[bondarchuk]

That's a really interesting tidbit about Chinese. Can't think of anything similar in any language I know, though. Does remind me of those primitive languages where the word for "forest" is just the word for "tree" repeated two or three times.

[HKH2]

> Does remind me of those primitive languages where the word for "forest" is just the word for "tree" repeated two or three times.

Come to think of it, Chinese does that too: 'forest' is '森林'.

[HKH2]

In English, we have 'oxymoron', and 'chiaroscuro' from Italian, but Chinese has a lot of words with contrasts, the yin and yang etc.