How can I memorize how to write Chinese characters?
I used to memorize Chinese characters by heart when I was child. There was no any short cut for memorizing Chinese characters, most people lost interesting to continue because it is too boring. But I was not so suffering because there was no any other choices, and everyone did the same.But recently I have found a way which is much better to remember the characters: know the pictography of the character.A few years ago, I talked to a Taiwan lady about the difficulty of memorizing traditional Chinese characters. She mentioned that she has never remembered how to write the traditional character Turtle.At that moment, I didn’t know how to write this complex character.I took some time to see the original scripts of the character. I found the followingThere are two shell bone scripts for this character:The left one is a picture of turtle from its back, the right one is a picture from its side.Shell bone script was used in 3000+ years ago. It was not unified, that means different people drew character differently. So actually, there were many different shell bone scripts for turtle.Then, about 2200 years ago, the first emperor ordered Mr. Li Si to unify the character. One character must be written only one way. So Mr. Li Si chose one of many shell scripts of Turtle to be the standard small seal script for Turtle:We can see the similarity of this small seal script to that of the right one shell bone script above. It is a picture of turtle from the side.After that, about 2000 years ago, the clerical script for Turtle isThe top is the head, the left are its feet, and the right is its shell, the middle its body, and the bottom is the tail. You just draw the picture of side turtle.It is not difficult to remember the character.Right now, the simplified song typeface Turtle iswhich is similar to the left shell bone script above which is the picture of turtle from the side view. The top is its head, and middle is its shell, and the bottom is its tail. The feet on the sides are disappeared.It is not difficult to remember this one too.It is slow to learn the character this way, but as you learnt a character, you will remember it forever, and you will have more interesting to learn more characters.If you are interested in learning Chinese characters in this way, you can see my following blog, which explains 200+ character one by one in detail.Amazing Chinese characters - Preface and Indexby clicking the link above.FYI
Why can’t Chinese phonetic writing express ideographic symbols, but Japanese writing can?
If my understanding is right, I’m a little bit confused.I ‘ve learned Japanese for some time but not quite familiar with its idographical expression. Can u just give me some examples？And as a Chinese, I think Chinese is a language taht was born to express idographic. The Chinese words today, in mainland, are simplified much than thousands years ago, but they still have that meaning.For instance, in ancient time, the word “sun” and “moon” are produced as the picture shows(The upper three from the left to right show the procedure of sun’s simplification. Fimally it became 日 as we see today. The bottom ones are moon’s. It’s 月 now.)And you can obviously see that they are produced according to the shape of the sun and moon. Still so many examples can be found like this. It’s just the most simple one to describe a thing. When it comes to an action, we may conbine serveral things together to express, like some actions need to be done by hands, then we combine the resemble image “hand” with another image.That's how Chinese come. And I think it really can express ideographic.
Why do the Japanese and Chinese write from top to bottom vertically?
Because of nonlinear economics: oddity happens and stays through path dependence.Before we invented paper, we wrote on animal bones and bamboo pieces Bamboo and wooden slipsVertical:They just happened to hold the first few slips vertically, and it got stuck.There are also longer vertical strokes and shorter horizontal strokes in Ancient Chinese writing as well as today. Easier right?Right to left:Imagine you are a right-hander if you are not. Now hold a rolled scroll of bamboo slips in your hand. Open it.You use your left hand to hold the scroll and right hand to pull one side of it, right. Now what would be a better writing direction?It's all reasonable oddities that got stuck. ;)And for Japanese, they just happened to live near a civilization that was much more advanced than themselves' in 6th and 7th AD, so they learned from them.As for nowadays, most Chinese write in the western way, and very few publications are vertically composed except for ancient Chinese classics.Japanese didn't go though a period that all tradition values got abandoned like China, so the majority of formal publications are in the old-timey way.Chinese erudite 辜鸿铭 Gu Hongming had a good one:When you read a vertically composed book, your head is nodding, nodding, nodding...but when it's a horizontally composed one, you just keep shaking your head. One grows admiration, and one provokes contempt.
Could someone translate this picture from Chinese to English please?
---------------------edit #2--------------------------- I went to double check this, but it seems both pictures are set to public already. Thank you for the additional info though :) However, even if those are just creator's signatures I would still like to know their meaning. I wouldn't feel right to give someone one of these as a present without all the details I can get^^
Can anyone decypher this chinese text?
It says 年宣大 製德明 This is read top-to-bottom, right-to-left, so it's like this 大明宣德年製 Dàmíng Xuāndé Nián Zhì It means, "Made in the years of Emperor Xuande of the Great Ming Dynasty"
Simplified or Traditional? Horizantal or Vertical? Chinese Tattoo?
Traditional, definitely. Simplified doesn't look as nice as traditional; with traditional you can really tell what the characters are and the meaning. It just, overall, looks a lot better. Also, do it vertical. That is the traditional way chinese characters are written and read in. I've never gotten a tattoo before, so sorry i can't really answer those last questions!
For those of you that can read Chinese, can you tell me what this poster says?
It is a poster printed at the very beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution. It is virtually an advocation of the Revolution and class struggle in China. If you rotate the poster 90 deg clockwise, you will see the following sentences: (On the top) Do not forget the Class Struggle! Annihilate all demons and devils! (We'll) firmly attack the anti-revolutionists! Consolidate the dictatorship of proletariats! (On the soldier's arm) Revolutionist (In the soldier's hand, from top to bottom) supporters of capitalism bad guys anti-revolutionists (The white characters at the bottom right) The Wuhan worker revolutionist army in 1966 (At the bottom) (Win) the class struggle by grasping (the bad guys)! An foreigner may be attracted by the stylized picture. However, for most Chinese people who's been through that period, it is a vivid visual reminder of the carzy history. For most Chinese people who's not, it is nothing but a joke. It is a time no one wants to talk about Cheers
What does native Chinese handwriting look like?
This would be a really fun question for me to answer.Little bit on my background. I’m Singaporean Chinese, L1 is Chinese and L2 is English, but due to my education and work, I’m L2 dominant.With respect to the topic of Chinese handwriting, I would like to quote a video I watched recently, that a font designer made the point that HanZi (Chinese characters) are “simultaneously tools and toys”.I can write Chinese functionally (here is a snapshot of my notes taken during a linguistics lecture):Well, looks really messy, isn’t it?This is what happens when I have to write Chinese fast, and for my own reading only. this is the “tools” aspect of Chinese Characters, very functional and utilitarian.Now, onto the “toys” aspect.I am a pen calligraphy enthusiast, which means, I write calligraphic works using pens (fountain pens and pens meant for daily use, as compared to the more traditional brush calligraphers). If I write Chinese for aesthetic purposes, my handwriting can look like this:(Formal script, left to right format, poem by the Taiwanese poet, Luo Fu)(Formal script, top to bottom, right to left format, Prajna Paramita Sutra)(Slightly cursive script, top to bottom, right to left format, poems by Zhu Shenghao (the guy who first translated most of Shakespeare’s works into Chinese) and his lover, Song Qingru).(Slightly cursive script, poem by Qin Guan)(Seal Script, well-wishing couplet)(Slightly cursive script, poems by Huang Tingjian)2 pages from the Diamond Vajra SutraEDITWho says gel pens aren't good for writing Chinese? I proudly present, my $1.60 muji gel pen (formal script, top to bottom, right to left)Ballpoint pens work too, but because of some limitations, I use them less frequently…EDIT800 upvotes! Wow this is unreal…… thanks for all your support and love for my little hobby……So yeah, Chinese handwriting can vary wildly, even if it’s written by the exact same person….
I wonder if anyone could help me understanding what is written in these two pictures? I received from a friend, but can't read it all.
Chinese is written top to bottom, right to left, so for the first one you read right column, then left column, and for the second one you read it straight right to left.The first scroll says:一九五一年壹月愛麗思華尔德寫（写）The top line means 1951 January. 壹 means one, as does 一; I guess they used both for variety. 一九五一 is just one, nine, five, nine, 年 is year, and 月 is month.The next line is "ai li si hua er de xie". I'm guessing that this is a transcription of "Alice Walker/Walter". Google translate, however, says "hua er de" is "Gould". The last character, 寫（写）means write, so this probably means "written by Alice Walker/Gould". (The first is traditional and second is simplified; the cursive seen on the scroll is like a hybrid of the two.)(In case you are curious, meanings of the characters in Alice Walker are love, beauty, think, flower, grammatical particle meaning this/so/like, virtue.)The second says: 龍馬精神 戊辰年(?)藝 龍馬精神 means "dragon horse spirit" and is an idiom meaning old in age but full of vitality. 戊辰年 means wu chen year, which is a year in the Chinese 60 year calendar corresponding to e.g. 1928, 1988, or 2048. Final two characters are probably a signature; I can't make out the first character but the second is 藝 which means art.Another note: this is probably Chinese rather than Japanese as the "Alice Walker" characters would be gibberish in Japanese. (The meaning would be the same and the pronunciation would be "arieshi hanashikatoku")