"Danh lam thắng cảnh"

Translation: Landmark

[Khanh.Chi]

''attraction'' Wrong?

[smirki1]

Can I say "sights"? It's not accepted, but why isn't it? When I google "Danh lam thắng cảnh", it's exactly that: sights or tourist attractions...

[hotuandat]

how about landscape?

[qm1224]

?覽勝景, 勝 thắng (to win) appears in this word again

[TehVanarch]

名覽勝景. A number of SIno-Vietnamese words have had their initials change from /m/ to /j/ like 名 and 民 because the Middle Chinese /mj/ initial lost the /m/ leaving behind just the /j/ (y sound) in Middle Vietnamese. So mdanh > danh and mdân > dân.

[winterweaver]

It's actually 名藍勝景.
覽 => lãm, which is an understandable guess.
As glossed in Duolingo, danh lam carries a meaning of famous pagoda.

[TehVanarch]

Thanks for the correction. As an added note: it appears that 藍 shares a common etymology with the Vietnamese chàm (indigo). 藍 (Old Chinese: ɡ·raːm > Middle Chinese: lɑm). Proto-Vietic: ɟaːm > Vietnamese: chàm.

[Khanh.Chi]

cmt

[COTOBVKI]

lam (藍) is an abbreviation of già lam (伽藍), which is borrowed from Sanskrit, means Buddhist temple.

[Raymondo19]

I sometimes see this term used in a more narrow sense of attraction?