Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
As far as I know, very few. But they do exist. For example, the character “砼” refers to concrete. It consists of the parts “人” (person), “工” (work), and “石” (stone), symbolizing “man-made stone.” Another example is “瓩,” which combines the number 千 (1000) and 瓦(watt), clearly meaning “kilowatt.” There’s also “猹,” a small animal … Read more
The easiest Chinese character would be numbers, one → “一“ two → “二” three → “三“ （No, four is not four straight lines.) the hardest Chinese character, I assume you mean the Chinese character with the most strokes. There’s some debate on that. So there are over 85 thousand Chinese characters. But you only need … Read more
Let me pour a giant bucket of cold water on this. [[ As a normal adult, you will never learn enough Chinese characters to be read a book, newspaper or website ]] I am sorry, but that’s just the truth of the matter. The “common wisdom” according to Dr. Google is that you need to … Read more
Inventing new characters seems to have been still practiced quite commonly through the 20th century. For instance, the character “熵” means entropy, and was coined by a Chinese physicist Húgāngfù in 1923. In Japan, we simply use the transliteration “エントロピー(pronounced entoropi-)” for the word, but I think it’s way cooler to write with one character. … Read more
Eh… no, not really. At least not anymore lol. Modern Chinese characters are not particularly effective at conveying meaning through visual representation, but ancient Chinese characters more closely resembled what they meant, with this resemblance becoming stronger the further back you go. Writing was independently invented only three to four times in human history: in … Read more
My English teacher, was an American from Oregon, named Susan Grant. She was a retired lawyer who likes to hike. She taught me that when she was young she had mild dyslexia, she couldn’t tell if it is “deb” or “bed”. Her Elementary School English teacher said, imagine a bed. what it looks like, and … Read more
Three thousand years ago, a lot of characters looked like what they mean, but over the course of three thousand years, some things are bound to change. In those days, most people lived their whole lives without seeing any writing; many of them probably didn’t even know writing existed, just as most people today probably … Read more
That’s another ‘China Myth’, right? But the truth is: a Chinese character is not an English/Latin letter, but it is a word, or even a phrase. If you could recognize 1500 Chinese characters you can use Weibo/WeChat and you can read most of the daily use information printed in Chinese language. If you learn 3500 … Read more
we have used “贾湖刻符” at 9000 years ago: we have used “双墩刻符” at 7000 years ago: we have used “半坡陶符” at 6000 years ago: we have used “骨刻文” at 2600.BC: we have used “甲骨文” at 1400.BC: we have used “金文” at 1300 BC: we have used “小篆” at 221.BC: we have used “楷书” at 202.BC … Read more
It depends on which font/script you’re looking at and what the original meaning is. 1# Let’s say nouns. There are many types of nouns, like nouns representing solid objects and nouns representing abstract concepts. For nouns representing solid objects. (a page of my kid’s Chinese book, first day in school) If you’re looking at a particular font/script, then … Read more