WANT!

[kevyn]

Just when I begin to learn to read Chinese, BoingBoing puts the spotlight on this:



"...Chinese characters are cleverly placed over some of the things."

Cool! Definitely WANT!

( Ganked from BoingBoing )

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Just remember that many Chinese characters contain both a semantic element and a phonetic element. That is to say, part of the character will relate to the character's meaning, and another part will be related to how the character is (or more likely, was) pronounced.

In Mandarin, too, there are quite a number of characters that are "borrowed", meaning that they originally had one meaning but are commonly used for another meaning altogether -- see 沒, méi, which originally meant "drown" (and has a water radical), but now means "not" (as in, saying something doesn't exist in 沒有, méiyǒu.

...and the 5-year-old says, "Whutsa Radikle?"

[kevynjacobs.livejournal.com]

As soon as I am educated enough to comprehend what you just said, I will respond.

In the meantime, I just want to look at the pretty pictures for character recognition.

Re: ...and the 5-year-old says, "Whutsa Radikle?"

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

沒

Okay, see the three little "ticks" on the far left of the character? This is a radical. In this case, this is a "water" radical, meaning that the character in this instance has something to do with water.

Other characters with the water radical:

河 - A river
泣 - Crying
洗 - Washing
波 - Waves
海 - Sea

Note that in each case, they all have the same three "ticks," and this indicates having some connection with water. Many radicals operate this way, indicating connections with people, birds, ice, fire, trees ...