Comments on: Chinese Character: Dragon in the Home

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:32:11 +0000

Some really wonderful work on behalf of the owner of this website , absolutely outstanding content .

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:52:50 +0000

Hi, came to your site from pocketculture.com. As a Singaporean I too have a love-hate relationship with chinese. And my biggest regret is not having made use of the time in school to master the rudiments of chinese (or at least memorise what I could, lol). Right now I have rediscovered the beauty of the language but have to idea how to go about “re-learning” a language. A situation I think alot of Singaporeans who rediscovered a language they grew up with are in. Officially, chinese here is considered a “mother tongue” but personally, I consider English to be my mother tongue since it was the language I was educated in and brought up with, not to mention it is the language I express myself most fluently in. And it feels awkward for me to start “picking up” chinese where I left off because it’s now a language that feels familiars yet estranged, much like riding a bicycle again after 10 years – technically you cannot “forget” how to balance, but it all seems so wobbly!

By: Ivy

Ivy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:47:04 +0000

@evelynpy: Yeah, it’s very unfortunate that Indonesia banned Chinese language learning during the Suharto era. But it’s never too late!! I didn’t start learning until I was 18. Hahaha.

By: evelynpy

evelynpy — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:53:36 +0000

as a chinese who was born at Indonesia…honestly i can’t speak or write chinese character fluently. I had class to learn Mandarin when i was at university n i think was so hard to learn it..

i just can write wo, ni, na, zuo etc…*forget mode on* or some short conversation of it!

i think i have to increase my chinese language immedietly!!!

By: Ivy

Ivy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:01:57 +0000

@Liz: Hmm, I think it really depends on the school, your teacher and which script you decide to learn (the traditional or the simplified version). My first professor for my Chinese class taught us the common radicals and explained how they were used to create new characters. She also taught a few others that were more interesting like country, which I explained in the guest post I did for you. But that was it. After her, the other professors didn’t teach the meaning of characters anymore. Then again, we were learning at a very accelerated rate where were were expected to learn about 30 – 60 words per week so there really was no time for them to explain it to us anymore.

But I do find that characters are much easier to remember by understanding how it was formed. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the best way to learn it since simplified characters have lost its original construction of radicals.

P.S. I just realized my reply to your email is still in my drafts folder. Will get to it soon.

@Destiny: Vietnamese words intimidate me. There are lots of accents all over.

@Mimi: Ren is one of my favorite characters too! Thanks for sharing!

By: Mimi

Mimi — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:38:55 +0000

I love how Chinese words can be taken apart and interpreted, it makes learning the language a lot more interesting. My favorite is the interpretation of endure (忍): a knife over the heart describes the more-often-than-not heart wrenching process of endurance.

By: Destiny

Destiny — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:56:10 +0000

I never really divulged what the characters symbolizes, but now that you’ve mentioned it, it’s pretty much almost the same. That’s pretty chill and cool!! Hahaha, too bad vietnamese characters are basically almost the same as the english dictionary and french as well.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:16:55 +0000

Thanks for this post. I love reading about how Chinese characters are composed. It seems like so much reasoning went into them.

I was wondering, is it common to be taught how the characters came about in Chinese classes? Seems like it should make them easier to remember. Although maybe there are just to many of them for it to be practical?

By: Ivy

Ivy — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:45:12 +0000

@Teddy: Yups! That’s the beauty of Chinese words but it also makes learning Chinese a bit of a pain – especially in the simplified form since many of the characters lose its original meaning from cutting down all the strokes.

@JJ: You’re not alone! I love etymology of all languages too! It’s really good substitute for memorizing vocabulary! It’s cool I can read Korean. Spend one year studying it in university so I could confidently get the ahjummas in K-town to cut my hair and serve me gam ja tang.

@Gel: Thanks! Yeah, I’m really amazed by those native Chinese speakers as well. I can’t memorize everything. No way. Not this lifetime anyway.

@Cynthia: 安 right? Yeah, I guess ancient Chinese thought having woman at home meant contentment and tranquility.

@Phil: There’s a lot of meaning behind English words too. Thanks for stopping by!

By: Ivy

Ivy — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:00:01 +0000

@Tara: Haha, it’s like Kansai-ben isn’t it? Nida/yo lacks the flavor I guess. Since I spent most of my time learning the Nida form in school, I’m actually more comfortable speaking in the nida level than yo level. Hahaha.

@Brenda: Well, it would be possible to dissect English words like Chinese characters but noticing the etymology of English words can be quite fun too! It comes in particularly useful for the SAT and GRE!