Chinese Characters EXPLAINED
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✍️ SYNOPSIS: Chinese Characters are not just random strokes, but are created in a (somewhat) systematic way. Learn about the different constructions of Chinese characters and the pattern that 80% of Chinese characters all follow!
📍TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 || Misconceptions about Hanzi
1:07 || What is Liushu? (六书)
1:44 || 4 Ways Characters are Created
3:47 || italki
5:15 || 2 Ways Characters are Used
6:55 || How 80% of Characters are Constructed
8:55 || Problems
10:25 || Advantages
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📚 REFERENCES:
Types of Characters: www.mandarinblueprint.com/blo...
studycli.org/chinese-characte...
Ancient dictionary (说文解字): new.qq.com/rain/a/20200313A0F...
Ancient weapon (我): baike.baidu.com/item/我/138822...
六书 (Chinese sources): zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/137265755
www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Rv4...
⚠️ NOTES:
1) All historical examples of Hanzi writing are taken from this site: www.zdic.net
2) Mutually explanatory characters are sometimes called "transfer characters".
3) Technically I should have said "loaned character" [9:46]
4) Most elements are metals, but you can see that all the gases are basically composites of the "air" character (气) and a phonetic component. [10:50]
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✅ Learn 150+ languages with quality native-speaking teachers on italki🎉. Buy $10 get $5 for free for your first lesson using my code AB5: Web: go.italki.com/abchinesemay App: italki.app.link/abchinesemay Hey guys! Do you like this style of videos? I used very little music and sound effect this time around and animated everything. I would love to know your thoughts! Also, if you also want to take a lesson with Paul's teacher in the video, here's her profile: www.italki.com/en/teacher/8865589/chinese
专注字 are also called "transfer characters" in English
can't learn a pictophonetic unless you first learned the 独体字。 you unknowingly reiterate the same error which keeps westerners ignorant: pictophones are largest % but least frequent and it is totally a mistake to focus on them first. Do pictographsand other stand-alone 独体字 first。
I'm a beginner in Chinese but my guess would be "he's done a good job of explaining the big picture, [some of] the general concepts and specially the Semantic-Phonetic compounds. What you said reminded me of a dialogue I had with an old and learned relative of mine: me: my cat understands what I tell him "come, go out, jump down, don't do that, also has learned to open doors to get into rooms he shouldn't get but does it discretely without dropping anything cause he knows I don't like it, but he still has difficulty with concept of 'shadows' ! He can't figure out which is a real object and which is a shadow! my relative: Oh! For that first you have to explain 'wave-particle duality' of light to your cat! @@QuizmasterLaw
This writing system is dumb.
I can’t imagine how long you took to edit this video… So much information in one video! Amazing✨
A lot, but not as much as our collaboration video 😂
Thank you for your effort. I think a shortcoming in your explanation is the use of simplified characters. Traditional characters, even though they're much more complex, they give you a better view of the different possible origins.
@@lutchbizin6420 He does use traditional characters to illustrate...
@@ABChinesethanks for your time and effort. It means a lot
😲! Grace is here too! 😀(I've watched some of her videos too!) {about Chinese sounds, sh, x, ... }
I've learnt more in ten minutes than I have a trimester. Fantastic work, please do more of this style video
I actually do recommend guessing the pronunciation of every Chinese character you don’t know using the semantic-phonetic method, that’s exactly how Chinese kiddos grow their vocabulary. Reading half a character(the phonetic half) is very common among Chinese kids. Guessing before knowing helps understanding and is incredibly fun, just make silly mistakes and correct yourself or luckily enough, corrected by teachers, co-learners and friends.
Notice how 我 looks very similar to the combination of two characters 手 and 戈. This may indeed potentially be the origin of the meaning behind the history of the character. This character is indeed a cognate of another historic character that represents “I”. 吾 or 吾人was used by Japanese and Chinese people prior to favoring 我. By that principle, the character (and the compound 言語) for language “語” has the radical and character of speech “言” and the right hand side symbolizes I “吾” probably having something to do with “My speech” or “I speak” referring to first person’s point of view of language. Fascinating considering that the character 我 has little to do with the character for language.
Bring 吾 back
I don't know about China but Japan has a lot of etiquette around how you referrer to yourself and others. There are many ways to say the word "I" in Japanese that show different levels of respect so I imagine the common way just evolved over time. This character "我" in modern Japanese is either used in words relating to oneself with some arrogance/ego, or by an ancient/alien being speaking about themselves. Some fictional anime characters still say "I" like this to show they're not from our world. From what you said, It sounds like 吾 is very logical and literal. However I imagine there are some social reasons why they moved away from that very simple way of refereeing to oneself. One theory for "我", is that it depicts an individual holding the weapon to stand up for themselves and defend their life. A bit dramatic, but perhaps shows the importance of your own voice during that era. Likewise, "俺" could be interpreted as 亻+ 奄 meaning an individual who is so important he doesn't just represent himself, but everyone else too. It's seen as pretty arrogant to talk like this but it's common use for men in Japan. The polite form, "私" means you're speaking in a way that's private/personal to you. It emphasizes modesty as an individual and is often the most soft/feminine way to talk. It might sound cooler to be the warrior with the spear, or the guy speaking on behalf of group, but there's a time and place. Using the right pronoun can say a lot about the context or personality you wish to portray. I think this why they changed it over time.
@@TheAwesomeAccount You’re absolutely correct about the character for “我” in modern Japanese. This was probably an intermediate form prior to modern Japanese, while Chinese did stick with the character. Because this character has the tendency to be boastful of ego, it tends to lead towards a very niche application in Japanese. For example, the characters used for “Selfish” using Kanji are “我儘” or in hiragana, “わがまま”. As for “私”, this character still represents “Private” in Chinese, where women in Japan predominantly use this character these days (it’s technically gender neutral, but men prefer to use a different character in Japan. More on this later). Corrupted forms include “わたくし” and “あたし”, which are exclusively feminine. That said, Japanese people tend to prefer using the term for “oneself” or “自分” as this is the most accepted form of gender neutrality. As for the masculine sounding form, we have “俺” and “僕”. For the former, this can used to refer to oneself as being very masculine, while the latter refers to being a literal slave in Chinese. In this context, I would assume that “僕” refers specifically to being a slave or of subservience to another in terms of manners. In modern Cantonese, this term of “僕街” literally refers to being subservient to the streets and is considered to be highly taboo (it’s profane).
我 was the name of an ancient weapon no longer being used after Qin dynasty.
@@render6671吾 is often used in old Chinese texts, but it is used commonly as a radical. For example, in Cantonese (Chinese dialect), 唔 means "not". 唔知道 means "don't know", and 唔同 means "not the same" (aka different).
Actually there is an origin to the word 我 。 it is a combination of hand 手 and dagger-axe 戈 . Because chinese words originated thousands of years ago, it is based on the cultural settings during that period. Most of the ancient chinese people are either a farmer/peasant or a soldier , farmers used farming tools that looks like pickaxe/rake and soldiers used spears. That is why they called themselves 我。The emperor on the other hand used a different pronoun because he didnt need to farm or go to war. The emperor called himself 朕。
When I was studying I found China has lots of first person pronouns at one point in history it was honestly so shocking lol.
Before Qin shihuang, the first emperor, everyone can use 朕 to call him/her self
@@alexandrahenderson4368yes, 朕，孤，寡人，吾，在下，鄙人，某，我，本人，洒家， all means me, lol
As a young man,you possess so much explanation capabilities ,fluency in English, wish you for great wisdom 🎉
I predict that this video will go viral, you deserve more subscribers, and the quality of the content you've made has been better and better. Well done
Thanks bro! 🥹🥹🥹
I'm working with an OLD brain and trying to teach it NEW things! Learning Chinese is one of those things. This is VERY helpful info 😊 Now i just have to retain it! 😉
I love learning the background of the radical, thanks for the video
Respect to you man. I justbstarted learning characters few days ago. Very helpful video. 👏👏
考 is still being used as 老, mainly on tomb stone, (顯考 for father, 顯妣 for mother).
如丧考妣
考is not used as老, it is used to describe the father has done a great job as a father. The same goes to 妣, she has done a great job as a mother.《考工记》：“考，成也；妣，媲也。” Chinese has the tradition of making conclusion of a person's life using few words when the person died. 盖棺定论 and this belongs to that tradition.
Nicely explained & technical. Good job. Thank you so much!!
I started taking Chinese lessons super young (six-ish) and took it for roughly nine years! So I'm definitely not a beginner, and I learned it when my brain was the most open to new languages (which usually ends in me knowing things that teachers never explicitly taught) but I also live in America, and outside of class I almost never hear the language 😢 So you can imagine the confusion that happens when I think to myself "it probably is a "bao" esque word or rhymes or something" or maybe "huh, this word probably has something to do with mouths. Like singing or eating" and then I go... "How do I know that???" And wonder to myself for the next three minutes Thanks for making this video! You and Grace are super helpful in trying to retain my Chinese from class!
Haha 太厉害了！
Thank you so much for this video. I've been trying to explain to people (native speakers included) that the Semantic Phoenetic Compound logic, while making sense most of the time, is still an incredibly flawed system and that the root cause is that most of these sounds were from classical chinese and do not really fit modern Chinese topolects. This video will make it much easier to show them what I mean exactly.
Hello, I am a Chinese native speaker and I knew the semantic and phoenetic compound before the video released, however I don't agree with that it is an incredibly flawed sysytem. flawed, yes, every writing system is falwed, incredibly, not agree. The sounds have changed from classical chinese to modern chinese, but it doesn't matter. Chinese characters is logograph characters, the most of sounds is being changed over last 3000 years, even the sounds are quite different in the different Chinese dialects area right now. The Chinese dialects speakers don't say the Semantic Phoenetic Compound is a flawed system just because the sounds changed as time going and area changing.
It is an incredible* system.
As informative as always. Thank you!
This is a video to review time to time. Helps a lot! 👊
This is Liquid gold right here, succinctly summarized and a must share with chinese learners.
Good quality videos, you deserve more support
These videos always make me learn a few characters forever, when you make them make sense like that I can't forget!
That's awesome to hear! 🥳
I've tutored Dutch on Italki and explored over almost 30 languages and it really is a great tool to add to your language learning toolkit. Good luck 😊😊😊
I'm a beginner so I hope I can carry this with me on my journey 😊 You're amazing.
So informative! 多谢
Great content! A lot of good info for a beginner or intermediate level student to be familiar with.
This video is so well made and useful. Thank you 😊 😉
Amazing work🎉🎉 yes once my laoshi told me about radicals, I can determine the meaning but still dunno how to read it. At least I know what it means. Thanks for this video, the animation and explanation just like usual, simple yet 'meaty'.
This is one of the best explanations about Chinese characters I've seen on KZhead so far.My biggest problem with 形聲字 is that the connections of phonetic componunds are based on old Chinese pronunciation which is very different from modern Mandarin, thus phonetic components in some characters don't make sense when learned with modern Mandarin pronunciation.For example, the phonetic component in 江(jiāng) is 工(gōng) which sounds nothing like jiāng, but in old Chinese these 2 characters had similar pronunciations.
In many southern dialects, the pronunciation of Jiang is gang, and the south retains more ancient sounds than the north.
I'm not even learning Chinese 😅 but this was super interesting and very well presented! 😃Well done!
Thank you!
This video helped a lot! Thank you! 🙂
Thanks for this great video :) I actually didn't really pay that much attention to the theory of semantics and phonetics but I often have a hunch on how an unknown character might be pronounced and I am often right with that. For now I can read and type chinese characters but I actually don't really remember most of the characters very clearly even though I can recognize them somehow. I have been planing to pay more attention to radicals while trying to learn how to actually write Chinese and the knowledge about semantic and phonetic compounds included in this video seems to be very helpful for my approach :)
Fantastic video!!
Thank you so much for your effort, I appreciate it 💙
Thank you for the video!!
What a great channel! Thank you. I just discovered it and subscribed. I lived in Beijing for 5 years and traded lessons with my Chinese masters students. I learned around 400 characters and started by trying to read signs. Then I began sending email to students in Chinese. We adopted a little baby girl from Jiangzi province and went back home to Australia in 2010. Sadly I’ve forgotten the characters because I never needed to use them, but I want to get back into it again. This channel will help me I’m sure. Thanks once again. ❤️
You don't have to go back to China again. Australia is filled with Chinese you can learn Chinese in China Town there🤣
As a Korean who learning chinese hanzi this is so use full... appreciate this 🎉
Awesome video! ❤
myyy goooshhh.... Thank you for these explanations !!
I wish I knew this earlier, just before started learning Chinese. Everyone told me about pictographs, so by the time I learned about other orders of creating characters it was too late to go back. :D Thank you for the video though! Cheers!
Better late than never! Hope this info helps you;)
This video is really awesome. Chinese is my mother tongue but I actually quite less behind it, such as those classifications. I believe it would be useful for beginners. Thank you!
this really gave me hope
Good video. The phono-semantic principle is the main reason that Chinese characters become easier and easier the more you know: because you can more easily recognize sound components the more characters you know, and they mutually reinforce each other. Anecdotally, once you know about 3000 character, almost every single new character is completely trivial to learn, and it becomes harder and harder to forget ones you have already learned. It's also the main reason simplified Chinese is, contrary to popular belief, no easier to learn than traditional (and perhaps even more difficult). You touched on this in the video with 難 (similar pronunciation to 漢, 嘆, etc.), but there are so many simplified characters which just delete sound components for absolutely no reason other than to reduce stroke count and replace them with (e.g.) cursive versions, which from the perspective of the learner, are basically just random meaningless shapes. See also: 導导, 層层, 動动, 權权, 歡欢, 團团... Or they replace a sound component with another sound component, which may make the character faster to write, but not necessarily easier to memorize (運运, 讓让, etc.). Or just do graphical simplifications which don't save any real time in the long run (if you already have to learn 言 in simplified Chinese to write 語言, then it takes no additional time to learn to write 語 instead of 语. It takes slightly longer to write by hand, but no additional time to memorize).
This is exactly why I always had the impression that the people spearheading the simplification process fundamentally misunderstood what actually makes Chinese writing difficult. And it also explains why the second round of simplification never got finalized, because all it did was reduce the number of strokes even further. You could even argue the reduced number of strokes actually makes the characters harder to memorize, since the pictograhic components would become even more abstract and less recognizable as the thing they're meant to represent than they already are. For example 言 could at least be visualized as a mouth emitting sound waves, but the simplified radical version of it is completely incomprehensible. This brings me to my next point, which is that a lot of characters fundamentally do not look like what they represent. Even with a relatively simple character like 月, how does that in any way resemble the moon? Or how does 山 resemble a mountain? Surely ☽︎ and △ would be more immediately recognizable, no? So if we're already meant to remember somewhat arbitrary looking characters, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to focus on reducing the amount of unique components from which more complex characters are built? And then also bring the characters in line so that they follow the phono-semantic principle more consistently? Perhaps even introduce it where it didn't before. Removing the 道 from 導 and replacing it with 巳 makes no sense, neither from a semantic nor from a pronunciation point of view. It might've made more sense to simplify 道 first and then apply the exact same simplification to 導 as well afterwards. All the while we have inconsistencies like 先 (xian) being used in 选 (xuan) when 宣 (xuan) exists, which already gets used in multiple characters which are all pronounced "xuan". Maybe it would've made it look too much like 道, but then that would've been a good motivation to simplify that. Perhaps by replacing the 首 part with 刀. Not only would it have given a phonetic link between the shape and the sound, it also would've been easy to come up with a story. Instead of "the first (or chief) to walk along a road creates a path" it would be "a warrior carrying a sword/knife creates his own path" or something. Where I do appreciate the simplified characters though is in the fact that they are less visually cluttered, making them more easily identifiable at a glance.
@@playtypus4592 It seems to be a mix of historical integrity and a wibble-shwab of cursive gibberish. I still question, to ðis day, why ðey þought making cursive ðe official Clerical Script was a good idea.
Well, what can we do? all mainland chinese use simplified nowadays. Also, most mainland chinese prefer simplified than traditional btw.
@@menonalevi6984 wow, absolutely shocking that mainland Chinese people prefer the system that was taught to them in school and is the one they are exposed to 99.9% of the time
I use Chinese to write the reply. 简体字是有缺点不错，但是你这段话部分是为了反对而反对， 1你说繁体字好记，看下“憂鬱的台灣烏龜盪鞦韆”好记还是“忧郁的台湾乌龟荡秋千”好记，拿一些挑选过的简化来证明繁体字好记，先有目标再找论据是吧？台湾学生写完“憂鬱”恐怕真的忧郁了吧 而且言的简化偏旁只用记住一次，后面言字旁的都可以马上认出来。 2 我可是知道不少台湾学生记笔记为了快，直接写简体的，为什么，因为繁体笔画太繁多，写得太慢，还没写完这个字，老师已经讲下个话题了。 对了连蔡英文手写好几个都直接写简体，她总不能因为觉得繁体比简体好记好写才写简体吧？ 你可以说有电脑手机，你手机会不会坏，会不会没电，上课会不会不让用手机，会不会学生小家长不让买，但是你一定能得到笔和纸 所以你过分强调了简体的坏处，但是故意忽略了更多繁体的缺点，比如繁体比简体好记都能选择性地来举例，只是为了证明所谓的“繁体比简体好记”。 你不用震惊大陆学生要学简体，我很乐意学简体，另外（这个不是主要原因）你看下外国学生学中文是学简体字还是繁体字，我只用举出憂鬱两个字就直接劝退了吧。 简化就是大势所趋，简化中出现的不好的情况比如 合并字：干，发，之类的应该改正，简化地不好的应该保留或者重新设计，比如龍，漢，鳳，但是这不是你用来抱着繁体字秀优越的原因。
Well explained, though 8:14 - The insect definition of 虫 probably came way later, with the character originally used to describe all types of critters/small creatures. Explains why it's used for a lot of small reptiles, arachnids, crustaceans, etc. Crocodiles are classified as fish tho, which makes sense but is funny to me
This is amazing! I've seen Chinese "sound out" characters and it never made sense. Now it does! My fave is when I asked how they know characters for the name of Western celebrities and I liked that explanation, too.
The longest name in Morning Musume is Sayumi Michishige(5 characters)! Kanji:Michishige Sa(from Risa Niigaki) Yu(from Yuki Kashiwagi,AKB48 Mi(from Nozomi Tsuji and AKB48 Tomomi Itano)
Always great content. 👍🏻
Hope somebody recommend my videos to those who are interested in Chinese. I love creating funny way of teaching Chinese. I believe it can help those who want to learn Chinese. Chinese characters still retain their pictographic origins. Knowing what the characters look like originally can help understand the meanings and remember them. I’ve spent about 100,000 hours studying English humor and Western culture, and many years studying Chinese culture and jokes. My native language is Chinese.
Wait, why does 烧酒 not make sense for soju? In german we literally have both "Branntwein" or burned-wine and also "Weinbrand" or wine-brand (probably closer to brandy, or i guess chinese 烧酒 / 白酒). This sounded so intuitive to me😢
Oh no no no, I meant "soju" as an English word makes no sense in English unless you look at its Korean and Chinese origins.
@@ABChinese Ah! Thanks! I misunderstood that :)
Thank you!😮❤
finally a good video about Chinese characters. thanks for not glossong over a lot of stuff like other creators do.
There are some comments saying that there is a 手(hand) holding 戈(weapon) in the word 我, they are wrong, your explanation is correct, the whole of 我 is a weapon. In oracle bone scripts, 我 was used as ours (instead of me), to represent “our country”, which needed to be defended, like 國(country) has 戈 (weapon) in it too.
A video on 我 kzhead.info/sun/f6meabisnKyEqYU/bejne.html&si=wqAnTSv8JV4TxYTE
A video on 國 kzhead.info/sun/ZZmMedeorJ9tY30/bejne.html&si=yHDlc5sjTjJpmtjx
Thank you so much.
Thank you
Thanks a lot.
This video is one of the best videos you've made (maybe it's the best one among I've seen from yours.) And it's really really really good compared to the ones 'out there' that I've seen. (Chinese_thumbs_up_symbol) !
Thank you! I thought it was pretty good too ☺️
this guy makes me fall in love with Chinese
Interesting that there is a semi-phonetic component to Chinese characters. I always thought they had zero phonetic components being meaning first. Being the complete opposite to "Western writing" that date back to the Egyptian Hieroglyphics (eg. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, Coptic etc) which are all phonetic first and meaning second.
The hieroglyphs themselves are (or at least were originally) meaning-first, though.
@@fab006 True at first but later on they acted like Greek letters. A symbol had a name and the first sound in that name was the sound that symbol made. That idea was passed on to the Middle East then to Greece then to the rest of Europe as the Latin & Cyrillic alphabets.
When i first started learning chinese back in kindergarten, i never thought of the characters as pictures but just characters with their very own meaning. The combination of characters can change its meaning.
The fact we get this for free is mind-blowing to me!
早上好 老师
This video means alot to beginners like me. Thanks
I’ve made many videos teaching Chinese language vividly and in a funny way. I hope you can recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese. I hope more people can learn Chinese to get comprehensive firsthand information about China and most likely seek more job opportunities.
@@Henry-teach-Chinese-in-jokes Yo i just have checked out your channel, your videos are pretty informative and easy to learn. However if you could adjust your ascent more definitive it would be better
Thanks! Peace on!
Absolutely excellent! Thank you so very much! Ming Ming Bye Bye
Spoken Chinese always just sounds to me like someone reacting to either a bad taste/smell or the sounds you make watching sports when your team fucks up or the refs blow a call 😂
This is quality teaching my friend, subscribed the other are just selling pretty face, you give knowledge
Great video. One question: am I right in assuming that characters of ALL categories are made up of pictographs and/ or ideographs, but that the pictographs and ideographs that a character is made up of either have their original function or are used to indicate a reading? Which would mean that in order to assimilate the visual aspect of characters, you´d "only" have to learn all the pictographs and ideographs.
Thanks! I had guessed the Wo had something to do with a weapon, partially from looking at the radical list. I don't know enough characters ye,t I am working on it, to even come close to guessing the phonetic components.
Wow, I never knew that about 我. I wonder how it eventually became what it is today. Really fascinating content and I agree that it’s well-presented.
Thanks for always coming by!
As a native Chinese speaker, this video really provides such a clear and meaningful explanation!
mandarin native speaker, been learning and using hanzi since first grade, still learning chinese characters on ur channel😭😭
I'm currently not even learning chinese and wanting to learn korean instead however chinese is such an interesting language that it makes me want to pick it up and learn it right now ahah
I've gotten interested in 汉字 when I started learning japanese 漢字. Chinese ideograms are really interesting, and I like how some characters' meaning can be guessed by just looking at the radical, or at least tell what it's related to.
"japanese chinese characters" overall Chinese
@@jcn268 Japanese Kanji is Chinese script. English, Spanish, French, German, and the rest of the European languages use the Latin alphabet script.
We Chinese people often joke that 沙漠 'desert' has no relationship with water and both of the characters having the water radical 氵. But I think it can be explained quite easily that 沙 means sand and it is by the sea 海 or beach/coast 滩 and it is an ideograph as well meaning 氵/水 is 少 (lack), hence 'lack of water' and I just looked up and found an explanation from 《说文解字》(a famous book) that 漠 is used to describe the quicksand flowing, therefore 沙漠 is explained.
@@mhz5749 It's interesting how ideograms work, even though sometimes they seem they don't have relationship with the thing they're describing, their parts can explain the meaning 😅
I knew I wouldn't particularly learn anything watching this video, but i always have to watch these just for the high quality animations
OMG thanks haha but these are just really basic animations (I made them all in keynote)
這是一個正確的學習漢字的方法 先了解 我 是 人。。。謝謝!
Awesome! It just lacks the information that some sound components come from older Chinese, like 生 (sheng) that gives the sound "xing" like in 姓，性，星 or like 真 (zhen) that gives the sound "dian" in characters like 颠 and 滇.
As a Chinese,I even don’t about it. You are awesome
Hi! Id there any list available of components that appear very frequently as the phonetic component? Thanks in advance for any hints!
Awesome video man!! For the qing characters I see two at the end have exactly the same pronunciation. I guess Chinese understand it according to the context, there's no misunderstanding possible, right?
Right, no different than homophones in English!
At 7:37 in this youtube video, you may have answered a question I had (though it might not actually be the right answer) A game series that I enjoy is called 世界樹の迷宮 . "labyrinth of the world tree" is what it translates to, the localizers gave it the name Etrian oddysee. I wondered why it used the kanji 樹 (ju) for tree, I had seen it in other anime and games. Normally, in the vast majority of cases 木 (ki) is the word for tree in Japanese. Though, I've just learned from the video that 木 only means wood in Chinese. So I'm guesing that because the tree being referenced here is a grand tree, Yggdrasil from Nordic myth, that the Japanese are being more respectful by using the more proper character for tree?
yes we differentiate the two characters, you would say 木头 for wood by itself
The original meaning of 木 in ancient times is tree and wood, or let's put it this way, wood and tree are same thing in the eyes of our ancestors 😂
note that 难/難 actually has a phonetic component on the right size instead.
1:21 Vegeta, what does the Scour say about the number of Chinese characters? *IT'S OVER 9000!!*
But I sometimes think it is good for people who know simplified Chinese to also learn traditional Chinese to get the fuller meaning. Like 协 vs 協 where the 3 力 unites together representing unity in strength. Or even 爱 where traditional 愛 has a heart 心 in it. It's like I love with my heart. Just a food for thought.
Wow. 😮
Chinese is so fascinating.
你好 sir, can you review TOFU learn? It's been recommended to me & it's working out so far
10:50 Actually, the periodic table only has 4 radicals, there's 金、气、石and水
how is stone in a perodic table?
@@equilibrum999 solid nonmetal
Very good explanation, thank you so much! Another thing I wonder is, how do native Chinese people type? I once asked my Chinese friend to type out something for me (on my pinyin keyboard) but they couldn't, they said they don't actually know pinyin and use the keyboard with radicals or something. Could you make a video to explain that?
Oooo, I don’t know too much about that. Most people use pinyin to type but there are a couple alternative methods that use strokes.
they might be from Taiwan and use bopomofo which is falling out of use lately
@@danielzhang1916 yes that's it. They are Taiwanese. Now I know what it's called. Thanks !!!
Honestly, Chinese people rarely uses this way in daily life because they just depend more on their memory. The only time they use this is for words they forgot or don't understand and then procced to make a educated guess.
Why, for example the fish radical, was a shark-fish BELOW the other while the whale, carp, and cod were to the left?
Weird question: did you go to Ball State? Noticed the Daily News w/Jim Davis on the wall.
Yes haha, 2015-18
@@ABChinese small world! Same here. Stayed there in 05. Used to run the Greeks Pizza in the village!
Nice!@@JopeyPajatrick
Is the semantic usually on the left and the phonetic on the right?
Usually, but not always
Hello, I want to ask about something. Does it also work for other character like Japanese kanji? Or it uses different framework?
Kanji is Chinese characters originally but I know that they were modified and simplified by the Japanese in their own way, and I don’t know much about what they did.
sorry if my question made a misconceptio, and thanks for the answer. i appreciate that.
Yep, although most Kanji used today are directly borrowed from Chinese characters. The Kanji that the Japanese created themselves (kokuji) mostly also follow the rules that were originally used to make Hanzi. A clever example is 'tsugi' - 辻, which combined the movement radical with a cross 十 to mean crossroads or an intersection
Wouldn't the character for "I" be a combination of hand (手) on the left and a war-scythe (戈/ge) on the right symbolizing your role in an agricultural society as a farmer-soldier? Also the picture you used for the 戈 isn't that representative, most 戈's look more like scythe blades. Another thing, the word for "hard" "難/naan" in traditional form looks like "漢/Han" (ethnic group AND a man 男子漢), so perhaps it was "loaned" because you're asking who that man is? (誰)
it seems like both were borrowed just for the sound and the 手戈 one is folk etymology, the oracle form is more similar to the blade shown in the video
The picture is of a 我 not 戈。Hope that clears it up
As said above, 我 has no “hand” in it. It was a ceremonial weapon (sometimes also used in wars), but it lost its original meaning very quickly as the need for saying “I” was much more important. With 難, the left part is indeed the phonetic component, just like in 漢. This component originally was a shaman who was praying for rain with his mouth open wide (this character often also has a fire at the bottom to represent a sacrifice made from a shaman).
@@ABChinese Haha, a bronze 我 XD
8:14 I was thinking about it when I saw the fish character being used for whale. haha
interesting
I do find myself picking apart a word to determine meaning. Works well for multiple choice. Wished there were spacing between words. It really kicks up the difficulty level for beginning learners when all words are jammed together. Is there a technique to decode those strings of characters?
"Loaned characters" Do these refer to borrowings of Hanzi when (aside from Japanese) many more languages were written in Chinese characters?
No, they refer to when a spoken word that doesn’t have a corresponding character loans an existing character
This is: (Junior) educated people pronounce a character by recognizing a half of it (秀才识字认半边)
I have a question. For what reason characters were simplified? Firstly I thought that it was done to make them easer to learn. But there are many character traditional form of which are not so harder than simplified, for example 来 and 來, 给 and 給, 语 and 語. Now I think that it was done to make them easer to write by hand. Which theory is right?
Yes, it was to improve literacy. You're right, some of the simplifications seemed weird, and I don't know the nuance of all the specific characters individually, but as a whole, simplification did reduce the number of strokes per character and slightly decreased the number of characters needed for literacy.
Thank you very much for answer.@@ABChinese
@@Igor_Chausov You're welcome!
Saludos
Ok, so it has a dark past, but how did it end up being the character for I? Also, the picture of the 3-sharped-teeth weapon you showed is flipped. It didnt clearly show its resemblance to the character.
The picture does show the right weapon, it is supposed to be mounted on a pole. There is a video on it: kzhead.info/sun/f6meabisnKyEqYU/bejne.html&si=wqAnTSv8JV4TxYTE
I couldn't imagine how long and tedious compiling 9000 characters in 100AD would have been. I wonder if any mistakes he made doing that ended up changing anything in the future of the language.