Wednesday, 5 March 2014

Holy Spirit: How about 精神 (seishin) instead of 精霊 (seirei)?

The word 精霊 (seirei) is used as the translation of "Holy Spirit".  However, this word (seirei) is also "only used in Bible" word.  People usually do not know what it means.  People might say, "seirei? Is that ghost or angel?" guessing from Kanji (Chinese character).

How about using 精神 (seishin) or 魂 (tamashii) instead? Both are commonly used words, and both has the meaning of "Spirit""Soul"

Personally I think the word 精神 (seishin) is more suitable for the translation of the word "Holy Spirit", because "精" (sei) means "spirit" and "神" (shin) means "God".  On the other hand, the word 魂 (tamashii) contains "鬼 (oni)" which means ghost or devil.

Let's check how much the words 精霊 (seirei) and 精神 (seishin) are used on the internet (data from Google).

精霊 (seirei): 4,000,000 results
精神 (seishin) : 254,000,000 results

精神 (seishin) could be used more than 60 times than 精霊 (seirei) on internet!





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