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Maybe when I'm 60 I'll kick his butt again! Hey I'm serious. Give me a few more years to get it back together. But then again, I dropped out for about 16 years.and he is bigger, stronger and 20 years younger than I am. But strictly in terms of fighting skill, he has already passed me! I'm currently teaching again as a sifu, primarily to help my si-Juk, or kung fu nephew, gain this teaching experience so he may become a sifu. At least this method does help insure that those with the title of sifu have proven themselves as teachers as well as fighters. But you can keep advancing in skill without choosing to become a sifu on your own. Then he/she may be fully authorized to open their own school as a Sifu. In our NVTO organization, a Sifu is a fully qualified instructor (tested to at least 2nd degree technically) who must also have experience teaching under the tutelage of his own sifu until he has overseen the advancement of at least two students all the way up to first degree level. If that's not sufficiently impressive, you can always spar with him. The headman of the whole system is simply a "maestro" or "instructor", and he goes by his first name in class. He has been doing FMA his whole life and has been in this system like 8-10 years now. After student, comes the rank of "assistant instructor". By contrast, I had to work with the Eskrima group I train with now for two years just to earn the rank of "student"-and informally given at that!. "master", a real master has to use an inflated title just to try to keep pace with the rank inflation. I guess it's just that when every Tom, Dick and Harry call themselves. Why not? Just don't do it in front of the others in the group seminars." During a private lesson, I asked him if he minded whether I continued to address him by his first name like I had many years before when I trained with him. I know one master of a Filipino martial art who has adopted the title "Grandmaster" at the urging of other members of an organization that he associates with.
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although in some cases I accept it as a concession to Western commercial expectations. I also bristle at people calling themselves "Dai-Sifu" or "Grandmaster", like being a "master" isn't honor enough. Check out my thread titled, "You too can be a WC Master".Īnnoy? Yeah, me too. Well he does resemble Santa Claus a bit, but other than that, I don't get it. Interestingly, one of my former "kung fu nephews", a student of one of my "si-dais", or younger kung-fu brothers, broke away from our family, declared himself a "Master" (I've even heard one of his associates call him Dai-Sifu or "grandmaster"), and has publicly taken on the title of "Si-Jo" or "kung fu great-grandfather".
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In this sense any instuctor can be referred to respectfully as "sifu", even though they are not your personal sifu (teacher-father). There is another word pronounced "si-fu", but written differently in Chinese, that simply indicates that one has mastery or accomplishment in a skill. Sifu means your "teacher-father" (your personal instructor), Si-Gung is your "teacher-grandfather" (your teacher's personal instructor or sifu's sifu), Si-jo would be your si-gung's teacher, or your ancestor, forebearer, etc.
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On the other hand, a religious personality, and by extension, experts of Chinese martial arts, can be addressed as "master-father" in all contexts.My Chinese sifu explained it like this: When you dedicate yourself to a Chinese system and to a particular instructor, you become part of a "kung-fu family". In the preceding example, the motor mechanic's apprentice would address his or her master as such, but the customer would not. As such, when addressing a tradesperson, it would only be used to address the speaker's own teacher or master. The latter term bears the dual meaning of "master" and "father", and thus connotes a linearity in a teacher-student relationship. Thus, for example, a customer may address a motor mechanic as such. The former term bears only the meaning of "master", and is used to express the speaker's general respect for the addressee's skills and experience. Though pronounced identically and bearing similar meanings, the two terms are distinct and usage is different. A similar term often used in Chinese is 老師, meaning "teacher". Both characters are read fu with the same tones in Cantonese and Mandarin, creating some ambiguity. The character 師 means "teacher", while the meaning of 傅 is "tutor" and the meaning of 父 is "father". Sifu or shīfu is the identical pronunciation of two Chinese terms for a master: 師傅 and 師父. Freebase (3.00 / 1 vote) Rate this definition: