Are you forced to learn all the weapons if you don't to?

On a complete side note, this is Philip Ng's school! The same Philip Ng who plays Bruce Lee in that recent film, and appeared in multiple episodes of Kung Fu Quest!

 

Yes he is famous

 

My instructor always encouraged me to ask questions. Every session I teach I ask each individual student if they have any martial arts related questions.

I have never met a good instructor who does not like questions. So long as they dont start with the words "Bruce lee ...."

 

Re learning weapons

My grandfather teacher felt that most weapons hand lost their relevance in the modern world and opportunities to spar in weapons competitions were a thing of the past. My teacher had to beg my grandfather teacher to show him the weapons. In practice I find that learning the staff has taught me as much about how to generate power as all the pad and bag work I have done.

 

And I thought only I need a "sarcasm-sign"

 

The instructor didnt start with Bruce Lee and you could ask them questions

 

Then why didn't you do it?

 

Because I got too busy asking the wc instructor things. I am thinking I should go again and check out the clf program

 

Oh, I agree.Someone using terminology which doesn't fit their field would make for greater scrutiny by myself.

But I find w/weaponry that oftimes the more common heard name is the one used. While there are various names for them,all the FMA folks I know personally commonly use the word "nunchaku" for that weapon,a word which is neither Spanish nor any Philippine dialect.

"Naginata" doth seem very odd,howe'er.

 

One thing that I have always had difficulty with is the complexity of the chinese naming systems. Some name intricately describing the position of the hand, arm, body or whatever and other don't bother with this at all.

Then you throw into the mix which dialect , even if mandarin, the lineage speaks as that changes things. Furthermore, if your lineage speaks a different language/patois then things get named again differently. Some would consider all of this important. Others would be more worried about whether the students could fight.

I am not too bothered but yes, I would prefer that the Chinese name. or the English quivalent be used (eg Pu Dao = Horse cutter). Oddly enough I have seen the Pu Dao called a Chinese naginata although physically it bears little resemblance to the Japanese weapon (other than both are types of blades at the end of a pole).

LFD

 

Pu Dao

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WN6qIAXgns

Naginata

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmJ99IJSglw

LFD

 

But wait, there's more!

Then you get into distinctions like concept vs movement and things get even more hairy. For instance bong sao is bong sao and is done the three ways it is seen in the forms, but mun sao is not a specific hand form and can be expressed in a multitude of different ways which look nothing like what is seen in the form because it's a concept label, just like gum sao which requires you to pin using the palm but doesn't care at all about the orientation, nor the movement required to get there.

Trying to name too many things in too many different ways ends up in even instructors missing how to interpret the labels. It's not a great way of organizing things.

 

Yang,Cheng-fu's last disciple,T'seng,Chu-p'ai, wrote in one of his books of the dialect shortcomings in the translation of names of things in T'ai Chi,such as "Grasp Bird's Tail",which was due to technical names for the sequence in one dialect sounding like that term in another dialect.Losing technical meanings can undermine one's understanding and hence pugilistic prowess.

One of my teachers (from Beijing) kept saying I really should learn Chinese- meaning Mandarin.I kept telling her almost all my other Chinese friends and teachers spoke Cantonese. Not counting their own dialects,of course.

 

I find the language of martial arts to be a fascinating topic. The use of jargon and terminology and how closely that is tied to the "identity" of an art or school is one aspect. I've found the Chinese martial arts to be particularly interesting in that respect.

In my experience Japanese and Korean martial arts schools I have been involved with have placed much emphasis on teaching jargon to the students; in some cases gradings have even contained mini language tests of sorts.

That said, certain terms were usually translated (allegedly for the benefit of beginners) and certain translations have become commonplace.

However, wherever I have practiced Chinese martial arts, there has tended to be much less emphasis on Chinese language jargon, though simultaneously I have always encountered "senior" practitioners who pride themselves on knowledge of "traditional" terminology. In place of Chinese language jargon English translations typically get used with little trouble, and often these include terms which have been picked up from the Karate/TKD worlds. So when I hear a terms like "cat stance" or "reverse punch" used in a kung fu class, I am really not bothered. By contrast, when I used to study Karate I used to find it funny how often the instructor would make a point of translating terms like "cat stance" when used into the usual badly-pronounced Japanese jargon.

 

Pudao/shuangshoudao/dadao are such non specific terms that it's difficult to say anything meaningful. As we discussed in the butterfly knives thread there is some tendency with modern training weapons to have very broad blades yet historical weapons display a range of blades which were on average narrower than modern training weapons and often simply like sabre blades.
This pudao for example could quite comfortably be described as a Chinese naginata

 

I thought the Pu Dao is not at all like the naginata, but more like the bisentoh.

Though I remember it being said the bisentoh came from the kwan dao, but maybe these are similar?

Edit: Looking at a few examples on the web some look like nagamaki.

 

Ah, so the terminology is very flexible?

 

This is also quite off topic, but I met a group of kung-fu guys, their style being a type of shaolin kung fu. I liked the dragon tatoo their instructor had and I wanted to see it, so I striked a conversation
I learned their style originated from kung-fu, but was generally a mix of more styles. I was very surprised they used japanese terminology (like zenkutsu dachi, shiko dachi, tsuki,....). I was told the reason being that the japanese names are more convenient as many people are more familiar with those and they also are clearer...

 

Or they were really teaching a Japanese art and calling it Chinese for some reason?