|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 24, 2015 21:19:32 GMT
And I'm curious to know why the word "shang" you mentioned above as "up" is used when some people order an attack ; isn't there a word for " attack " ? I understand that "shang" is used when referring to the emperor because he has a high position, but I don't see the interest in using the term "up" for launching an attack or a killing... I hope that I don't bother you too much with my questions, but now that you opened this thread, since I'm eager for learning all kind of languages, you'll have more questions than you thought from me !!! ) Maybe I already mentioned it in other posts, but when I was 16, I had the luck to begin to learn Mandarin ; unfortunately, our teacher was married to a Chinese dissident, and after 4 or 5 months, we never heard of her again (I think that maybe they have to fly away due to politics...), so, all that I know is what I remember from her teaching years ago. Then, I discovered the Shaw Brothers' movies, first with French subtitles and later with English subtitles and it helped me to better understand Mandarin. And now that I'm used to watch series/movies with only Chinese subtitles or no subtitles at all, the more I watch, the more I'm able to understand a few sentences, but it's still difficult to understand the whole plots, of course... And it seems to me that the character "kai" for " open " has the character for " door " in it, right ? i'm afraid i don't have answers to all your queries--and chef has answered the blade vs sword one way better than i ever could! so, i've listed the queries that i'll try to tackle in the above quote. first off, what a wonderful opportunity you had to learn mandarin! i wish i'd taken it up earlier in life--i'd probably have an easier time now! and i think it's amazing that you've kept up with it, self-taught. you have a knack for languages! and please feel free to ask as many questions as you'd like--again, i don't have all the answers, but i'm sure someone on the boards can help! never stop asking. ok, regarding 上 "shang", its uses are more varied than merely indicating the direction of "up". in the context of addressing the emperor, the implication is "the king/ruler who is on high", so he's in a lofty position above the rest of his subjects. as for the command to attack, "shang" is used the same way as "forward!" and "advance!" very often you'll see "shang" paired with "front" [上前] to mean moving forward, approaching something/someone. so, generals telling their soldiers to 上 means to command them to commence battle. i hope that clarifies! yes, the word for "open" is indeed in the same category as "door". IIRC, the character is derived from having an object (like a door jam) keep the doors open, and hence the meaning. and if you'll recall your GL, the character "ye kai" has this same character for "open" as his name.
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 24, 2015 21:41:53 GMT
Am I mistaken if I guess that the Chu Liu Xiang's title " hua mei niao " litteraly means " beautiful sister bird " ? sorry, i forgot about this query! 畫眉鳥 is literally "painted eyebrow bird" and refers to a type of bird. here's a wiki entry on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_hwameii did a quick google search, and there doesn't seem to be a good chinese-french dictionary online that allows you to look up chinese characters using the chinese method. pity! meanwhile, if you don't mind using a chinese-english one, try this one: www.chinalanguage.com/dictionaries/?pageID=CharDict/Query i've used it for years. it's not the most user-friendly, but it's reliable and quite comprehensive. and it uses traditional text, which is my preference. the other good thing about this dictionary is that you can put in the english word or the pinyin if you can't figure out which radical category a particular character belongs to--they're not always obvious! for example, 畫 (1st character) is found in the 5-stroke 田 radical category, and the radical happens to be in the middle of the character, which is rare. here's the entry for 畫 www.chinalanguage.com/dictionaries/?dict=chardict&mode=view&query=%E7%95%AB
|
|
|
Post by reinafu on Jun 24, 2015 21:59:10 GMT
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 24, 2015 22:06:54 GMT
reinafu oh, that's a much better and more versatile dictionary than the ones i skimmed using google search! keep using that by all means!
|
|
|
Post by chefying on Jun 25, 2015 4:25:11 GMT
And it seems to me that the character "kai" for " open " has the character for " door " in it, right ? "Door" - read as men(2) (the number represents the tone, in this case, the second tone) is written as 門 in the traditional style, and simplified into 门. To answer your question, yes, kai(1) 開 in the traditional style has a door in it. The simplified form is 开. I visualise this word as a Japanese torii gate, an open doorway, hence open. en.wikipedia.org/?title=ToriiThis is how I remember certain Chinese words. 閂 or 闩 - you can practically visualise this word - it is the bar across the door to lock or fasten the door so that it cannot be opened. It is read shuan(1). 間 or 间 - I see the bright sunlight 日 between the slightly opened door. This word is read jian(4) and means the space or a gap between something, or amongst. 人间 means among the people. 問 or 问 - I see a mouth 口 at the door - someone shouting "anybody home?" This word is read wen(4) and means 'ask/to ask'. 聞 or 闻 - I see an ear 耳 at the door, rather like eavesdropping, trying to find out the latest news. This word is read wen(2) and means 'to hear' and its compound, 新闻 mean new things heard, hence 'news'. 悶 or 闷 - to have one's heart 心 behind closed doors must be really boring. This word is read men(1) and means 'bored'. 闖 or 闯 - this is another word that can practically be visualised - a horse 马 crashing through the gates. This word is read chuang(3) and means to rush around / break in / force one's way out. 們 or 们 - this word is not for visualisation, the 門 part is for the sound effect. It hints at a word relating to people (the radical 'ren' 人 modified into 亻) that sounds like 門. This word men (neutral sound) means a group of people. So "me group", as in 我们, means us, while "you group" 你们 and "they group" 他们 means 'you all' and 'them' respectively. Finally, there is this word 鬥 that looks like 門 but it is not. 鬥 is read dou(4) and means to fight or struggle or to contest. I think the simplified form is 斗. Hope this helps somewhat.
|
|
|
Post by reinafu on Jun 25, 2015 6:02:07 GMT
Thanks a lot to both of you !!
Your explanations are very instructive !
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 25, 2015 6:11:14 GMT
reinafu this has been fun! any other aspects about writing you want expanded on? i'll try my best!
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 25, 2015 8:33:29 GMT
actually, i have a request: chefying could you give more examples of how you remember certain chinese characters (like in your example above)? please? *batseyes*
|
|
|
Post by chefying on Jun 25, 2015 11:29:05 GMT
actually, i have a request: chefying could you give more examples of how you remember certain chinese characters (like in your example above)? please? *batseyes* Oh dear, I had hoped that it would not come to this. There is this word, 阉 yan(1). You must remember that I am a guy, and this is how I remember this word. What action is it that is done behind doors 门 that hurts terribly as though one had been struck by a mega 大 bolt of lightning 电 ? Castration... for this is the meaning of the word - castrate or spay. In actual fact, there is this word, 奄 yan(3). With this word, what I see is 大 da(4) meaning big, and 电 dian(4), meaning lightning or electricity. As for the word 电 itself, what I see is a flash of lightning over the paddy field, 田 tian(2). Anyway, to me, 奄 looks like a SUDDEN mega flash of lightning that COVERED the whole paddy field. And that is the meaning of this word, cover/widespread or of all the sudden. This word forms the 'sound' or 'vowel' of the next few words. Truth be told, this word is not that often used. The word 掩 yan(3), continues from 奄 and 阉. In the case of the latter, the radical is 门 door. For 掩, the radical is 扌, which in turn was derived from this 手 shou - hand. Anytime you see a word with 扌 radical, chances are that it has something to do with a hand action. The hand action that sounds like 奄 is to cover or shield or blinker or hide. The word 腌 yan(1) bears the radical 月 which is derived from the word 肉 rou - flesh or meat. Yes, I know it looks exactly like the word 'moon', but the poor moon 月 here does double duty as moon and flesh. Anyway, the word that sounds like 'yan' that has something to do with mean is meat pickled or cured with salt. Hence yanyu 腌鱼 - salted fish, and yanrou 腌肉 - salted meat. Paradoxically, 腌菜 is pickled vegetable which does not have any meat in it, despite having to use the word 腌 with the radical of meat. 淹 yan(1), on the other hand, bears the radical 氵 which is derived from the word 水 shui - water. The word that sounds like yan but has something to do with water is 'flood' or 'submerge'. Hope this makes sense and hope the "mnemonic" helps with remembering the words. My methods are unorthodox, but they work for me.
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 25, 2015 17:37:34 GMT
chefying i think it's great that you've developed your own system of mnemonics to help! the only "orthodox" method for learning chinese is just to remember/memorize each character. what method is used should be up to the individual!
|
|
|
Post by reinafu on Jun 25, 2015 18:06:28 GMT
This thread becomes more and more interesting each day !!
Question : is the word " dui " which is used in " dui bu qi " (sorry), the same as the one which is used when someone says " dui!" with the meaning of " that's right " (at least, it's how I understood this word when watching series) ?
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 25, 2015 21:16:17 GMT
This thread becomes more and more interesting each day !! Question : is the word " dui " which is used in " dui bu qi " (sorry), the same as the one which is used when someone says " dui!" with the meaning of " that's right " (at least, it's how I understood this word when watching series) ? yes it is! the versatility of words! this is the character: 對
|
|
|
Post by siuyiu on Jun 25, 2015 22:24:07 GMT
i've debated if i should start a new thread, but the topic has already been covered in this thread that i figured i'll just continue here. for those who aren't as well-versed as native speakers like chefying and adept learners like reinafu, all this talk about tonalities and pronunciation and homophones (the more precise form of homonyms) may seem confusing. without going into a lot of detail (and please remember, again, that i'm not a native mandarin speaker), i'll just point out a few things that'll hopefully help. Tonalitychinese is a tonal language. what that means is that for every character/word in the chinese lexicon, there is more than one way of pronouncing it, and the different pronunciation/inflection is related to a different meaning/usage of that word. this is one of the reasons why there are so many jokes (and sometimes vicious taunting) related to mispronunciation resulting in a word, a phrase, or a sentence meaning something else simply because the tonality is off. so, when you say a particular word, you can't just say the mixture of consonant and vowel sounds any which way; you have to have the right pitch (high, low, rising, falling, etc.) as well. think of it like singing a note--you can't just sing any note of C and expect people to know you mean middle-C. sing middle-C. (hope that makes sense.) mandarin has up to 5 tones per character/word. cantonese has up to 9. if anyone can explain about other dialects like hokkien, shanghainese, sichuanhua, that'd be great! (i say "up to" because not all tones denote a different meaning for each character--some only have 3 tones for 3 meanings/usages.) Homophonesbecause the human mouth and tongue can only be shaped in so many ways to produce sounds that become words and because certain cultures prefer certain sounds over all available ones, there is a set limit in chinese as in any other language. this means that homophones (words that sound identical but with completely different meanings) exist. as confusing as this already is, there is an added layer of confusion when rendering chinese into its transliterated forms (i.e., pinyin or the older version known as Wade-Giles). without adding the numbers/symbols to denote tonality, many more pinyin words end up being shared by chinese characters that, in the original language, are not homophones at all--or at least, not so identical in sound. now, keeping those two things in mind and having already seen some examples in other posts in this thread, let me show a few more examples. first off, multiple tonalities per character as related to meaning. 樂 le4 = happy, yue4 = music, yao4, luo4 (sorry, don't know how the last 2 are used. i do know that it's also a surname, but uncertain about pronunciation. in mandarin, that is. i know how it's supposed to be pronounced in cantonese, though most canto speakers say it wrong nowadays, including those with the surname.)覺 jue2 - aware, jiao4 - sleep
these are the more extreme examples of commonly-used words whose tonalities differ greatly depending on context. with others, it's more a slight variation of tonality/pitch that separates the different meanings/usages. secondly, homophones. i've categorized by pinyin and subdivided by mandarin tonality. recall that each character can be said in multiple tones; i'm only using its most common tone, the one associated with its most common meaning/usage. (NOTE: i'm relying on the dictionary i'm using to be correct about tonality--if there are errors, please point them out!) yanyan1 煙 - smoke 嫣 - charming 胭 - cosmetics rouge yan2 言 - word, speech 嚴 - strict 鹽 - salt yan3 眼 - eye 演 - perform yan4 驗 - test 厭 - dislike 雁 - wild goose 宴 - feast qingqing1 輕 - light 青 - "indigo" qing2 情 - feeling 晴 - fine weather qing3 請 - request qing4 慶 - celebrate zhuzhu1 豬 - pig 朱 - cinnabar 珠 - pearl 蛛 - spider zhu2 竹 - bamboo 燭 - candle zhu3 主 - master zhu4 住 - reside 助 - help you'll note that the rebuses of many characters do group them into similar tonalities, but again, it's not very precise and not a good guide, not like it is with consonants and vowels in english.
|
|
|
Post by reinafu on Jun 26, 2015 14:42:53 GMT
I'M ENJOYING THIS THREAD !!!
|
|
|
Post by chefying on Jun 26, 2015 16:25:59 GMT
I'M ENJOYING THIS THREAD !!! I agree. siuyiu had put a lot of effort into it. As for my unorthodox mnemonics, let me clarify that I use the system primarily to recognise the word, and not so much for remembering its vocalisation.
|
|