I’m spending this week trying to dig deeper into a question: What does the Big Brain want?
Yesterday we talked about personal growth. It seems that few of you actually have a compelling need to learn Chinese. You seem to be driven by other things – curiosity, self-improvement, etc. This obviously has implications for how we spend our time over here: I want to be sure we’re producing stuff that you actually want.
One question I have concerns learning characters. What is your attitude to them? Are they as important to you as learning the spoken word? (Remember, you have limited options in terns of study time and focus.) We could emphasize them more, if that’s what you chaps want.
I’m also allowing for the possibility that a good number of our users may be too busy in their work and family lives to post comments here. This type of learner may well be learning Chinese for purely work-related purposes and they may be under-represented in these discussions. Such a group would have different needs than say, people who treated learning Chinese more as a personal endeavor, so I want to be sure we don’t ignore such people. (We’re nothing if we’re not inclusive.) Does anyone have any feedback to share on this point?
Ken Carroll
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Yep, I also just moved to a more Chinese “linguistically intense” part of the City and my Queen’s English has become corrupted / evolved to where a whole new language form has emerged. Kind of scary at first, but proves that the podcast lessons are working.
Hi Lantian!
You are correct, the 25-50 hour figure is only for native speakers. Moreover this figure only works for native speakers that do not have any problems processing sounds and can correctly identify single phonemes (for example, there are three phonemes in the word BAT). Phonemic processing is widely understood as standing at the heart of learning to read English and this ability must be acquired before moving on to an explicit phonics based program of any nature. My 25-50 hour figure (say at 2 hours of instruction per week) does not include the time needed to acquire the phonemic processing ability which is HIGHLY variable across individuals.
The ideal program (what I mistakenly called the correct method) would be taught in a small class environment (1 to 1 is ideal). The focus would be on learning about 200 Consonant and Vowel Sound pictures (see Phono-Graphix method). After achieving this goal a student would have the skills to “read” but not decode thousands of words in English.
All words? No. But after a period of time spent learning Chinese (after having achieved an equal phonological ability to identify separate sounds in Chinese which of course is not necessary in order to read Chinese) how many characters might an average native speaking student be able to identify? 400-800? As you pointed out this would to an extent be a function of age.
“If taught correctly one can learn to spell 85-90% of English words correctly within 25-50 hours.” I doubt this. I was taught to read English using the “new reading method” where we sounded out words phonetically. It worked wonders for learning to read quickly, but my teacher couldn’t convince me not to try to invert the process for spelling. The result is that 40 or so years later, I still struggle with English spelling. I think you just have to memorize every word. So, we just have 20,000 words that use varying combinations of 26 radicals.
I suspect English and Chinese are of roughly equal complexity.
Someone may have pointed out already, and I missed it, but the character based approach does have some advantages.
characters are better able to retain meaning in new contexts. For example 2000 year old Chinese is still semi-inteligible to modern Chinese speakers. Cantonese speakers and Mandarin speakers can communicate in writing. Japanese Kanji is also semi-inteligable.
I would like to offer a few points in favor of learning characters. I didn’t think it would be useful at first, and found it numbingly difficult. But after a couple weeks of practicing drawing characters, I amazed myself at being able to recognize a few.
Contrary to the opinion voiced by others (that written chinese will not help you learn to speak), I think it is an excellent option if you have limited access to chinese speakers. In time it might significantly increase your exposure to chinese.
If I don’t practice chinese regularly I quickly lose the vocabulary and grammar that I have worked so hard to master. But I find that if I have a chance to read. It helps me to reinforce and solidify language that I learned orally.
I find that I don’t retain chinese unless I experience it in multiple situations. Hearing, speaking, reading and writing the words in different contexts helps me to hold onto the knowledge better. In particular helps me bridge that time between classes and the occasional conversation with a chinese speaker.
I think different people have different areas of strength. Most people have better musical abilities than I, and maybe don’t need to reinforce their speaking by learning to read. But I find it there just aren’t enough other opportunities to experience the language.
One more point is that for reviewing, writting is it is much more effient than listening to audio content, because you can find the material so much more quickly.
I do find reading fun sometimes. I don’t know why but I think it is the kind of enjoyment one gets from solving a puzzle or playing a strategy game. It amazes me find that at the age of 50 I am suddenly able to read chinese. Chinese writing is a vast mysterious wealth of ancient knowledge and somehow I don’t think I will ever be able to understand the language without learning to read it.
I wonder what the world record for blog comments is?
I think it might get a little quieter now some people have helpfully summarised. I do get over the top sometimes but basically that is because I am passionate about learning Chinese and had to overcome what I considered to be much very misguided information for somebody in my position attempting to learn it.
Probably one thing we can all agree on is that a good dose of passion is a huge boost whichever method you use.
ummm I ought to politely point out to ‘Clever Dick’ that I didn’t label anybody a “Nazi” fundamentalist. I used the term fundamentalist as a description of what I see as an almost religious zeal for the application of traditional approaches to character learning. I point this out as it is quite likely that people don’t have time to read all these comments and whilst I don’t mind my views and opinions being disliked, I would rather not be disliked for something I didn’t say as well.
I did however appreciate the ‘”character” assassination’ pun
Lantian, 你现在住在中国，不是吗？ 你太幸福了！ 不公平！
Hi Chris,
just to fuel this discussion again (obvoiously the poster above wanted to kill it):
Let me tell you that I stood on the dark side once myself. Those days I always proclaimed that I do not have the time to learn those stupid characters and listening/speaking-skills are more than enough. Unlike you I did not heap up such a deep body of theory below me, though. I just pragmatically said: No time, thanks.
As you can read some 80 posts or so above I rotated my views by about 180 degrees. And it wasn’t the leverage-learning effect that changed my mind (did not believe that those days) but the following main reasons (among others):
1. I ran against a wall with the “spoken only” approach after a while. I stagnated and did not get anywhere – there was simply not enough “air time” for practicing. To learn from everyday conversations was impossible – too fast for me. Conversations geared at my level were cumbersome for both sides. After a while I noticed that I missed the huge body of “asynchronous” resources that can teach you very effectivly how Chinese sentences are built and how phrases are used – the world of written Chinese.
2. I had to acknowledge that most advanced Chinese learners were able to read Hanzi fluently and that most material from the Intermediate level upwards was Hanzi-Only. There had to be a reason for that.
3. I reluctantly admitted that the role of the characters was much bigger for understanding Chinese than I claimed.
One day I decided to learn the characters and did nothing else for a while – stupid, rote learning by repetition, a horrible time. It paid of. Nowadays I still often stumble across new characters or notice that I totally forgot others – but I have a comfortable base now. Then came Chinesepod and I felt the leverage-effect of Character learning lifting me up.
So it is not to late, even for you…
No it is not too late even for me
Somewhere in many places amongst the litter of comments, blog posts , forum posts etc. I have stated many times that I am not ignoring characters. I have also posted about translating, my reading strategies etc.
Of course at some point early next year when I release character based material some people who understandably haven’t read that huge volume of potential places where I might have posted will scream “hypocrite” meibanfa, the problem with this medium is that you cannot post an entire methodology in every comment.
I started learning 11 months ago, for almost three months I just listened (didn’t even feel the urge to open my mounth and try the sounds) then I started attempting sounds and scratchy character stuff. The character learning at that time did terrible damage to my progress so I stopped. At about six months I started gently working with characters again (I was ready) I had also got stuck into to talking over Skype (obviously badly
). My beef is with the idea that you should start with the text or even run them simultaneously (many people believe this). It may surprise you to know that I have spent a little time learning the basics of looking up characters in a Chinese only zidian, that I can comfortably write about 120 characters and read around 300 or so, that the characters I can can read I can read at full speed (well subtitle speed anyway). Not a lot of characters I realise but I am the path to real reading. I haven’t really used anything apporaching traditional methods methods so far and have spent comparitivly little time learning the the characters, as long as I stick to soee basic rules. I generally do not attempt anthing I cannot hear well, I generally try not to learn to read anything I cannot listen and speak, and I never try to learn to write anything I cannot read without thinking. This feels so natural.
I have horror stories from my first attempts, the character 尖 (point, pointed) I picked up because of something I was studying. I could write it, I knew it was xiao3 over da4 etc. I came to use the word with my Skype partner and all that popped in my head was the character (usually I just have sounds and meanings in there) even worse there was no sound associated in my head. This was like a slap with a wet fish. In the example used by Eugenio way above I know tian2 田 already. Why do I know tian, well because I had learned nan2 男 which is of course field over power (the power of the man hoeing the field or whatever) aside from the fact that this is both sexist and out of date this should be the character for tractor
. I hadn’t actually wanted to know the character or word for field that was unwanted collateral damage there were other words that would have served me better at that time.
Chinese is my main hobby now, I have a full time job and a large family, I study it very hard considering so maybe an identical me studying in evening class would have been ready for characters at one year or even one and a half. Who knows maybe a younger fulltime studier would be ready at three months. The fact still remains that starting with that baggage at the beggining seems very strange.
I have spent a lot of thought and undergone a lot of self analysis regarding my studying and the progress I make. I am in very unfertile ground, living where I am and having limited study time. If I had a Chinese speaking partner for example I know that even now I wouldn’t have touched a character. Heaven forbid that I ever start thinking in characters :O.
One shocking thought I had early on is if Japanease can use essentially the same set of characters to write a completly different language, then surely that is a strong level of abstraction between the spoken form of Mandarin and the written form no matter what cunning cultural arguements there are to attempt to knit them together. We had men hoeing fields in ancient England too and also kept women firmly in place under our roofs for a peaceful environment although we might have even called it a home without a pig (maybe a yang2 羊 sheep under the roof in Wales
). Taking the above into account isn’t there a strong case for stating that actually you don’t get the full culture hit unless you learn the meta language actually in Mandarin (zhe4ge4 zi4 you3 tian2 de yi4si (aaiii zian4zai4 wo3 ming2bai2le), did that make anybody sweat a little??. Should we really be learning the true language of characters in English? what do we loose by attempting to be oh so smart and educated and un-childlike.
Yes I may be ‘psuedo-intellectual’, I may be misguided etc. but a valid arguement is valid no matter what the source and I think I have at least one here worthy of further thought. I hope I have a least demonstrated that I don’t take any of this lightly.
Henning you started with sound too, ok you hit a wall but would you have changed things?
Hi Henning,
I noticed that you said you ran into a wall with the speech – that is was too fast to learn from. Just from my personal experience, at first i also found native speech too fast, but after listening to native speed speech for hours and hours and hours from various sources (mostly Devil Beside You and Smile Pasta), i am now able to process native speed chinese and understand it if i know the majority of the words. I really believe that it is possible to learn proper spoken chinese without even seeing a single character.
The written language and spoken language are two separate things, one is acquired and the other is ‘learnt’.
Anyway, good luck and well done for persevering with the characters!
英
英, ying, courage. What a beautiful opening of this blog. What a well chosen character by a great master calligrapher. I can’t paste the calligraphy here, so please go to the top of the page and contemplate the character.. Such powerful calligraphic specimen. Such poise, such art. I never fail to feel a deep emotion when I contemplate a character just for sheer enjoyment. Or when a great calligrapher and old friend of mine, tells me: “look at my latest piece of calligraphy”. He does tell me “read what it says”, because you can just contemplate it for its sheer beauty.
Enjoy yourself drawing the 英 on top of this page just with pencil and paper, after not so many attempts you will succeed and you’ll feel amazed and relaxed at what you have accomplished, to do it with a brush is quite another matter, but you have taken an important first step. But you cannot fully enjoy the contemplation or execution of a character, unless you know what it means. Indeed, you do not need to write characters to profit inmensely in your studies just by contemplating them.
The meaning.英:
英: A man 大 in the middle of a space, in a forest 艸， A brave man standing alone in a dangerous situation. 英國: England, the Brave Country (or the flowery country).
英: Also means blossom: The flower of men.
Note: 大，in composition, e.g.: 因，恩 ALWAYS means man, NEVER big.
大, on its own means big. Etymologicaly大 represents a grown up man standing (body, legs and arms). By extension, zhuan-zhu轉注 , the stature of an adult (by opposition to the child’s), so meaning great, tall.
As regards the difficulty of learning chinese. You can impress and give a free lesson to your friends or their children, by teaching them in a few moments (they will never forget) dozens of characters just by showing them a selection of well chosen characters. The children, or adults inmediately understand the meaning, or what the characters stand for, because, with a little hint here and there on your part, they can see for themselves. They do not need to believe you.
Yo could never convince a child even in a whole day session that “arbol” for instance, means “tree” in a certain language they do not know, more over, it is indeed tree in Spanish. Whereas if you tell them that 木 represents a tree, with its trunk, branches and roots, they can easily see that. Utterly convincing. And so on…
A man = 大 ???
This is where your credibility falls apart.
This character 大 = big.
Heaven help us !
Llorente先生,
Very sorry to disturb you but it is just a linguistic comment
英 does not mean brave/ courage. As you commented 英 originally means flower/calyx. 英 also means “excellent/lovely”, it comes from flowers in full bloom.
艸 does not mean forest but means herb/plant, it is equal to 草.
央 means (depressed)center，a human 大is overborne at his neck and so sagged at the center. In this story meaning of human is lost but only means depressed center and depressed center of herb/plant is flower/calyx.
As you said 大 comes from a human stretching hands/legs, so it means big.
So, 英國: England, does not mean the Brave Country, but nor does mean the flowery country, because it comes from its sound. It is not sure “England” or “Ingles” but was originally written as 英吉利.
(Oh I have to add that 英國 does not mean England but United Kingdoms.)
Regards,
SEPARATE WAYS – I liked Lorente’s descriptions, it makes for fun reading and helps to learn the character. All these etymologies must of course be taken with a grain of salt as Kanji noted the conflicting suggestions. After awhile, those etymologies also do fade as the characters become more tightly coupled with the sound/meaning/context etc.
I’m not sure if other’s might have thought my various arguments about writing hanzi meant I thought that writing/speaking were closely coupled. I don’t. I’m of the very strong opinion that listening ability, speech, recognition, writing and reading are all very very separate abilities. One can pick and choose which to learn.
I’ve probably choosen the longest path b/c I want to integrate them all. You know, I’m a tortoise racing with myself disguised as a rabbit.
Mashood / chris:
I am convinced that speech recognition is (after a certain point and depending on mitigating factors like accent and clarity of pronounication) 95% dependent on familarity with words, phrases, and constructions.
If I have to conciously think about the possible meanings of a word in the conversation flow I am lost – my “parsing” breaks down (evil stopword, cf. parsing threat) – this is where the factor of speed comes into play. If I do not know a word at all I either do not notice it or it tears the sentence apart.
And where do I learn new words & phrases? 70% from written materials (30% from CPod explanations in the podcast-banter). In English I would even go as far as to say 100% of new words come from written materials. The spoken communication consolidates new words, but it is the written form where I identify them for the first time. The more words I learn from written materials (in combination with a dictionary) the more I understand the spoken word. Each new CPod vocab lifts my hearing skills. Here you have the wall I am talking about. The wall is built by unknown words – the Hanzi help you to tear it down.
@Chris: I agree that there are lerning phases in which you concentrate on a certain aspect, like pronounciation, character recognition, etc. Now my weakest point is not reading, anymore. Acording to the Character Test Applet I can identify about 2500 characters (that level was up to about 2800-3000 characters during my crazy character learning times). My soft spot is building own sentences. I have no idea about grammer, never properly learned that. So I will start focus on that as soon as the full Grammar guide shows up….
Three things:
If you were an adult English speaker learning, say, French, knowing how to read and write would help you learn the speaking much faster. The same is surely true of Chinese: but given the time and effort needed to first learn characters it is understandable some people starting out prefer to ignore the characters.
Chinese writing is largely phonetic: most characters represent the sound of the word, similar to English.
A relatively small number of characters make up (in different combinations) a large amount of vocabulary. If you come across a new two-character word and already know both components, you will remember that piece of vocab much more easily. And reading/writing will make that recognition (of the component parts) much easier.
that’s all!
Oh, one additional aspect: The number of characters I can acutally write by hand is really, really small. Typing is quite OK, because the PC gives me alternatives that I can choose from. So being able to read is totally different from being able to write.
Dear Kanji,
You are contributing with reasonings to this debate. We must all thank you for your efforts.
However, on 英 you are completely wrong. Yours is just a fancy explanation from not reliable resorces. For my part, unless otherwise stated I never speak on my onw authority, but on the authority of reliable Chinese resources as follows:
In the first place the modern meaning of 英 is: Oustanding, hero, courage. Flower, and, yes, Britain. And what’s more, the modern meaning of 央 Yang is: center 中心 e.g. 大廳中央 In the middle of the hall. 新華字典 (Xinhua Zidian 2004).
In the second place, and based on the Shuowen Jiezi, (200 A.d), we have:
“央 Un homme 大au milieu de ^ l’espace (A man in the middle of the space). Milieu, centre (middle, centre). 從大在 ^ 内。大者人也”
Caracteres Chinois, León Wieger.
Then, we have “英: Brave, heroic, England.”
“A man 大 in the midst of a large space; in the SEAL WRITING it is a man in the midst of a jungle. With the addition of the radical ++ (the grass radical, 140) the idea of jungle is still further elaborated”.
Analysis of Chinese Characters, by G.D.Wilder and J.H.Ingram, Dover Publications Inc.
And we could also cite:
“英: 一個置身于廣闊的 ( ^ ) 茂密叢林 (++) 中的成年人 (大) 的形象，就是英雄形象。 “英” 表示勇敢或英明。”
“A mature man ( 大) in the midst of a large space ( ^ ), thick with vegetation (++), suggests a brave man in a jungle. Hence: 英，meaning brave or heroic.”
What’s in a Chinese Character by Tan Huay Peng 2002, New World Press
Some amateur etymologist confuse archeological etymology, which is a fascinating ever researched and changing domain, with the “etymology” that the Chinese gave themselves nearly 2000 years ago, which was in part based on the evolution of characters up to that time, and on part on a practical basis for the sake of systematization (suceeding, as in so many ways, at squaring the circle). That is to say, they managed to systematized the characters. It is a wonder to all present sinologists and researchers, that the single handed creator (reform amounting to creation) of modern characters (“modern”, in this instance, as in many other in Chinese culture, means a mere 2000 years), past down extremely few incongruencies or errors (how can you account for such geniuses as Mortzart, Shakespeare, etc). Modern reformers (simplification) in the end only could or dared or were capable to reform very little (thank goodness!), and what was undertaken it was for the wrong reasons with the far reaching result of weakening the whole marvellously laid out system. Later day reformers pretending to put the las 2000 thousands year right, just like that, is preposterous.
but Eugenio aren’t you exaggerating the % of chinese characters which have a complex and interesting history as pictures?
most characters are just phonetic, with a radical which hints more closely at the character’s meaning: but the main part of the character is phonetic, just like English or German or whatever, and the phonetic elements need to be learned by rote in a very boring way.
Doesn’t all this discussion just kind of prove my point that in-depth analysis of the characters is not an efficient way to learn to speak Chinese. Studying characters in this way is a separate discipline in its own right.
At least two posts went by that had information on 英 before the much more modern meaning of English/British was even mentioned and this meaning was derived from an original transliteration where the sound was the important thing.
Despite all the history the ‘only’ meaning that mattered to me for ages was English/British ying1guo1 UK, ying1wen2 English language, ying1li3 English mile etc. And indeed in these cases that is precisely what it means.
In ying1xiong2 hero or ying1yong3 valiant it has a brave meaning.
Does anybody really think that any of this has any relevance whatsoever to some poor soul struggling with one of his first sentances ni3 shi4bu2shi4 ying1guo2ren2 ? “I am sorry mate, can you speak English, I thought I had this but I just spent three months studying the characters. Are you asking me if I come from a country that is somewhat overburdened in the middle?”
As an ideograph 英 like many Chinese characters appears somewhat overloaded. Take a look at mobile phone or shou3ji1 literally hand device, that is not very specific is it? I think that there comes a point were people just did not want to go to the trouble of inventing a new character everytime (a practical impossibility).
Don’t get me wrong I love Chinese written language and will enjoy studying it in increasingly greater depth. Also when I master the reading I know I will be able to read content a lot faster than in English (a real concrete advantage) but I will not overburden myself with too much information for now.
Eugenio if you prove anything to me it will only be that studying Chinese characters is useful for studying Chinese characters.
In mathematical terms x=x. I will bear this in mind when I have decided to embark on an in depth character study. This tells me nothing about y.
Chris I’m not sure 英 is an ideograph: I think the above etymology of character is suspect:
I don’t think it has any connection with 央 yang except that, in the past, the spoken word for ‘brave’ (ying) sounded the same as the spoken word ‘central’ (yang) … and there was already a character existing for central/yang (ie 央).
So when they wanted a character for brave/ying, they took the 央 and added the grass on top, to distinguish the new character from the old.
This is how maybe 90% of the characters were created. Most are not ideographs.
So, as I say, learning reading and writing you end up learning phonetic symbols, not meaning-pictures.
Chris M
Okay all sounds too complicated for my requirements at the moment, I will continue learning reading in my own way. Surely the phonetic symbols carry meaning as well though? I understand that Chinese characters are not pure ideograph as first thought when misguided Westerners first encountered the language but in these types of discussions many people seem to treat them as if they do carry significant pictorial information.
I did have some cartoons that were designed to teach literacy to Chinese children (made by Chinese people for Chinese children).
Apart from the fact that it was obvious that the children were expected to have a spoken knowledge of the words prior to introduction to the characters (at least in the lower levels I looked at). There were three obvious approaches in the cartoons.
One: just show them how to wedge together two characters they already learned with no overt explanation or special story. For example yi1 plus ren2 = da4, er4 plus ren2 = tian1 (just accept it, draw it and don’t ask questions,here is a little animation of the parts wedging together and here is another one of the stroke order).
Two: provide some sort of logical explanation to justify the character so xiao3 over da4 is big to small with is a point right (here is a little animation of the character morphing into a needle point).
Three: tell a little story (here is an animation of a man hoeing a field, we zoom out create characters from the graphics wedge them together and we have nan2).
The stories seemed to be rather few and far between (I think you got one good story out of every nine or twelve characters).
I think I might just dig these up again and use them when I have the time alongside my current slow cook to fast reading. I know its childish and uneducated but there again it just might work better than the educated approach. The other advantage being that it was entirely in Chinese (although Children’s Chinese but at least I could kind off understand it once I got over the squeaky voices).
I do wonder, do you gain some insight by learning to write in Chinese, in Chinese (I expect that comparatively few Westerners have done this)?
Dear Chris M and Chris Mandarin student,
Dear fellow students, the improperly called phonetic elements in a character are not phonetic elements at all, they are part of the signific elemets in a character, and, wonder of wonders, they are also phonetic indicators. All the components of a character contribute to the meaning, and the radical is the part that least contributes to the meaning if at all, its main function being a clarifying and classification one.
The main function of a radical is not to give the meaning or an hint at the meaning of a character, the main function is for dictionary classification purposes and to clarify words which are homonyms but not synonyms. So it would be more accurate to speak of signific elements in a character which at the same time may act as phonetic indicators. It is grossly misleading to speak of phonetics elements in Chinese, all componets in a Chinese character contribute to the meaning. The main function of any element in the composition of a given character is to contribute to the meaning, and in many instances, any of these fundamental meaningful units, serve at the same time as phonetic indicators, which in every case is secondary to the meaningful one.
I agree with you when you think it boring learning the characters by rote: it seems imposssible to me! The problem lies with the way characters are learnt, not with the characters, you cannot learn mathematical theorems by heart you have to reason them.
In the English language with have countless words such as see and sea, both pronounced /si:/, which pronounced out of context we could never guess what word is meant. In context there is no possible mistake but nevertheless, when we write these homonyms in perfectly clear context we still write these words differently. For the sake of understanding this has certain similarities to the “phonetic series” in Chinese, only in Chinese is much more interesting and meaningful.
I remember many years ago, when I had not the faintest idea that I would end up studying Chinese (enjoying it all along), I was reading a signed article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th edition) about the Chinese language. First they told characters were symbols, that you could guess the meaning of the character but not the pronuncioation by looking at the radicals Then they told you you had a guess at the pronunciation by certain phonetic elements in the character. And suddenly when after I had read a good many pages on the phonetic elements of characters, all of a sudden the writer warned the reader to get ready for a great great shock (now, hold on to your chair we say in Spain). He sort of said: “Did we say the phonetic elements in a Chinese character gave a hint at pronunciation of the character, and not at the signification of it?” “and did we not say that the radical hints at the overall meaning?” “Well, dear reader get ready for a big surprise, because in the great majority of cases the phonetic element is not only the signific element the character (often indicating the sound at the same time), but it is also the whole and complete ancient character itself, before the radical was added at clarification and dictionary classification purposes only, not at semantic purposes”.
Believe me, after reading this, I was baffled to the extreme and the suspense was more unberearable than at an Alfred Hitchkot film.
Right now I do not have time to give a complete set of good examples, so I will just explain the first pair of characters that come to my mind.
Take the famous yin and yang characters 陰 the ancient character for yin had not the radical on the left, for hill, and the pronunciation was yin. The ancient character gave us the whole meaning Yin 陰 (take out the radical, which I cannot do with my computer)and you have, on top: there are actually 今(jin) clouds 云 (yun). By the addition of the radical we have “the shady side of a hill”, the dark side of things.
The same happens with the yang character:陽, on the right, we have the “phonetic” the sun spreading its rays, on the left the hill radical.
Now, it is very symptomatic (and paradoxically funny) of the nature of the Chinese script that when they simplified these characters, they did not recur to phonetic elements, but to signific elements, when phonetization was supposed be the main aim of simplification.
The simplified version of Yin and Yang.
Yin 阴, on the right, the radical is kept, the “phonetic” has been simplified with the moon:月, to express the dark side of the same idea, dark side of a hill, no idication of pronunciation月= yue4 (nothing to do with yin).
Yang,阳, similarly, they simplified the “phonetic”, that was a sigfinic, with another signific 日(pronunciation ri4, nothing to do with yang2).
Now I have to run, but before I say bye by now, let me tell you that when transcribing names from an alphabetic language to Chinese, the usual procedure is to choose characters with a pronunciationa as close as possible to the original, but at the same time, as you have many homonyms to choose from, to choose a name which suits the person: if I, or a Chinese has to give a name to 5 Marias, he can give each one of them a similarly sounding name, but with totally different characters and meanings
according to what he knows or perceives of the persons.
In a similar way, when the Chinese had to create a character for something that had or could be named, they recured to the many homonyns which already possesed a written symbol and would apply to the new word a composition drawn from similarly meningful words (first priority) and trying at the same time that those same elements had a similar or the same pronunciation to the new written word been created.
The secret of the Chinese perfect match of spoken-written language, is that when you want to name something you have so many homonyms (or near homonyms, we must not forget the tones), that you can crate striking transliterations. A famous example is the transliteration of Coca-cola. The first transliteration (done by an almost illiterate), sounded Coca-cola, but the meaning was horrible, so they did not sell any bottle. When the mistake was discovered and a new name alloted, just with a change of tones here and there, it sounded more perfectly to Coca-cola, and the meaning was amazingly encouraging 可口可樂,which means “extremely nice and gives you all the joy”. Pronounce Coca Cola in Chinese and enjoy yourselves: you’ll become terribly thirsty!
Now I do not have time to find you all sorts of striking examples to show you that you do not have to learn characters just by rote, but by an understanding of the elements that you can deeper and in a much simpler fun way into the language. It’s even easier than studying the pictures you mentioned.
most characters are just phonetic, with a radical which hints more closely at the character’s meaning: but the main part of the character is phonetic, just like English or German or whatever, and the phonetic elements need to be learned by rote in a very boring way.
they are called signific elements, and the so called radical is not there to point to the meaning, but for classification purposes and to clarify a cluster of homonyms.
most characters are just phonetic, with a radical which hints more closely at the character’s meaning: but the main part of the character is phonetic, just like English or German or whatever, and the phonetic elements need to be learned by rote in a very boring way.
Sorry folks, the last three paragraphs are there by an error of mine when I copied some of your latest commentaries to comment on them.
Llorente先生,
I am not willing to continue this fruitless communication but just for my honor I right my response to your comment saying that “Yours is just a fancy explanation from not reliable resources”
My former comment was based on my dictionary published in japan that has long history and reputation.
But further confirmation I went to a big book store this weekend and checked another (more than 10) Chinese & Japanese 词典 & 字典 and found the same results
1.the meaning of 英
1)flower 2) excellent 3) abbreviation of 英吉利 4) Chinese name
2.process of the word
央 center of 艸herb/plant
3. no dictionary indicates英 means/meant “brave/courage”
I believe that dictionaries are established fruits of philological studies and not a personal opinion. I also checked a book written by a philological authority in japan (Shizuo Shiralawa) and found the same result.
The above is the fact I confirmed and my opinions are
1.I can not find any element which indicates brave/courage in 英
2.I could not find any Chinese idioms using 英 that indicates英means brave.
(英雄 is 英 excellent雄 bravery/courage)
3. as a Japanese who are using 汉字 for a long time, I cannot feel any meaning/image/impression of bravery/courage in英
so I said “英 does not mean brave/ courage”
Regards,
Kanji,
Your are totally right. That’s an old political british invention.
In the chinese/french dictionary 英 never had any link with bravery or courage.
英 gives Flower or talent :
( n. ) 1. fleur
2. talent éminent
( adj. ) éminent / beau
well obviously the French would delete any link between 英 and bravery or courage.
Ken,
I started listening to your Pod about a month ago and found it captivating. The conversations are lively and relevant to everyday life. The ipod audio format fits well into my time schedule. I am able to listen to the pod casts every morning on my way to work. I print out the PDF transcripts to supplement my listening. I found your discussion of key vocab words very interesting. I don’t have time to work on the written word, too, but I have interest in learning the origin of certain words.
Would you be able to highlight and discuss some of the written characters on your website or in your email updates? I find linking the written word with the spoken word can help me learn spoken chinese. Is this possible?
On another note, in the Boston, MA area, more and more high schools are starting to offer chinese language as an option. Are you looking to capture this younger audience? It seems to me the high schools with chinese language classes might be able to incorporate chinese ipod into their curriculum.
Keep the chinese ipod going strong!
Chris M,
For your info here is what you get from a typical chinese dictionnary (http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE8Zdic8BZdicB1.htm)
英
◎ 花：落～缤纷。
(Flower)
◎ 才能出众，才能出众的人：～俊。群～荟萃。～才。～雄。～烈。
(Talent … and it gives hero only with 雄)
◎ 精华，事物最精粹的部分：精～。～华。含～咀华。
(best quality)
◎ 用羽毛做的矛饰：二矛重（chǒng ）～。
◎ 古同“瑛”，似玉的美石。
◎ 指“英国”：～文。
◎ 姓。
(Chinese name)
But at the end of the page, for the English speaker you’ve got directly the following :
“◎ 英
hero outstanding person”
Which is obviously a … huge shortcut !
evidently the character acquired the “hero” meaning after it began to be used to refer to English people …
Chris, UK
anyway kmk, not to be overly pedantic about this but if you go back to the website you refer to and click through, you’ll find plenty of heroic uses:
英发 yīngfā (1) [heroic bearing]
英豪 yīngháo [hero;outstanding person]
英魂 yīnghún [spirit of the brave departed;spirit of a martyr]
英烈 yīngliè (1) [heroic]
英气 yīngqì [heroic spirit]
英爽 yīngshuǎng [bright and brave]
英武 yīngwǔ [of martical bearing]
英勇 yīngyǒng [heroic;valiant;brave;gallant]
英姿飒爽 yīngzī-sàshuǎng [of valiant and heroic bearing]
Wow! Whoever followed this discussion will certainly never forget the composition of the 英-character, its meanings, origins, and connotations.
You guys should have such in-depth analyses/discussions for *all* relevant 6,000 characters from the GB-encoding-standard in the forum and afterwards compile the results in a comprehensive form.
LET ME ADD SOME OIL – In my Pleco electronic dictionary, based on the dataset from the Concise English and Chinese Dictionary 2/e Oxford University Press 1986, 1999. I mention this because the new Pleco software uses a different dictionary dataset and ..obviously some BiggieBrains here may actually check.
英
ying1
1. A person of outstanding talent or wisdom:
英豪 heroes
2. flower
落英 fallen flowers
Personally I have seen/read both stories/etomologies assoicated with England, both as meaning ‘flower country’ and ‘brave country’. Maybe dictionaries can also represent biases.
I have to to remark that I have noticed that some of my Japanese friends have the darnest time when a particular hanzi/kanji gets associated with a different meaning or connatation between Chinese and Japanese and in word order/placement.
Conversely, most Westerners are too rigid in their view of a hanzi. As we can see from the discussion, thinking of 英 and only coming with three associations England, English, etc., is self-limiting.
Of course it is a natural result when one just starts learning Chinese, but it’s important to start associating one’s base with derivatives, otherwise we’ll never get to a higher level.
And it makes things easier. But you know, I don’t think the various examples are so outside the realm of ‘any’ language. I’ve asked Chinese people to give me some examples of all the words they can think of starting with ‘a’.
They say “apple, and ….”
That’s when I make them all sad and miserable about their English by saying “apple, and, ardvark, artichoke, Annapolis, adroit, advantage, admirable, agnostic, Adam, abysmal, …”
Hanzi do eventually morph into an “a”.
This thread is amazing, I keep scrolling thru it, having to re-read all the discussion, …strycilniniee…how do I spell that again. j/k
PINYIN Back– ohh, let me just add a I thought I had over dinner as I listened to John and Jenny’s podcast on joining a local chamber of commerce.
At one point John asks Jenny for the pinyin, I think he did it to clear up and proactively address any concerns with pronunication over ‘ng’ as in ‘ying’ versus ‘yin’.
Anyway, I thought …hmm it would probably be good to sporadically insert such highlights in newbie and elementary podcasts. Although the pinyin/audio chart is great, there’s nothing like embedded in context learning.
I am talking about getting learners to associate the proper Chinese sounds for pinyin. You know, not saying ‘ka’ as ‘care’ but as ‘car’.
It would get too academic and boring to have it in every podcast, but I bet occassionally saying the pinyin for those sounds we know that westerners have trouble with, and doing it after having heard proper native dialogue and then Jenny re-read it, well…that would make things too easy wouldn’t it.
Occassionaly highlights like this for hanzi would also help feed the hanzi fire, one podcast on one hanzi is too little, and not necessary to do 6,000 (Henning! j/k) Somewhere in between there is the porridge bowl that’s just right.
对不对。 我没说错了没有？
Lantian, you say that most Westerners are too rigid in their interpretation of hanzi. I can see this but there is a middle way.
As I pointed out I don’t see why a beginner should be burdened with
any other meaning than England, English etc. At the beginning high frequency words that they use have this meaning. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with them knowning that there are other meanings. One of my favorite phrases is “rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty” (from Douglas Adams I think). Ever since I heard this I use it to ringfence areas off in my mind that I can come back to. My bugbear is with the intensive study of characters at an early stage, that does not mean completely ignoring them.
You could actully teach someone quite a lot about characters without actually learning them, they would then be a position to not make some of the common mistakes and misunderstandings. Just reading this entire bunch of comments would teach a beginner quite alot about characters without knowing the specifics of a single one (not perhaps a good idea though).
In the same way I am often warned “ahh but you will not be able to make connections between words because you have not studied hanzi from the start”. Well now I know what the doomsayers meant, I know why they said it but I think I know why they are wrong. You don’t have to study characters to make the associations, you just have know how Chinese words are constructed. I have many many times in the past just said verbally “is that da3 the same da3 as in ….” etc. etc. So I have many many associations in my head that map to this syablle maps to the second part of that word ect. Mostly I don’t know the actual character. Heck I am a big boy now I can acutally use various pieces of software to check the character composition of words and visually compare (same, not same) the work of a few seconds and I haven’t actually learnt the character.
Maybe the Western mind would benefit from a gentle easing into characters like slipping into a warm bath. Afterall a good parent doesn’t try to cram reading skills and vocabulary into their tiny child because they know (or should know) that this will do more harm than good in a long run. The reason to sit there reading to your tiny child is because the first things they learn are.
This is a book, it has a story in it, the story is the same each time they read it to me, I can track where we are by the pictures, the pages turn that way, mummy use those squiggles to follow the story, it goes from top to bottom, it goes from left to right etc.
Now I will have offended a whole bunch of people by comparing them to Children. Well so be it, when I have grown up I will come and kick their butts
.
Learning a language is almost unique in that you spend a whole heap of effort, pain sweat and effort just to aquire a skill that you won’t be able to do as good as hundreds of millions (in this case) of normal people. Even the kudos of being able to speak two languages well is severely diluted by the fact that in many parts of the world this is completly normal. Maybe that is why the fact that a whole bunch of kids have nailed the basics better than you is sometimes hard to bear. Talking about sophisticated topics that are above their heads and jumping in at a higher level than them doesn’t change that one bit.
As we can see Chinese characters arise much interest. Our favourite language, Chinese, has a unique writing system. Some of the characters may seem at first glance like a little bit hard nuts to crack, but it only takes a gook Nutcracker (a Tchaikosky of an approach).
Our favorite language has a unique writing system with an uninterrupted history of over 5000 years. We as students and lovers of this, the Paradise of Languages, the Eden of linguists, have a great responsibility to know, defend and to fill in the gap left by the competent Chinese authorities from all sides, right and left, which have wasted their time and efforts arguing over Chinese culture on political grounds. They have failed to promote, research and elucidate the Chinese script thus contributing to the sensation that Chinese characters make no sense and have consequently no place in the presente world, leaving Chinese characters to fend for themselves.
It my view, it is of the utmost importance to be aware of the following:
In the 1930s some Chinese intelectuals advocated the modernization of China. Traditional culture and values were chalenged. These “intelectuals” (hypnotized by the West) saw the Chinese writing system as an obstacle in the modernization of China and therefore advocated the abolition of Chinese characters. Lu Xun魯迅 , termed as “commander of China’s Cultural Revolution” stated that, “If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will be”: 漢字不滅，中國必亡。
The avowed aimed of the reform of the Chinese script in mainland China in the 1950 and 60s was the eradication and complete abolition of Chinese characters and to establish the Pinyin romanization as the official written system of mainland China.
The “simplification” of Chinese traditional script together with the promotion of a “common speech”, namely Putong hua 普通話, based on the Bejing 北京 dialect were the fist necessary steps towards the abolition of characters. The autorities could not abolish the Chinese script at one blow because it was the common ground of communication in a country with so many markedly different dialects mutually unintelligible (as different as English to Spanish).
A FIRST ROUND of official simplifications of characters was issued in two lists, one in 1956 and another in 1964. There ensued much confusion and opposition to the new characters. In 1977 a SECOND ROUND of new character simplifications was promulgated. This SECOND ROUND of simplifications met with fierce opposition due to confusion of characters and lack of intelligibility.
In 1986 the authorities revoked this SECOND ROUND completely and restored to their traditional form some of the characters simplified in the FIRST ROUND of simplifications. Without official recognition some characters from the SECOND ROUND of simplifications still appear informally, as some Chinese students learned them at school.
Since revoking in 1986 the SECOND ROUND of simplifications, the authorities have declared they do not plan any further simplifications of characters in the future nor do they plan to restore the traditional characters already simplified.
It in interesting to note that in December 2004 the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body in the People’s Republic of China called for elementary schools to teach traditional Chinese characters in addition to the simplified ones. It was argued that most mainland Chinese, especially young people had difficulties with traditional characters when dealing with non-mainland Chinese communities, or when reading non-simplified texts form the huge body of Chinese writings, from A.D. 200 up to the 1960s(18 centuries). The educational authorities did not approve the recommendation saying that it did not fit in with the “requirements as set out by the law”.
Finally, despite my digressions, I have never lost sight of the fact that this is a ChinesePod blog posing the “simple” question whether or not to give a little bit of more weight to the teaching of Chinese characters. One must be very careful about this. Enough damage has already been inflected on Chinese characters.
In my view it does not matter how much is taught. Just some exposition to the characters could be more than enough, along the lines of today’s visionary-lesson Direction with a Map 1 (and suggestions to it).
The important thing is to do it properly, along the truly Chinese lines and sources which for the past 2000 years have followed after the creation of the present system, in the 說文解字. And this applies both to traditional and simplified characters, which in principle are not different. The real problem is not what has been done by the simplification process (serious enough) but the trend that it points out to: a continuous weakening of the system by a total lack of support to it.
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