“sazen” sounds a lot like “zazen”, which just means “sitting meditation” from “za” sitting + “zen” meditation.
“sa” on its own could be many different words in Japanese, but the first one Google Translate gives me is “差” or “difference”. So we could say you accidentally constructed a word meaning “difference meditation”.
Not as tight a fit as I might like, but maybe that’s because I haven’t meditated enough on the difference between what the word “sazen” literally means and what it means after you understand it. :-)
New words probably shouldn’t use completely made up sounds. It can only add confusion. There may be existing similar words with completely different meaning; or worse, with distantly overlapping semantic fields.
Good existing English words were mentioned: handle, pointer. Both naturally evoke an idea to the correct direction: they point to the idea of a pointer, they provide a handle to grasp the idea of a handle.
“I didn’t intend to force my made-up words on people outside of that context, but alas, here we are” reads to me like an apology, which is proper; but wouldn’t it still be better to just not do it at all instead of apologizing afterwards? Views on this differ for sure. This type of behaviour points to a serious lack of humility.
I have found in my note-keeping for my own use, that attaching made-up sounds to specific ideas that don’t have words yet is actually very useful; whereas overloading words that already have other meanings is something that actively harms clarity.
So, this is just a silly comment, but...
“sazen” sounds a lot like “zazen”, which just means “sitting meditation” from “za” sitting + “zen” meditation.
“sa” on its own could be many different words in Japanese, but the first one Google Translate gives me is “差” or “difference”. So we could say you accidentally constructed a word meaning “difference meditation”.
Not as tight a fit as I might like, but maybe that’s because I haven’t meditated enough on the difference between what the word “sazen” literally means and what it means after you understand it. :-)
I got also confused by the similarity.
No, this is a very good comment.
New words probably shouldn’t use completely made up sounds. It can only add confusion. There may be existing similar words with completely different meaning; or worse, with distantly overlapping semantic fields.
Good existing English words were mentioned: handle, pointer. Both naturally evoke an idea to the correct direction: they point to the idea of a pointer, they provide a handle to grasp the idea of a handle.
“I didn’t intend to force my made-up words on people outside of that context, but alas, here we are” reads to me like an apology, which is proper; but wouldn’t it still be better to just not do it at all instead of apologizing afterwards? Views on this differ for sure. This type of behaviour points to a serious lack of humility.
I have found in my note-keeping for my own use, that attaching made-up sounds to specific ideas that don’t have words yet is actually very useful; whereas overloading words that already have other meanings is something that actively harms clarity.
I’d just sort of assumed the similar sound to zazen was intentional and that if I’d known Japanese it might make more sense.