Sharpest Tool in the Box

So maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am, but actually I made a little comparison between Chinese words today, specifically the character 老. The pinyin for this is lǎo. I was curious about this character specifically because as some of you might have noticed, I call Lily my Jie Jie (姐姐) which means older sister. She calls me her Mei Mei (妹妹) which is younger sister. In addition, I call Bobo (her boyfriend) my jiĕfu (姐 夫) which actually means brother in law (and Lily would then call my boyfriend or future husband if it were that serious, 妹 夫 [mèifu]). Recently Lily told me that if I wanted to I could call her Lao Jie (老姐). She explained that this means that we are actual sisters, not just call each other sisters because we are close. I thought before that "sister" was the closest relation you could call someone who actually isn't a part of your blood family, but it turns out if you add "lao" it's more special. So now I call her LaoJie and she calls me LaoMei (the funny thing is when we are chatting online or texting she'll text me in Pinyin which is very UNCOMMON here. She only does it because I cannot read Chinese characters but can somewhat pronounce if something is written in pinyin, especially without the tones). Anyway, my point is that a few days ago I noticed that someone referred to me as LaoShi (老师): teacher. So of course I put two and two together and wanted to see if the two characters were actually the same (the character from teacher AND the character from LaoMei). They are. Basically when it comes to Lǎoshī (teacher) the word Lao means old aged or experienced. When used in front of a a family member's relation or a name it means "a term of affection" (preceding a surname) or "a prefix denoting respect or closeness, used in several fixed terms". Even better is the fact that Shī (师) means "teacher, master, specialist". So when Chinese people say "teacher" they are very respectful, because it's not just regular "teacher" but a close, RESPECTED, teacher. Through just these few words and meanings alone, we can see how much respect Chinese give the elderly because if you call someone Lao it denotes old age and/or experience and ALSO a synonym for endearment, so it's not offensive to be called "old" but actually something that is honored.

Enough of my rant about something cool I figured out all by myself here. Hopefully in the next few months I'll learn much more that I can share on my blog.