiwan, the best time to grow it is from February to March, and it will take almost a full year of growth before harvest.
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Itās actually a luni-solar calendar. I think itās based on the solar and lunar cycles, not just lunar, and a little like the calendar used to define the day that Easter falls on. So yeah it isnāt an entirely lunar calendar and it isnāt the only calendar that incorporates the moonās cycles. Also given that the ānew yearā is defined in terms of the cycle of the earth around the sun it is impossible to have a purely lunar new year. They are just using the moon to arrive at the exact date that the earth has been determined to have completed a solar year.
Also I believe that the term āChinese New Yearā does not have a typical parallel in Chinese? Isnāt it the nongli new year, which means the farming new year or something. In any case Iāve never heard anyone call it Chinese new year in Chinese.
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Since the first of every lunar month has to be the new moon, with the 15th being the full moon, it actually impossible to define the East Asian lunar new year in terms of the Earthās position in its orbit around the sun, since the moonās phases rarely align perfectly with the Earthās orbit around the sun. That is why leap months are needed to correct the discrepancy. If it is so perfectly solar, every lunar new year would fall on the same Gregorian date each year, and it obviously doesnāt.
Just for reference, a normal lunar year without leap month has between 353 to 355 days. A lunar year with leap month is around 383 to 385 days. Not at all close to the 365.25 days of a solar year.
The new year itself is completely lunar. The only thing keeping it solar is leap month to ensure the new year doesnāt come before the winter solstice.
There are a whole bunch of calendars based on the lunar cycle, and a whole bunch of calendars based on the solar cycle. If you have issue with calling the East Asian lunar new year as just lunar new year, you could also call it by the the name of its designer, kind of like how we refer to the Western calendar as Gregorian.
In that case, you should call it the Schall von Bell calendar and the Schall von Bell new year.
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Anglicizing?
Difficult. I listen to American News and often hear the newscasters going into the native accents when mentioning foreign names.
I can just barely handle my own English and my Chinese let alone imitate other accents.
When I teach my students how to say their names in English be it there adopted English name and family or their full name as romanized, I asked them to just please drop the requirement for the tones.
Have sympathy for the audience you are speaking to.
I feel foreign names and places should be spoken in the neutral accent of the language you are speaking.
But letās not anglicize.
ę°å¹“åæ«ęØļ¼ ęåē¼č²”ļ¼ē“
å
ęæä¾ļ¼
Notice, no mention of Chinese New year. Just New Year.
My students taught me that.
×Ø×ש ××©× ×- ×©× × ××××
Literally, Rosh Hashanah means the beginning of the Year.
Thereās no Jewish or Israeli in it.
Letās just greet each group in their native language welcoming the new year and weāll get the right foods and weāll get the right music and so forth.
My original point was that many cultures use the Moon and when I was celebrating this Chinese New Year in New Jersey and New York and here in Taiwan it was basically with the chinese/taiwanese community. Only because my friends and the area I grew up with were predominantly Chinese and Taiwanese.
I was really very ignorant about other types of Asian Lunar New years and now Iām looking forward to trying out their culture. If anybody wants to be my guide and to guarantee my safety at the different restaurants private message me if youāre in southern Taiwan.
I think our ancestors were avid star watchers, not a lot else to do at night I guess. The precession of the equinoxes is curious one to me, when did we actually figure that out. The cycle lasts 25,772 years and first recorded instance is the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 129 BC although I suspect the Egyptians had figured it out long before that.
Basically itās a wobbling of the earth and the zodiac formations shift in orientation roughly once every 2000+ years.
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It requires a very stable political climate, one that probably relies on being able to precisely predict heavenly events to gain political legitimacy, and thus continuously devotes resources to improve our understandings of the heavenly bodies, as well as record keeping.
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Nice one 
Iām guessing in any case the essence of the festival greatly predates the calendar. Much as Christmas predates Christianity.
Apparently the moon was formed due to a collision of a planetoid with the earth billions of years ago. 
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