Is it common for Chinese characters to have several different readings in Mandarin Chinese?
It is indeed not uncommon for Chinese characters to have different readings. It is important to understand why so I’d list some of the reason here.Different readings are used to distinguish parts of speech or meaning of the character. 80% of the reading differentiations serve this purpose. For example, 将 has 2 commonly used readings, jiāng and jiàng. The former is used to indicate future tense, e.g. 我将要出发 (I will depart), while the latter means “general” as in “将军” (general).A character can have different readings while forming different words. A good example is 薄, which when pronounced bó is an adjective meaning “thin”, when pronounced bó forms a part of certain words like 薄礼(humble gift), and pronounced bò only in the word 薄荷(mint).The reading can be different when a character is used formally. For instance, 给 is usually pronounced gěi colloquially , but in formal usage is jǐ as in 给予 (to offer)Dialects. I’d rather not go into this because I don’t have a good understanding of it either (as a native Mandarin speaker…)Certain characters have archaic pronounciations in Classical Chinese. Not very important either.
I have a character who has some things in common with me. I feel like people will claim she's some sort of self-insert. Is it okay if your characters have some things in common with you or not?
Oscar Wilde once commented on three main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray:Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian is what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.Have you noticed how half the stories written by new writers are about writers, journalists, or screenplay writers? How every other book Stephen King writes is about struggling writers in a new England small town?It is almost inevitable for writers to put themselves, or at least an aspect of their personality into their stories. Even GRRM, who is renowned for his prowess in writing diverse and colorful characters, put Sam in as his writer avatar.I think the trick is two fold:One, do not write yourself as a Mary Sue, and your story as a wish-fulfilling fantasy trip for yourself. Nothing wrong with writing such fantasies, FOR YOURSELF. But most readers wouldn't be very interested in reading about it.Two, be very self-aware of what you're writing. I think this is perhaps the most important one. Having self-awareness often times makes the difference between an interesting and a mediocre story. Be self-aware of the kind of story you're writing, be self-aware of the tropes you're using, make at least one of your characters self-aware of their own personality flaws, either struggle against it or be at peace with it. And if you do want to put yourself in the story, Stephen King style, at least have the self-awareness to laugh at it.Be very conscious and self-aware about your stories, make sure every scene, every dialog, every word serves your plot, or your character, or explaining the world.It's OK to write yourself into your story, you just need to do it consciously.
How do I find common characters between two strings in python?
You can do it using set operations in Python.string1 = 'sathua'string2 = 'hat's1 = set(string1)s2 = set(string2)common_char = s1 & s2 # Letters in both s1 and s2Output: {‘t’, ‘a’, ‘h’}Enjoy Coding…:-)
What did these characters (damon and pythias, achilles patroclus, theseus and pirithous) have in common?
From what I remember, they were all famous pairs of friends or comrades from Greek mythology. Pythias was sentenced to death and asked for permission to return home and settle his affairs before execution. When this was refused, his friend Damon offered to act as a hostage while he was gone, as surety on his return. He made it back in the nick of time, so impressing the man who had sentenced him to death that he was spared. Patroclus was the close friend and comrade of Achilles, and it was his death during the Iliad which spurred Achilles to return to the battle. Pirithous was King of the Lapiths in Thessaly, who became the great friend of the hero Theseus. He had heard of the skill and bravery of Theseus and decided to test it by stealing his herd of cattle. Theseus came out after him, and when the two met they were so impressed with each other that they ended up taking an oath of friendship.
With Chinese characters that have many elements, how can one know, generally speaking, which character contains phonetic information?
The geneal rule of thumb is when it makes a large number of appearances, and almost always in the same few positions on a character, it is a phonetic component.I have actually compiled a (non-exhaustive) list here: Shower Thoughts: The Importance of Consistency in Common Components by Rian Zakaron on On the Topic of Chinese CharactersSuch method of identifying the phonetic component in order to guess what the pronunciation is will not always get you the right answer.Despite the fact that Chinese characters have changed very little over the past 2000 years, the pronunciation has transformed quite drastically.Nevertheless, your guess will be quite close most of the time.So, what would indentifying these words entail and actually be like?Here is an example: 尚, this is the character which I have the most number of entries on my list. Here are the ones that I know of:廠敞躺趟党賞償嘗嚐常當黨擋One thing all of these characters have in common is that they all end in -ang.This is because these character’s lowest common denominator is 尚. But you may have also noticed that there are several characters that use characters with 尚 as a base phonetic component. Such as 償 using 賞, 嚐 using 嘗, and 擋 using 當.These kinds of composition make frequent appearances in phonetic characters (形聲字).But as I mentioned, it does not always work.One notable example I know of is 膩 (nì). It uses the phonetic conponent 貳, which is the number two, and is currently pronounced as èr in Mandarin.This is because over time, 貳’s pronunciation changed, while 膩’s remained the same, which results in their phonemes not lining up.Languages like Japanese, which borrowed a lot of vocabulary from China, have managed to preserve 貳’s pronunciation: 貳 (に or ni).Still, once you get in the hang of things, you may begin to adopt the native speakers’ read-half-of-the-character (字讀半邊) method.And perhaps you will begin noticing things, like how I noticed that 餐 and 粲 share the same phonetic component (歺又) recently.60% of the time, it works all the time, and that is good enough for me.
What are the four types of characters in fiction?
There are four types of characters in fiction as the question states. The four types of characters refer to the way a character changes throughout a story. These four character types are: dynamic, flat, static, and round.Dynamic Character- A dynamic character is one that experiences a change in either their outlook or their personality. This form of change can either be one that is simple to see or could be one that happens subtly to the point where it’s hard to detect when the change started.Flat Character- A character who is flat is one that displays few personality traits and does not experience a change within the story. These characters don’t really have any layers to them, everything about them can be seen on the surface. These characters aren’t fully fleshed out but they are able to impact the story.Static Character- Static characters are characters who don’t develop at all during a story.Round Character- Round characters are characters who happen to be fully fleshed out. These characters will have a distinct personality, background, and motives.
What do Jack The Ripper and Winnie The Pooh have in common ?
they both killed prostitutes