Originally posted by Yiliquan1
The words Yi and Li are romanization of the characters for "one" and "principle." Quan means "fist."
Our teacher inherited his Chinese system of Baixingquan from his Chinese teacher (who spoke Chinese, by the way, and who taught him Xingyiquan, Taijiquan and Baguazhang as well). When he "created" Yili (which was really nothing more than a reorganization of everything he had learned from his teacher, rather than teaching it seperately - not too dissimilar in concept from what you are trying to do), he acknowledged its Chinese roots, heritage and ancestry by keeping the Chinese terms.
We have found some incorrect terms that we had been using, and when we found the actual terms and phrases in correct Chinese, we changed them. For example, our transliteration of the Japanese term kiai was mistransliterated as qiai. We found out it is instead qihu. So we changed it to be correct in grammar and syntax.
Gambarimasu.
:asian:
I respect that. But if he made the changes, he "could have used" English! The system was now his and he is American. It might sound wrong to you, but it fits the same bill of what you are telling me.