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tea & chinese characters
Hi all... just stumbled across this group during a google search for
the caffeine content of various teas. Glad to see it too! My question now is this... is there some handy, pocket-sized index of chinese characters and their english translation that anyone knows about? I don't want to know how to find the bus stop or what to order at a fast food place... so I'd rather not try to pick through a "traveler's guide." What has puzzled me for the last several years is how to make sense of the Chinese characters on tea containers. I go to the asian market to buy tea, and although many brands provide a small english subtitle somewhere, there are many more which simply don't. I can't tell you how often I've bought a particular container of tea basing my choice on whether I liked the color of the package<grin>! Although, to be honest, I usually can find someone who will at least tell me whether it is supposed to be green, black, oolong, etc. Still, as any tea fancier knows, that doesn't really tell one that much. I yearn to be able to descipher what the manufacturer is telling me on the label. Does is come from a particular province? Is it almost guaranteed to promote longetivity, happiness and a calm spirit? Does it own a special name? ("5 Step Happiness Tea?") I, however, am ignorant and illiterate in the Chinese language and would love to acquire just a BIT of it, anyway. Trying to take on the whole language is too daunting and fatiguing a prospect! So if anyone here could point me in the right direction on this problem, I would be very grateful. (I DO know one character by heart... the one that means TEA. Beautiful little thing it is too.) Thanks, Whytebyrd |
tea & chinese characters
whytebyrd wrote: > Hi all... just stumbled across this group during a google search for > the caffeine content of various teas. Glad to see it too! > > My question now is this... is there some handy, pocket-sized index of > chinese characters and their english translation that anyone knows > about? I don't want to know how to find the bus stop or what to order > at a fast food place... so I'd rather not try to pick through a > "traveler's guide." What has puzzled me for the last several years is > how to make sense of the Chinese characters on tea containers. I go to > the asian market to buy tea, and although many brands provide a small > english subtitle somewhere, there are many more which simply don't. I > can't tell you how often I've bought a particular container of tea > basing my choice on whether I liked the color of the package<grin>! > Although, to be honest, I usually can find someone who will at least > tell me whether it is supposed to be green, black, oolong, etc. > > Still, as any tea fancier knows, that doesn't really tell one that > much. I yearn to be able to descipher what the manufacturer is telling > me on the label. Does is come from a particular province? Is it > almost guaranteed to promote longetivity, happiness and a calm spirit? > Does it own a special name? ("5 Step Happiness Tea?") I, however, am > ignorant and illiterate in the Chinese language and would love to > acquire just a BIT of it, anyway. Trying to take on the whole language > is too daunting and fatiguing a prospect! > > So if anyone here could point me in the right direction on this > problem, I would be very grateful. (I DO know one character by > heart... the one that means TEA. Beautiful little thing it is too.) > > Thanks, > Whytebyrd Hi Whytebyrd, I have started something along those lines specificaly targeted at Pu'er Tea. While it is not nearly as comprehensive as your request, it is a start. It can be found at http://www.pu-erh.net/cheatsheet.php Another very good resource for Tea Terms in general is the Babelcarp which can be found at http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html , while it is not available to be printed as a book, it will allow you to search hundreds maybe even thousands of Chinese tea terms. Mike http://www.pu-erh.net |
tea & chinese characters
"whytebyrd" > writes:
> Hi all... just stumbled across this group during a google search for > the caffeine content of various teas. Glad to see it too! > > My question now is this... is there some handy, pocket-sized index of > chinese characters and their english translation that anyone knows > about? I don't want to know how to find the bus stop or what to order > at a fast food place... so I'd rather not try to pick through a > "traveler's guide." What has puzzled me for the last several years is > how to make sense of the Chinese characters on tea containers. I go to > the asian market to buy tea, and although many brands provide a small > english subtitle somewhere, there are many more which simply don't. I > can't tell you how often I've bought a particular container of tea > basing my choice on whether I liked the color of the package<grin>! > Although, to be honest, I usually can find someone who will at least > tell me whether it is supposed to be green, black, oolong, etc. I'm not aware of anything like this for Chinese tea in general - it might not fit in your pocket! - but, for Pu'er, there's Mike Petro's "cheat sheet": http://www.pu-erh.net/cheatsheet.php Also, while this won't help you in a Chinese grocery store, the website in my signature can translate a lot of tea Chinese (both Chinese characters and their transliterations.) It does one phrase at a time, though. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
In Western markets Chinese tea boxes will indicate the PinYin name and
the corresponding Chinese characters. In the West we know the names of Chinese tea from the PinYin(English representation of Chinese) like Cha,LungChing,QiMen,MaoFeng,etc. Some English terms for Chinese also have developed historically and not a PinYin translation of the Chinese. If you were in China you'd probably would need some Chinese character dictionary for teas which probably wouldn't help because how do you 'lookup' a Chinese character. They use Radicals and we use an Alphabet. I've developed my own tea dictionary over the decades. The Internet makes it easier to find information on PinYin and Chinese character tea terms. When I get stuck, I ask here, because others have developed their own dictionaries and we have several people conversant in Chinese who catch everything that falls through the cracks. My tea dictionary which I call the Rosetta Stone was initially developed by manually coding the PinYin and Chinese characters from commercial tea boxes. With the dawn on the Information Age it now resides as a flat file on my computer searchable by english,pinyin,chinese. The most recent additions are Puer related terms I find on the Chinese auction site TaoBao. Jim whytebyrd wrote: > Hi all... just stumbled across this group during a google search for > the caffeine content of various teas. Glad to see it too! > > My question now is this... is there some handy, pocket-sized index of > chinese characters and their english translation that anyone knows > about? I don't want to know how to find the bus stop or what to order > at a fast food place... so I'd rather not try to pick through a > "traveler's guide." What has puzzled me for the last several years is > how to make sense of the Chinese characters on tea containers. I go to > the asian market to buy tea, and although many brands provide a small > english subtitle somewhere, there are many more which simply don't. I > can't tell you how often I've bought a particular container of tea > basing my choice on whether I liked the color of the package<grin>! > Although, to be honest, I usually can find someone who will at least > tell me whether it is supposed to be green, black, oolong, etc. > > Still, as any tea fancier knows, that doesn't really tell one that > much. I yearn to be able to descipher what the manufacturer is telling > me on the label. Does is come from a particular province? Is it > almost guaranteed to promote longetivity, happiness and a calm spirit? > Does it own a special name? ("5 Step Happiness Tea?") I, however, am > ignorant and illiterate in the Chinese language and would love to > acquire just a BIT of it, anyway. Trying to take on the whole language > is too daunting and fatiguing a prospect! > > So if anyone here could point me in the right direction on this > problem, I would be very grateful. (I DO know one character by > heart... the one that means TEA. Beautiful little thing it is too.) > > Thanks, > Whytebyrd |
tea & chinese characters
Jim... I am really, really impressed by your "Rosetta Stone." What an
accomplishment that is! I can only imagine the amount of actual time you invested in that project (which is apparently ongoing). Not all manufacturers have include a Pin Yin name either. Although I'm sure that most of the products which are packaged especially for the overseas English speaking areas do. The market I go to most frequently (Well-Farm) has a wide mix of products and very many teas are apparently packaged for domestic (their own) use. Not to mention the very interesting-looking assortments of packaged herbs and herbal "teas". (I would just love to experiment with these, if I even knew a tiny bit about what they actually are) In my brother's Japanese character "dictionary", the ideograms are generally classified by the number of radicals they have. This, mind you, is just what he tells me, I haven't taken that particular bull by the horns yet. There are also other systems of classification, apparently. I just can't imagine that there is not somewhere a decent "abridged" version of the above. How do they teach children to read & write? I'm not looking for an equivalent to a desk model unabridged dictionary. For my purposes, that would be like swatting a gnat with an atomic bomb. |
tea & chinese characters
"whytebyrd" > writes:
> [...learning Chinese characters...] > In my brother's Japanese character "dictionary", the ideograms are > generally classified by the number of radicals they have. This, mind > you, is just what he tells me, I haven't taken that particular bull by > the horns yet. There are also other systems of classification, > apparently. > > I just can't imagine that there is not somewhere a decent "abridged" > version of the above. How do they teach children to read & write? I'm > not looking for an equivalent to a desk model unabridged dictionary. > For my purposes, that would be like swatting a gnat with an atomic bomb. You might try _What Character Is That?_ by Gam P. Go, published by Simplex Publications in 1995. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
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tea & chinese characters
"niisonge" > writes:
> > In my brother's Japanese character "dictionary", the ideograms are > > generally classified by the number of radicals they have. This, mind > > you, is just what he tells me, I haven't taken that particular bull by > > the horns yet. There are also other systems of classification, > > apparently. > > Basically, a chinese dictionary could have 3 systems of character > classification - by radical, stroke count, or pronunciation (in > pinyin or wade-giles, etc). > > And then there is the matter of traditional chinese versus > simplified Chinese. If it's tea packaged in mainland china, it may > use simplified characters (but not necessarily so). And if it's tea > packaged in Hongkong, or Taiwan, it's in traditional chinese > characters. Not to mention that there are many different styles of calligraphy. I find some of them pretty illegible. > So for many characters, you need to be able to recognize both the > simplified and the traditional form. Some simplified characters look > vastly different from the traditional form. > > Radical dictionaries are complicated to use - especially if you don't > know what radical to look under. I think this point merits underlining. Say you can break down a given character into four different radicals. There's no rule that will infallibly tell you which of the four is "the" radical to look up the character under. I haven't seen a dictionary that lists characters under *all* their radicals. Does anyone know if such a beast exists? > And some dictionaries just don't contain that many characters, so > occasionally you may never find the character you're looking for. > > If you want to play around with radicals, and dictionaries, try an > on-line dictionary like zhongwen.com. > > And The Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary is pretty good too. You can > get it through Amazon.com or your bookstore. But it's actually not > pocket-sized, it's pretty thick and big. > > [...how Chinese people learn literacy...] > > It's far easier to recognize characters (read) than it is to > write. And some chinese kids, though they can read the character, > they find it's hard to write. So they just write they way they think > it should be written. Basically, they make up their own > characters. But amazingly, they can read it back to you, even if you > can't read it. This is something to remember if you ask a Chinese person to write down a character for you. If you can't find it in a dictionary, it may be because they wrote it wrong. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
You'll need Chinese fonsets GB2312,Big5 or Japanese Shift_JIS,EUC-JP or
an appropriate OS for Unicode to see the Chinese characters in my file. The file would also be viewable if you downloaded a Chinese editor like Northstar. I don't have any native language fontsets or Unicode loaded on my computer. When I need to see the graphical representation I use Zhongwen or Unicode.Org. I've developed routines to do that for me using the various native language code pairs or Unicode. I'd have to scrub my file for a presentation that wouldn't make me look like an idiot. I'd have to exlain it is Wade-Giles or Cantonese and not PinYin. Some terms by themselves don't mean anything like Yellow Sprout which refers to a Yellow tea or one of my favorites the Babelfish puer translation 'returns to gansu' which means 'sweet aftertaste'. To me the file makes sense but to most it would be gibberish. Sites like this with tea terms are easy to find if you know what to look for http://www.sanzui.com/bbs/archive/in...p/t-18053.html. It will look like gibberish if you don't have GB2312 loaded and in my case I know how to handle the language pairs gibberish. If you're not calling me out then there is more to it than meets the eye. Jim Michael Plant wrote: > Space 4/29/06 > ....I delete me... > Jim, why not put your linguistic database up > for all of us so we can benefit from your hard > work and effort. > Michael |
tea & chinese characters
Lew wrote: "There's no rule that will
infallibly tell you which of the four is "the" radical to look up the character under. I haven't seen a dictionary that lists characters under *all* their radicals. Does anyone know if such a beast exists?" You have pinpointed one of the biggest pains in the ass associated with learning Chinese. Actually every character has only one radical. The more you use a dictionary, the more luck you'll have figuring out which of the possible radicals is *the* radical. One small hint is that it is usually the outermost. Some dictionaries - usually the bigger and more scholarly ones - have a section after the radical index entitled "hard to find characters". Those sections can be really useful, as the authors have often done a very good job of anticipating which characters are likely to confuse a learner. |
tea & chinese characters
"Alex" > writes:
> Lew wrote: "There's no rule that will > infallibly tell you which of the four is "the" radical to look up the > character under. I haven't seen a dictionary that lists characters > under *all* their radicals. Does anyone know if such a beast exists?" > > You have pinpointed one of the biggest pains in the ass associated with > learning Chinese. Actually every character has only one radical. I'm aware that most people talk that way, but it kind of begs the question of what makes it "the" radical. > The more you use a dictionary, the more luck you'll have figuring > out which of the possible radicals is *the* radical. One small hint > is that it is usually the outermost. Outermost? It's pretty unusual for one radical to enclose all the others, though it does happen. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
When I say outermost I guess I'm thinking of something like 缩 where
the radical is 'silk' instead of roof or person. Can you give an example of one that confused you? |
tea & chinese characters
"Alex" > writes:
> When I say outermost I guess I'm thinking of something like > 缩 where the radical is 'silk' instead of roof or person. Does "outermost" mean "leftmost"? > Can you give an example of one that confused you? If by "confused" you mean I initially guessed wrong about which was "the" radical, well, there are so many. Statistically, I suppose the leftmost turns out to be "the" radical most often, so I usually try that first. By the way, would you *please* quote the context you're responding to? Google Groups can be persuaded to do that. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
Lewis Perin wrote: > "Alex" > writes: > > > When I say outermost I guess I'm thinking of something like > > 缩 where the radical is 'silk' instead of roof or person. > > Does "outermost" mean "leftmost"? Of course not. It's more like the last element that was added to the more primitive or basic character. Keep practicing, and get a bigger dictionary with a stroke index for the challenging characters. Eventually it will become clearer (and attempts to explain the phenomenon will seem less threatening). > > Can you give an example of one that confused you? > > If by "confused" you mean I initially guessed wrong about which was > "the" radical, well, there are so many. Statistically, I suppose the > leftmost turns out to be "the" radical most often, so I usually try > that first. That's what I meant by 'confused', yes. Unless we're talking about a character where there is basically no radical (夹曲甩 and many more) then there is one radical that will lead you to the dictionary entry. If you don't know what it is, then you are 'confused'. > By the way, would you *please* quote the context you're responding to? > Google Groups can be persuaded to do that. Sorry, I didn't realize that was your pet peeve. It was pretty obvious what I was responding to based on the sequence of the messages, but I am happy to oblige, as you can see, and in the future I'll stick to the rules. Improving your ability to guess from context will help you with the tricky characters too. Unneccesarily snippy or testy responses will alienate people who are making a good-natured effort to help you. > > /Lew > --- > Lew Perin / > http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
"Lewis Perin" > wrote in message ... > "Alex" > writes: > >> When I say outermost I guess I'm thinking of something like >> ? where the radical is 'silk' instead of roof or person. > > Does "outermost" mean "leftmost"? > >> Can you give an example of one that confused you? > > If by "confused" you mean I initially guessed wrong about which was > "the" radical, well, there are so many. Statistically, I suppose the > leftmost turns out to be "the" radical most often, so I usually try > that first. > > By the way, would you *please* quote the context you're responding to? > Google Groups can be persuaded to do that. > > /Lew There is no confusion actually. There are broadly 3 stages in the development of a chinese character: Ideograph (Pictograph), Phonetic Borrowing, Pictophonetic Writing. These stages often overlap. What is known as "radical" usually comes from the Ideograph - the basic form of a character which would mostly stem from a primitive drawing. Looking at the example Alex cited, "? " (suo - meaning to shrink), it is not difficult to see that the left-side character is the "radical", while the right-side character is a compound, or pictophone consisting of a roof, under which are 2 characters - the left is a man, the right, in its earliest form, was a drawing of a mattress; together, it depicts a man lying on a mattress under a roof - this character is mainly pronounced as 'su' - to take shelter. Alex mentions that the left-side character is that of "silk", which isn't wholly correct. For simplicity of reference, we often call it 'si', meaning silk. Putting the 'si' meaning "silk" and 'su' meaning "to take shelter" and coming up with 'suo' meaning "to shrink" doesn't seem logical now does it? That's because the left-side character is not pronounced as 'si', nor does it indicate "silk". It is pronounced as 'mi', meaning 'fine silk'. In old chinese, it was written that the silk spun & twisted by 5 silkworms is called 'mi', while silk spun & twisted by 10 silkworms is called 'si' (hence the chinese character for 'silk' is written as 2 'mi'). From this character derives the meaning to "make finer, to twist and tighten". A skein of silk twisted and roped around a shelter limits the space, hence the meaning "to shrink". However, etymology is not exact science, and there are characters which scholars can only offer the best guesses at how they arrive at the final meaning. The right-side character means to "take shelter", but it can also mean "a unit of measurement" (pronounced as 'xiu', usually to measure a night); so a rope to tighten a unit of measurement can also mean "to shrink". Danny |
tea & chinese characters
"Alex" > writes:
> Lewis Perin wrote: > > "Alex" > writes: > > > > > When I say outermost I guess I'm thinking of something like > > > 缩 where the radical is 'silk' instead of roof or person. > > > > Does "outermost" mean "leftmost"? > > Of course not. It's more like the last element that was added to the > more primitive or basic character. Keep practicing, and get a bigger > dictionary with a stroke index for the challenging characters. > Eventually it will become clearer (and attempts to explain the > phenomenon will seem less threatening). You needn't impute motivations like that. > > > Can you give an example of one that confused you? > > > > If by "confused" you mean I initially guessed wrong about which was > > "the" radical, well, there are so many. Statistically, I suppose the > > leftmost turns out to be "the" radical most often, so I usually try > > that first. > > That's what I meant by 'confused', yes. Unless we're talking about > a character where there is basically no radical > (夹曲甩 and many more) then there is > one radical that will lead you to the dictionary entry. If you > don't know what it is, then you are 'confused'. > > > By the way, would you *please* quote the context you're responding to? > > Google Groups can be persuaded to do that. > > Sorry, I didn't realize that was your pet peeve. It was pretty obvious > what I was responding to based on the sequence of the messages, but I > am happy to oblige, as you can see, and in the future I'll stick to the > rules. Thanks; it isn't only *my* "pet peeve", if you want to characterize it that way; it has a history on this newsgroup. > Improving your ability to guess from context will help you with the > tricky characters too. > > Unneccesarily snippy or testy responses will alienate people who are > making a good-natured effort to help you. I appreciate your effort to help, I really do. If "snippy or testy" applies to my response to your use of the word "outermost", well, I found that baffling. Maybe we should take this offline? /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
> I appreciate your effort to help, I really do. If "snippy or testy"
> applies to my response to your use of the word "outermost", well, I > found that baffling. Maybe we should take this offline? Sorry to have jumped to conclusions. Let's just get back to tea. |
tea & chinese characters
Alex wrote:
> Lewis Perin wrote: >> By the way, would you *please* quote the context you're responding to? >> Google Groups can be persuaded to do that. > > Sorry, I didn't realize that was your pet peeve. It was pretty obvious > what I was responding to based on the sequence of the messages That's what you see using Google Groups, a relatively new web frontend for Usenet. Lew and I and many others are using clients (newsreaders) which show a thread in the more common tree structure. That usually involves explicitely selecting the articles you want to read. So to understand what you're referring to if you don't quote anything would require me to read the article you're replying to and your article in that exact same order. And even then, I'd have to guess which part of the article you're referring to. > Improving your ability to guess from context will help you with the > tricky characters too. > > Unneccesarily snippy or testy responses will alienate people who are > making a good-natured effort to help you. I'd say Lew just wanted to help. Proper quoting is more a service to your readers, frankly. Courtesy, if you will. It makes for easier and faster reading. Hope I could help you understand Usenet better, Stefan |
tea & chinese characters
Stefan Goetzinger wrote: > Hope I could help you understand Usenet better, > > Stefan You both have. Thank you. This is not a common practice on the group that I spend most of my time on, so I'll just have to adapt. |
tea & chinese characters
"Alex" > writes:
> > I appreciate your effort to help, I really do. If "snippy or testy" > > applies to my response to your use of the word "outermost", well, I > > found that baffling. Maybe we should take this offline? > > Sorry to have jumped to conclusions. Let's just get back to tea. Sure; thanks for the suggestion! I'm drinking the young, supposedly organic 101Tea bingcha made from wild and ancient Jing Mai trees, and enjoying its fruity, brown-sugar sweetness. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
"samarkand" > writes:
> [...development of a Chinese character...] This is fascinating stuff. But - and please don't take this as a protest - from the standpoint of someone who's never systematically studied the language, it seems like a tremendous amount to learn in order to understand a character. It makes me wonder how many readers of, say, Chinese newspapers have this level of literacy. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
Lewis Perin wrote: > This is fascinating stuff. But - and please don't take this as a > protest - from the standpoint of someone who's never systematically > studied the language, it seems like a tremendous amount to learn in > order to understand a character. It makes me wonder how many readers > of, say, Chinese newspapers have this level of literacy. That's the problem, right? It takes years of concerted effort even for native speakers, even using simplified characters. BTW I'm drinking tieguanyin, as always ... kind of in a rut, but I love it. |
tea & chinese characters
"Alex" > writes:
> Lewis Perin wrote: > > This is fascinating stuff. But - and please don't take this as a > > protest - from the standpoint of someone who's never systematically > > studied the language, it seems like a tremendous amount to learn in > > order to understand a character. It makes me wonder how many readers > > of, say, Chinese newspapers have this level of literacy. > > That's the problem, right? It takes years of concerted effort even for > native speakers, even using simplified characters. And wouldn't simplified characters make the etymological understanding in Samarkand's post harder to attain? Simplified characters are easier to write, but they often hide the full compound nature of traditional characters. /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
Lewis Perin wrote: > And wouldn't simplified characters make the etymological understanding > in Samarkand's post harder to attain? Simplified characters are > easier to write, but they often hide the full compound nature of > traditional characters. I think in many cases they make that sort of deep understanding (how a character came to have its meaning) much more difficult, if not impossible. There's a good discussion of this in Robert Ramsey's The Languages of China - which is a superb book all around - and in some one of John DeFrancis's books. DeFrancis is kind of a nut job, though. He's in favor of completely replacing characters with pinyin. |
tea & chinese characters
> I think in many cases they make that sort of deep understanding (how a
> character came to have its meaning) much more difficult, if not > impossible. Let's put that in perspective. Do you understand the etymology of every word in English? Does anyone? No. Unless you look it up in some dictionary about the subject. The same is for Chinese. While, Chinese might get a general sense of the meaning by looking at the character, we don't really worry about that. All we care about is how to correctly write it, and what it means. So we don't have to know the etymology of a character to know the meaning. As long as you already know what it means. Know what I mean? And one thing is interesting. People in Mainland China can generally read Traditional Chinese, but not write it. But for people who read Traditional Chinese, very hard to understand Simplified Chinese - just can't recognize a lot of those characters, unless you spend some time learning them. Then, classical Chinese is much different from modern Chinese; much like old English is different from modern English. So a lot of things written in old times are too hard to read by most ordinary Chinese. For example, 敬其事而后其食, this sentence is pretty simple, but many people still can't understand it. |
tea & chinese characters
"niisonge" Let's put that in perspective. Do you understand the etymology of every word in English? Does anyone? No. Unless you look it up in some dictionary about the subject. The same is for Chinese. While, Chinese might get a general sense of the meaning by looking at the character, we don't really worry about that. All we care about is how to correctly write it, and what it means. So we don't have to know the etymology of a character to know the meaning. As long as you already know what it means. Know what I mean? "Danny" Agreed. During school days, we looked at the radical and guessed at the meaning of the word from a passage during lessons because we were too lazy to lok it up in the dictionary. Etymology is a "fun" science to me, looking at the character and learning how the system of writing in Chinese developed and evolved, while a radical provides a hint to the character, this is not always true. The writing system has evolved so much over time that there are characters which have radicals that do not provide a clue at all. "niisonge" And one thing is interesting. People in Mainland China can generally read Traditional Chinese, but not write it. But for people who read Traditional Chinese, very hard to understand Simplified Chinese - just can't recognize a lot of those characters, unless you spend some time learning them. "Danny" People in Mainland China can generally read Traditional Chinese, but this is increasingly on decline. I spoke to some educationists from China recently, and they lamented that many children in Mainland China nowadays are not exposed to traditional characters as they were in the past, and many of them no longer understand these characters. "niisonge" Then, classical Chinese is much different from modern Chinese; much like old English is different from modern English. So a lot of things written in old times are too hard to read by most ordinary Chinese. For example, ???????, this sentence is pretty simple, but many people still can't understand it. "Danny" Smart. |
tea & chinese characters
Is BabelFish close?
"After respects its matter but its food" Jim niisonge wrote: .... > Then, classical Chinese is much different from modern Chinese; much > like old English is different from modern English. So a lot of things > written in old times are too hard to read by most ordinary Chinese. > For example, ¶ʳ, this sentence is pretty simple, but > many people still can't understand it. |
tea & chinese characters
"Space Cowboy" > wrote in message ups.com... Is BabelFish close? "After respects its matter but its food" Jim "Danny" Nnnnope. :") |
tea & chinese characters
niisonge wrote: > Let's put that in perspective. Do you understand the etymology of every > word in English? Does anyone? Well, educated English speakers know a lot of etymology, but point taken. However there are two points worth making: one, Chinese characters are harder to learn than words, so etymology, or more accurately the system of associations between characters, is potentially more helpful; and two, Chinese etymology largely refers back to characters that are still in use and that Chinese readers already know, as in the previous example. English etymology draws on languages that most of us do not speak - Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Latin, Greek, Old French. > And one thing is interesting. People in Mainland China can generally > read Traditional Chinese, but not write it. But for people who read > Traditional Chinese, very hard to understand Simplified Chinese - just > can't recognize a lot of those characters, unless you spend some time > learning them. I learned traditional characters first, and when I moved to China I was ridiculed for not knowing 头 and 书. > Then, classical Chinese is much different from modern Chinese; much > like old English is different from modern English. So a lot of things > written in old times are too hard to read by most ordinary Chinese. > For example, 敬其事而后其食, this sentence is pretty simple, but > many people still can't understand it. Respect his business, and then his food? Maybe, and then his eating? Classical 食 is a verb, right? I prefer to think of Classical Chinese (as opposed to traditional a/k/a complex characters) as a separate language that occupies a position roughly analogous to Latin and Greek for us. Well-educated Taiwanese can easily read Classical Chinese, but that's because they study it for years and years in their incredibly rigorous high schools, much like Brits who went to Eton can read Greek. Intelligent mainlanders can understand bits of it, much like I (American) can guess the rough meaning of Latin based on the two years of it that I halfassedly studied in high school. |
tea & chinese characters
"Space Cowboy" > writes:
> Is BabelFish close? > > "After respects its matter but its food" Are you asking if it's close to English? /Lew --- Lew Perin / http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html |
tea & chinese characters
niisonge quotes Confucius: 敬其事而后其食
敬 (jing) derives from the term 敬* (jing zhi), meaning to carry out one's duty to his best ability, from the book of 大* (da xue) : 为人臣, *于敬 As a subordinate, to carry out one's duty to the best of his ability 食 (shi) is food = living = living expenses = salary Hence the quote means : first one must complete a job to the best of his ability before he can discuss how he should be paid ps. Using Google groups to access, not sure how the chinese characters will turn out. If you can't read it, send me a private mail and I'll forward this to you. Danny |
tea & chinese characters
"niisonge"
Then, classical Chinese is much different from modern Chinese; much like old English is different from modern English. So a lot of things written in old times are too hard to read by most ordinary Chinese. For example, 敬其事而后其食, this sentence is pretty simple, but many people still can't understand it. "Danny" The characters and their meanings are not that ancient. One might think they are, but if one think of the phrase 敬业 (jing ye) meaning to focus and work hard on one's career; and 粮食 (liang shi) which not only means food, but crops farmers harvested for money, hence "Salary", it is not difficult to reconstruct the phrase in English. Analects is still largely comprehensible - now reading The Book of Poetry and I-Ching, that's seriously like reading Beowulf in Old English! ps. Yipee! It works! I can type in chinese characters now! |
tea & chinese characters
For friends interested in older Chinese, I recommend this strongly:
http://www.afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wen...=intro&lang=en Danny ps...let's talk about tea baby, let's talk about brews and sips, Let's talk about all the good pots, and the bad pots that may be, let's talk about tea, huh yeh, let's talk about tea... |
tea & chinese characters
I guess that means no more email ;-). Funny you could do it on your
Blog,Email but not with your Newsreader. Junk those Newsreaders and jump on Google. Jim Danny wrote: > ps. Yipee! It works! I can type in chinese characters now! |
tea & chinese characters
samarkand wrote: > For friends interested in older Chinese, I recommend this strongly: > > http://www.afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wen...=intro&lang=en That is an excellent website. Too bad it doesn't have the Cha Jing. |
tea & chinese characters
/3/06
> For friends interested in older Chinese, I recommend this strongly: > > http://www.afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wen...=intro&lang=en > > Danny > ps...let's talk about tea baby, let's talk about brews and sips, Let's talk > about all the good pots, and the bad pots that may be, let's talk about tea, > huh yeh, let's talk about tea... Danny, It has been said that in Brooklyn, my home town, the ability to act crazy will stand a person in good stead during those tense moments of seemngly unavoidable and unwelcome street encounters. Ya gonna fit right in, boy! Michael |
tea & chinese characters
"Lew"
And wouldn't simplified characters make the etymological understanding in Samarkand's post harder to attain? Simplified characters are easier to write, but they often hide the full compound nature of traditional characters. "Danny" I thought what you said, and put the question to my lecturer. We were taught that the "The Scheme of Simplified Chinese Characters" was implemented in 1956, but very little was said about the etymology of these reformed characters. It is a common misconception - as you have mentioned - that the characters are easy to write but do not convey the full nature of traditional characters. In reality, many of the simplified characters were in existence hundreds and thousands of years ago, and some were even the primitive forms, which the traditional character system expanded upon. The 1956 Scheme mainly standardized some of these written forms. Take a common character that we are familiar with, the character for "Cloud" in "Yunnan" - 云 (yun) The primitive form of this character was etched on rocks and bones as 2 horizontal strokes to indicate the sky, and a pigtail below to indicate the shape of a cloud. It is not difficult to see from 云 how closely it resembles the primitive form. This is in fact the written form in many of the chinese ancient texts up to fairly recent times, when the form 雲 took over, indicating cloud that carries the rain. This was done in part also to separate 云 from another meaning "to speak". Ironically, the 雲 which we take as traditional form is actually the newcomer. The 1956 Scheme returned the old form of 云. So in learning, I do tend to think that simplified characters is an extended part of the etymology of traditional characters. Yo mann, me going back ta doin' ma Salt n' Pepper rendition... Danny |
tea & chinese characters
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tea & chinese characters
>It has been said that in Brooklyn, my home town, >the ability to act crazy will stand a person in good stead >during those tense moments of seemngly unavoidable >and unwelcome street encounters. I will keep that in mind........ Do all three of us need to show our true colors, or just the persona in control of the body at the moment? -- Mike Petro http://www.pu-erh.net |
tea & chinese characters
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