The Brain Dump

I added two photo albums to the blog--one for Pics o' the Week and another as my first batch of pictures from China. Unfortunately, there seem to be some technical errors with them. With the China one, for instance, when you go inside it, you can see the thumbnails for all the pictures but when you click on one to magnify it you only get a blank box. You can see most of them in the slideshow, but for whatever reason you can't see the last seven. It's all very frustrating. I'll try to get it fixed but until then . . . here are some nice thumbnails for you to look at!

The Pic o' the Week will continue now that I'm relatively settled and blogging on a regular basis.

OK, time for bed. G'night!

You never quite realize how much you take something for granted until it's taken away. Let's say, for instance . . . literacy. Signs, books, directions--no problem! Yeah, well . . . move to China. Suddenly you're confronted with not letters, but doodles! Doodles everywhere! And you have no idea what anything means.

Enter: Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition

This tasty little book gives the definition, pronunciation, and stroke order diagram for each of the 3,000+ "frequently used" characters in China. That's right--3,000+. It recommends learning seven a day, as that's the rate of the average college student, I think is what it said. I dunno, works for me. So I've started doing that.

The Chinese writing system is based not on letters, but special characters called radicals. Sometimes these radicals are words in and of themselves, like 已 (yi3, "to twist"). Others are only used in combination with other radicals. "How many radicals are there?" you ask. Well lucky for you the Chinese simplified their characters in 1959, making it easier to learn. That means there are only 226 distinct radicals (and then a few "leftovers") to memorize. Yippee!

What's more, the logic behind the writing system is based on six different kinds of "meaning determinates." Depending on the character, you may be looking at a:

1) Picture - These characters are a pictorial representation of what they mean--though, due to the simplification process from 1959, many of the characters no longer look anything like what they are supposed to. It's like Pictionary but without the reference card!

2) Symbols - These happy characters are stand-ins for concepts.

3) Sound Loans - Sometimes characters look and sound exactly the same but have completely and totally different meanings. I guess the Chinese were running low on noises and pictures to make.

4) Sound-meaning Compounds - These two-part characters use one part for meaning and the other for sound. Similar to sound loans but more complicated!

5) Meaning-meaning Compounds - These characters combine two previously separate characters into one really complicated character and derive its meaning from what this doodle book insists is a kind of "logic." For instance, when you take 女 (nü3), which means "woman," and 子 (zi3), which means "child," and cram them together for 好, you logically get the character for (hao3) "to be well, good; to consider good, to like, to love." It's just so damned logical!

6) Reclarified Compounds - Sometimes Chinese gets a little carried away with loaning characters sounds or meanings or this or that from other characters and people start to get confused. That's when a nice and totally random scribe would step in and add things to characters to help distinguish them and control their meanings. In this way, you can get sound-meaning-meaning compounds--like cloning a clone. What could go wrong!

You'll be relieved to know that any character you see could derive its logical meaning from any of the six methods above--we wouldn't want things too get to easy now, would we? But enough praising the Chinese for their logical and easy-to-learn writing system. Let's get to the characters! I thought I'd share the ones I'm learning with you, so you could come along for the journey if you wanted to. I've already been at this for a while, so I'll only include the first weeks characters. Tomorrow I'll post the rest. Here we go:

一 - yi1 ("one")
丿 - pie3 ("left")
女 - nü3 ("woman/female")
人 - ren2 ("person/human being")
二 - er4 ("two")
三 - san3 ("three")
十 - shi2 ("ten")

jiong1 - ("borders") I couldn't type the character for this one because it never appears as an independent character, it's only a radical that modifies other characters. Doesn't mean you don't have to learn it though!
囗 - wei3 ("to surround")
力 - li4 ("strength")
男 - nan2 ("man/male")
丨 - shu4 ("downstroke")
ren2 - ("person") I couldn't make the character here either, because this is a side-radical--only used with others
已 - yi3 ("to twist")

[grass radical] - This one doesn't even have a pronunciation.
艺 - yi4 ("skill/art")
亿 - yi4 ("one hundred million")
xin1 - (side-heart radical)
忆 - yi4 ("to remember")
[back-turned stroke] - See [grass radical]
也 - ye3 ("also")

她 - ta1 ("she/her")
他 - ta1 ("he/him")
门 - men2 ("gate")
们 - men2 ([pluralizing suffix]) You tack this onto nouns to make them plural
手 - shou3 ("hand")
shou3 - (side-hand radical)
弋 - yi4 ("dart")

戈 - ge1 ("lance")
我 - wo3 ("I/me")
找 - zhao3 ("to visit/to look for/to make change")
亠 - tou2 ("lid")
mi4 - (crown radical, doesn't appear by itself)
小 - xiao3 ("small")
你 - ni3 ("you")

That's all thirty-five for the first week. And remember: That's more characters than English has letters--and you still won't be able to read any signs or any books after you learn them all.

Isn't Chinese fun?