To those not exposed to the Chinese script (even with Chinese ancestry), at a first glance, written Chinese seems like a myriad collection of random strokes and squiggles. To the uninitiated, they look formidable. This article demystifies some of the misconceptions that written Chinese is an impenetrable wall. Just as it was believed that the Great Wall Of China is also the same but it had been broken through twice.
An educated person in English still can read and understand English of 200 years ago, such as the US Constitution or the Gettysburg Address. The difficulty starts when encountering works of Shakespeare, some 500 years ago. Still, it is not indecipherable. Going back further, we would be unable to read - let alone understand - such literary pieces as Beowulf or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales without special training.
Chinese people, on the other hand, have no difficulty reading and understanding works written 2000 years ago. Only when seal characters or variants of the writing were used before the Unification of the Empire special training is required. We are able to do so in part because the semantics and concepts are encoded in the character itself.
Alphabetic languages use sound to define semantics. One can pronounce words in Latin-based western languages quite easily, but understanding them is another story. On the other hand, to one who knows knows these Chinese characters, languages such as Japanese or Korean can be easily understood even if one cannot pronounce the Kanji or Hanja. Think of Chinese characters as icons on the computer screen or the universal signs found on restroom doors.
There are three main groups in which Chinese characters are formed.
1. Direct from the pictogram.
2. Combining pictograms to form abstract concepts.
3. Using a character for its sound but combining with a radical to differentiate its semantics.
From each group, I shall give a few examples. The other well known pictogram-based language (though dead) is the hieroglyphic system of ancient Egypt. Just as English has root words, so does Chinese. Linguists call such root characters as radicals.
Characters in group 1 are the easiest to understand. For example, the character for the sun is written as 日. Originally it was written as a circle with a dot in the middle with seven radiating strokes to represent the rays. This is how ancient Chinese saw the sun with its sunspots. Even to this day, this is how the sun is drawn in children’s art. Chinese love to square things because it is easier than to draw a perfect circle. Connecting the seven lines of rays and squaring, it becomes 光. Yes, it means rays and by extension, light and even empty. Remember lines drawn in cartoons to denote emptiness?
To differentiate the moon from the sun, the crescent moon is used instead. After squaring it, the pictograph became 月. The two horizontal lines represent the clouds floating across it in the original pictogram. So is the horse – after squaring and abstracting - 馬. Those three horizontal strokes represent the mane and the hooves are transformed into those 4 dots below. The character for man is nothing more than a figure stick with his head and arms cut off for simplification to become 人. Because of its fundamental meaning, most became radicals on which more complex characters are built upon. For example, the word “big” 大 is a man with outstretched arms represented by the horizontal stroke. As you can now infer, the character for “small” is a man with its arms and legs squeezed closely to the body: 小. The legs are coalesced into one stroke. For the radical for female, a rounder figure is rendered with outstretched hands to give it a flair for elegance - 女. It is not difficult to imagine an image of woman by adding a circle to represent her head.
The most interesting group in forming Chinese characters is the second form. For example, the character for river is 川 which has been straightened and stylized to give it some aesthetic form. It is actually the picture of two banks with the middle stroke representing the flow of water. Picture in your mind three elongated “s” at an angle of 45 degrees from the north. If you can squeeze the river, what you get is water. Hence the character for water looks something like >|< which is then styled into 水. This root radical when combined with other characters means that things are related to water or liquids. Hence words such as “float”, “sink”, “deep”, “shallow”, “oil”, “wet” etc have the liquid attribute. However when combining with other characters, 水 is too cumbersome and not as aesthetic looking. So it was abbreviated to just three drops of water. Therefore the previous examples in their Chinese equivalents are 浮, 沉, 深, 淺, 油 and 濕. Note the common left hand radical of the shorterned form for three drops of water.
木 is originally a picture of a tree, with its roots and abstract drawing of its leaves removed. Since only wood comes only from tree, the meaning is extended to mean wood. Therefore when you see this radical combined with some other character, it usually means that it is some kind of a tree or things made from wood. Similarly for the fire and other radicals.
One must bear in mind that the way a character formed is due to the times in which ancient Chinese lived and that China was an agricultural society. Since semantics are encoded in the character, one can learn its culture through its writing. For example, in those times, what the ancient Chinese feared the most were fire and floods. Therefore the word “catastrophe” is composed of two characters, an overflowing river on the top with the fire radical in the bottom - 災. Notice how the character of the river, 川 is changed into 3 '<' signs. This is because of the aesthetic factor.
In ancient times, the two most reliable sources of light were the sun and moon. Hence “bright” is the combination of the two characters: 明. Like with other languages, the meaning is extended to mean “understand”, “intelligent”.
There are some universal truths which cannot be viewed differently even by other cultures. It is like 1 + 1 = 2 (at least in base 10!). Every sharp object has a point. How does one represent it? Very simple – just combine the "small" character on top of the "big" character - 尖. Every sharp object has this shape. What does a man do under the shade of the tree. He rests! Therefore the character to rest is 休. Notice how the人 is now up righted to make the combined form look better and to conserve space. The character for mother is derived from the character female, 女 with a bigger and rounded torso to represent pregnancy with swelling breasts. This is a universal fact - 母. Add a man to the top for the universal fact that in order for man to exist, a mother must be present first. Hence the word for every is 每! Notice how the character for man is changed slightly to conform to aesthetic reasons. Same in other languages, i.e., changing the shape of the letter in certain combinations for stylistic reasons. For example the Greek lower case letter, sigma. It can be written either as σ or ς depending where it appears.
Add 3 drops of water to "every"; another universal fact; that every ocean must have water in it - 海. Some may argue what about lakes, ponds and rivers. Well, this is Chinese thought and rules, just as why we must use “an” in front of words beginning with a vowel or a silent “h” whose second letter is a vowel. In any case, the characters are 湖, 池 and 河. Notice the water radical on the left. These words are borrowed sounds from the characters on the right. The radical is used to differentiate the homonyms. This what we see in Group 3.
In English we have the words for bark, neigh, meow, bleat, chirp etc. What more logical that in Chinese, the creature is appended to the mouth radical? Thus we have 吠, 嗎, 喵, 咩 and 鳴 respectively. Using the same logic, all characters combined with the hand denotes some kind of hand action while those with the foot is associate with movement; with the fish radical the character denotes some kind of sea creature not necessary to mean some kind of fish. For example a whale, 鯨 is not a fish but in Chinese, it has a fish radical. By know the meaning of the radicals, half of the complexity of Chinese ideograms is solved.
Not everyone knows that Chinese culture is extremely sexist. Even Chinese natives may not be aware of this fact hidden in their written language. They know that males are more important than females; that baby girls are drowned in recent times when China instituted the one child per family policy! Ancient China was an agricultural based society. Therefore to cultivate the fields, manpower was needed. Hence a woman producing sons is good and so the character for good is a woman and her son - 好! A woman’s mouth on the other hands bears no weight or importance and therefore it means "iffy" - 如. A woman under a roof means peace to the man since she does all the work for him! Why should not the man be at peace? Thus this character is written as 安 where the top part is the roof radical. She is not even important enough to be part of the family. The pig has more important status than her. A pig is a commodity since pork is the preferred meat of the Chinese. Without a pig, a family cannot exist! Thus 家 is family - a pig under the roof. The word for “sexy” is 媚. Ancient Chinese believe that the eyebrows of women are indeed sexy just as ancient Japanese viewed the woman’s nape as some kind of fetish. Now you know why the kimono always reveal the nape of the woman.
What do women do when they get together? Well their favourite past time in the eyes of Chinese men, is gossip. Hence the original meaning of 姦 is gossip. However its meaning is now changed to something else. However we can see its vestigial meaning in another form. If having three women together is gossip, then having a thousand of them banded together means that gossip is multiplied by a thousand times. Ancient Chinese believe that the root of evil is not money but from gossip. Thus the thousand women character is evil - 奸.
Ancient Chinese believe that wind is caused by the beating wings of insects. Hence the character is written as the composition of a wave front, an insect and its wing - 風, where 虫 is the insect radical. Simplification removes all such cultural beliefs and information. Now it is represented by an X - 风, one aspect that I abhor.
Finally a character can come from a story. The best example is 孽. This character means “sin” – a Buddhist sin. It contained the characters Xue 薛 and the character for son 子. This is from the story, “The rebellion of Xue Kang against the Tang Dynasty” (薛剛反唐). The Xue family helped the Tang founders in establishing the empire. They were ennobled for their merits. When the scion of the family rose against the rule of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天), they were easily defeated by the Empress and the entire family was then exterminated upon her orders. The details are that this scion was an reincarnated enemy killed by the forefathers of the clan. Hence the revenge. A very apt story to explain this thoroughly Buddhist concept. Buddhism was the rage at that time, especially under the rule of the female Emperor.
Just as English invents new words by combining letters, Chinese can also make new words by combining existing characters. First choose a character that is the homonym of another character. Combine it with an appropriate radical. Voila – a new character is born. This is most obvious in naming newly discovered elements. This includes aluminum, manganese, radium, oxygen, nitrogen, radon etc are all unknown in ancient Chinese. These new characters were formed by adding the appropriate metal and gas radicals to become 鋁, 錳, 鐳, 氧, 氮, 氡 which are approximate English sounds to Chinese ears.
In conclusion, Chinese characters are easy to understand and remember once you break it down into their components. For me the more difficult part is distinguishing the tonal aspect of the language.
For learning
Chinese (Other) | Category
General | Level
A1: Beginner |
Second language
English | Created
Jul 07, 2011 12:04 | Views
922 |
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