Sunday 13 February 2011

Chinese

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I have had a fascination with China recently (the country!) and have been reading up on it as well as looking at learning the language.  Writing Chinese is not easy, it looks beautifully artistic and i would love to get a grasp on it.  However, there is no alphabet in Chinese language and with the symbols often only differing by a dot or comma shaped bit it could take a while to learn !!!!



"...there is not a consistent logic inherent in the formation of all Chinese characters, so that although we can see in some of today's characters how they have developed from their earliest forms, there is no methodology which will serve us for them all."
The Chinese characters started as pictogram's much like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, they have evolved over the years into the beautiful (if confusing) writing you see today.  There was a time when the characters and their meanings were obvious but today they all seem rather obscure.  For example, the character for "good" is made of a sign for woman next to the one for child because for a mother to have a baby (especially a boy) was a good thing, similarly the character for safe/secure is built of the sign for woman under the one for roof as with a woman in your home meant there would be a family which would bring stability.

Interesting huh ??

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