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Daan -
Cecilia Lindqvist's China: Empire of Living Symbols might be what you're looking for. She gave a
lecture here at Leiden University's Sinological Institute last week, which I thought was very
interesting. Check it out on Amazon.com or something
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imron -
Quote:
But claiming 4 dots represents 4 legs and then having that under a fish, cooking pot, and the word
for hot boggles my mind--even if that were true it makes it 10 times harder characters compared to
a logical system.
There is no logical system. For any system you come up with, there will always exceptions and
parts that are illogical. You say you need things to make sense, but you readily accept 'hand' +
'spear' as 'me'? These are the kind of things that only make sense if you decide it makes sense,
because hand+spear=me doesn't make sense to me especially as 'hand' (扌) + 'spear' (戈) also
means 'search/find' 找, (which makes equally little sense to me).
Anyway, the book I was talking about before was called something like 汉字入门 but a quick
search for that doesn't turn up anything.
muyongshi -
I know which book you are talking about...My friend has that...I can't find it either on any
site...check with your school if you are interested.
renzhe -
Quote:
I am probably not alone. In fact, even if the meanings were purely fictitious but systematically
fit the pictures and related to the actual meaning of the character. WOW. That would be genius
indeed.
You are not alone. Everybody who has studied Chinese characters has done this. They are called
mnemonics. Like my example with biting your fist = philosophy. It's certainly not etymologically
correct, but I never forget that character.
Quote:
But claiming 4 dots represents 4 legs and then having that under a fish, cooking pot, and the word
for hot boggles my mind--even if that were true it makes it 10 times harder characters compared to
a logical system.
I have never heard anyone say that the 4 dots represent 4 legs, everyone knows that it is the fire
radical. Perhaps some children get told the four legs story to visualise more easily, but it is
hardly what the four dots "represent".
Furthermore, the fact that horse was originally a pictograph is really well documented and not
disputed. You can trace the development of the pictograph through time. At a certain point in
time, with the standardisation of writing, the fire radical was added. You can explain that to
yourself in a number of ways.
Really, it is common knowledge, and has been for thousands of years, that parts of characters
carry meaning. The professor here seems to think that every part of every character carries
meaning and that every single character was intentionally designed to carry a meaning derived from
these parts. Some of his explanations for this are very far-fetched.
johnmck -
Clearly Chinese characters are not created from random strokes and hence there is a some form of
reason behind them. If you can find out the reasoning behind each character this can help you to
remember them. It is not possible to decode a character if you do not already know what it means,
but it can help for remembering.
Nevertheless purchasing this book sounds like a waste of money. Not because it is not useful, it
sounds very useful, but because the contents are already on the web for free at www.zhongwen.com.
For example:
http://zhongwen.com/d/167/d218.htm
I use this site all the time. It is based on traditional characters (which is good for
understanding the reasoning behind characters). I only use simplified characters so it was not so
easy to use at first but one starts to understand the simplificatoins fairly quickly and the site
becomes easy to use.
Edit: On reflection, if this book is cheap it may be worth buying and reading before studying
characters. Then use zhongwen afterwards for further study.
waynewalter -
renzhe,
I haven't read his book, of course, but on his site, he claims that every character carries a
indication of pronunciation also. So he doesn't say that every part of the character adds to the
meaning necessarily.
Thanks for clearing up the fire radical question. That fits better because I've seen the earlier
symbols for horse which does appear to have legs. Perhaps fire was added more as a pronunciation
guide.
In response to imron:
You make a good point about "hand" and "spear" not making "sense" logically now that you mention
it. Somehow that is sticking in my head quite well. Why?
Apparently, when you attach a movie in your mind to the word you want to remember in a new
language, you are 1,000 time more likely to remember. So I see a person holding a spear to defend
themselves.
Again, an excellent point in this character 找 that includes the SAME two roots. The only
difference I see is that the two root aren't connected. Actually, that sticks in my head also. To
me, it means that the person has thrown the spear and now needs to go find it. Therefore, search!
Whether that was the original intent of the character or not, I just learned ANOTHER character
without effort and without writing it 100 times. Zhao3. So thank you very much Imron. I will
practice it a couple times. Also, I didn't know that word in my spoken vocabulary yet. But now I
do.
Frankly, if I can imagine something that fits in my head as a graphical images then it will stick
in my brain forever. There's some great books on "right brain strategies" for instantly memorizing
things using images. And Chinese characters seems like the perfect subject to fit graphically in
the right brain permanently.
In responses to Daan:
Thanks for recommending that book China: Empire of Living Symbols. It appears to be fascinating.
It sounds very much like it makes the characters come ALIVE. I know my wife and daughter will love
all the connection to the history.
In reality, it's almost irrelevant to learn the true history of how the character came to be
unless you're a sinologist or linguist. But getting ideas to help make visual movies out of them
so the come alive in your head and remember them easier. Now that's my goal.
Sincerely,
Wayne
muyongshi -
Quote:
he claims that every character carries a indication of pronunciation also.
Well that is simply not true. Unless you connect it to maybe other character that happen to have
the same radical and by doing a seventh degree type of thing then associate it to that word...All
you need to do is look at the other example already given and you will see how this is a
preposterous statement!
waynewalter -
Johnmck,
Wow. what a great post to this thread! I love your ideas.
First, I'm my last post, I used Zhongwen.com to lookup the character for 找 to see what it meant
and the breakdown of the symbols.
I think we were posting simultaneously. I just got the idea to use Zhongwen.com as you suggest to
get started studying characters!!
I'm not concerned about the money, like you say, having the professor's book might help. BUT he's
sold out for at least 2 to 3 months which he wants on editing and reprint of his new version.
But Zhongwen also has a book of the contents of the site, I believe. That might be useful. But I
love the site because you can copy and paste.
So here's my plan at the moment....
I want to learn characters in order of most frequently used. So I found a site that has the 3000
most commonly used characters in descending order of frequency.
Unfortunately, it just give the meaning of each without the breakdown like Zhongwen.com
So I have the 3000 in a spreadsheet. Now I'm going to take each character, search it on
Zhongwen.com and then paste the results into the spreadsheet and learn the meaning at the same
time.
That will give me a quick reference in frequency order for studying the characters. Also, I want
to make flash cards.
I'm using Pimsleur to learn the spoken language and I also downloaded the transcript of all the
Pimsleur lessons that has with the pinyin and characters. So I'm thinking of going back to the
first lesson and learn the characters for all the words I already know how to say VIA this
Zhongwen.com method. I will make sure those characters are in my frequently used list and label
them as Pimsleur words.
My feeling is that if I systematically learn the characters at the SAME time as learning the
spoken mandarin words as I go forward, the characters will stick better in my head.
Also, I might order the Zhongwen.com book after checking the reviews. The one imron suggests above
sounds great also.
I have friends who want to learn Chinese, this might turn into a useful collection of tools to use
if it turns out to be successful.
Thanks for your suggestion, Johnmck!!!
Sincerely,
Wayne
renzhe -
waynewalter,
what you are talking about when inventing stories and explanations about characters is a tool
commonly known as mnemonics. It is very useful for learning characters, as you have found out
already.
The only discussion is how groundbreaking this particular research is, as there have been books
teaching all characters through mnemonics for quite a while (take the Heisig system example).
Another mnemonic I've used is for the character bei 杯. If you take the meaning of the individual
components, it means "not wood" or "no wood". For some stupid reason, this stuck in my brain (cups
are nowadays usually not made of wood) and I have remembered it ever since. I honestly don't think
that you can make a credible explanation for why a cup is written as "not wood". It just ended up
that way, languages are organic.
so you're right in trying to understand the way characters are built, and this will certainly help
you learn them better -- in fact, it is essential. But don't expect an all-encompassing system
that explains everything. There are things about Chinese characters which are simply not logical.
waynewalter -
In my plan above, I'm stuck on the very first, most popular character. What does a ladel in the
(rising) sun have to do with genitive as well as simple and composed adjectives? It appears I will
need help in connecting characters ideas into the meaning especially in the case of abstract ideas.
Any suggestions?
http://zhongwen.com/d/170/d186.gif
Sincerely,
Wayne
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