I have heard descriptions of Chinese characters that they are not so much ideographic as weakly phonetic, i.e., characters that have similar elements tend to have similar pronunciations.
That may be true, but the ideographic basis of many characters cannot be denied. Here are some of the interesting things I've learnt. After we finish reading this post, let's come back and see how many characters we can recognise on the palace wall of the Forbidden City in Beijing.
I've always wondered what this is saying!
Let's start!
1. The word for country is 国 guó.
Why does this character mean country?
Let's analyse this step by step.
This is the character for 1: 一 yī
This is the character for 2: 二 èr
This is the character for 3: 三 sān
So far, so good.
Now what could this character mean? 王 wáng
It doesn't mean 4. (That's 四 sì.)
王 wáng means king or monarch. That's because the king is believed to unite heaven, earth and mankind, hence the vertical line joining the three horizontal ones. Another theory has it that the symbol resembles the markings on the forehead of a tiger, which is associated with royalty.
Now consider the character 玉 yù. This means "jade", and it may be puzzling until we remember that the seal of the Chinese emperor was traditionally made of jade. The ideograph refers to the mark of the monarch.
And that finally explains the ideograph for country. 国 guó has a box around the character for jade, and this represents the borders within which the monarch's seal holds sway, i.e., the country.
2. The word for woman (female) is 女 nǚ.(The tone symbol is a combination of an umlaut and a falling-rising tone.)
Most words associated with the female gender have this character as an element.
She - 她 tā
Mother - 妈妈 māmā
Older sister - 姐姐 jiějiě
Younger sister - 妹妹 mèimèi
(Confusingly for Hindi speakers, the word 弟弟 dìdì means younger brother, not older sister!)
Some other derivatives of this character are amusing.
When the character for "woman" is combined with that of "child", the result is 好 hǎo, which means "good". (Family values at work!)
When the character for "woman" is shown with a symbolic roof over her head, the result is 安 ān, which means "safe". "Woman under roof" = "safe"!
Whenever you see the character 安 ān, you can (safely) guess that some aspect of safety or security is being discussed.
For example, during the recent media sensation over the supposed defection of a Chinese official called Dong Jingwei, the following tweet was making the rounds.
Notice the characters 国安 in this tweet? We know both these characters! They're guó and ān, the characters for "country" and "safe". Sure enough, it turns out that Dong Jingwei was the vice minister for state security.
3. The word for man (male) is 男 nán. Where does this come from?
Well, the character 田 tián means "field", and the character 力 lì means "strength". In other words, a man is one who has the strength to plough a field.
This is a paddy field, which certainly looks like 田 tián "field".
And I guess this is a good representation of "strength" 力 lì - a lunge.
4. The word for "centre" is 中 zhōng, which is visually evocative, since the vertical line slices right through the middle of the rectangle.
That explains why the ideograph for China is 中国 zhōng-guó - The Middle Kingdom.
5. The word for person is 人 rén. It's a stylised stick figure of a person, all right.
Now imagine a person stretching their arms wide. That gives us the character 大 dà, which means "big" or "great".
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Now if you stretch something above the symbol for "big", that gives you 天 tiān, which means the "sky" or "heaven". (Something big above.) It also means "day", because one can presumably see the sky above during the day.
Advanced quiz: Can you now read the word 天安门? Hint: the last character is pronounced mén, and means "gate". It's a simplified form of the traditional character 門, which visually resembles the saloon doors of old Westerns.
6.
The word for "sun" is 日 rì, and that is why Japan is represented by 日本 rì-běn. It's the land of the rising sun, after all.
The word for "moon" is 月 yuè. It also means "month", which is roughly equal to a lunar cycle. (Come to think of it, the English word "month" also comes from "moon".)
Combine these two characters into a new one to get 明 míng, which means "bright". The ancients probably couldn't imagine anything brighter than the sun and the moon together.
If you now put this character together with the character for "day", you get 明天 míng-tiān, which means "tomorrow", literally a sun and a moon after today.
Now go back and check out the writing on the palace wall of the Forbidden City. It says "Long Live the People's Republic of China" (中华人民共和国万岁; zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó wànsuì)" on the left, and "Long Live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples" (世界人民大团结万岁; shìjiè rénmín dà tuánjié wànsuì)" on the right.
We already know four of these characters now - 中 zhōng, 人 rén, 国 guó, and 大 dà.
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