毙, 卧, 昌, 稚, and 蒙

I know I said I'd only post Monday-Friday, but the first lesson got such a great response I decided to give posting every day a shot. Enjoy!

Reader challenge for this lesson: what are other city/place names in China that contain 昌? I'm pretty sure there are quite a few...

Bryan, no problem. It is a great way to learn. We switch back and forth a lot, depending on our moods I think. When we're tired, she just speaks Chinese and I speak English (since understanding a foreign language is easier than speaking it), but it seems like more and more we're using Chinese as our primary language.

中国民居---蒙古包

　 蒙古包是蒙古族的家。因为蒙古族大部分是牧民，

他们喜欢到处游牧，所以蒙古包是一种方便拆迁

的房子。它一般是圆形的，用布围起来的房子。

So quickly we find that a word does not really have a straight forward logical correlation between the two forms 毙 and 斃.

斃,卧,昌,稚,and　蒙 毙, 卧, 昌, 稚, and 蒙

當我看到這個　稚　的時候，我腦子會想起來　幼稚園．

John, good idea to add number of strokes to the lessons. Especially with the more complicated characters it can sometimes be confusing to figure out the exact number.

And don't despair whenever you find it hard to learn characters. It's hard for the Chinese as well and they also forget how to write the more complicated characters. My friend from Shanghai who's been here (Denmark) for a year and a half sometimes have to check a character with a dictionary because she doesn't write much by hand anymore.

宜昌 yíchāng Yichang (city in Hubei)

瑞昌 ruìchāng Ruichang (city in Jiangxi)

文昌 wénchāng Wenchang (place in Hainan)

昌平 chāngpíng Changping (place in Beijing)

昌都 chāngdū Changdu (historical capital of Kham province of Tibet)

卧：
Ah, I've been writing 卧 a lot these days in Chinese class, as we had to learn everything about the house, that word being the one for bedroom, 卧室。 For the breakdown of that character, 臣chén means a minister, but you must see it as an eye sideways (the box in the middle is the pupil, the verticle lines in the middle the iris (that is the official way to explain the drawing, but you can also see it as the face, with the square the nose and the veritcle lines the eyes). That of course is what the eye looks like when lying down. 卜(bǔ) is now the meaning of carrot, but it is suspected that it is 人 modified, a person laying down and resting his eyes.

昌:
JohnB already gave a breakdown for 昌, meaning that when someone says the sun is coming, thing look prosperous. Of course the time we most write this is as a radical in 唱, to sing (music of the mouth is prosperous? yes, it is the phonetic part, but why do they pick that one instead of say 长, 等等？)

稚:
禾 hé ('grain') and 隹(zhuī 'bird with short tail')
I haven't a clue what that has to do with immature. Someone else come up with a good one. Both of those things can be immature? (well, the bird part is probably just phonetic, but dang, don't we hate when the birds eat the grain before it is mature for harvest...hey, maybe I got something there...)

蒙:
Did you know 蒙 is a boar豕 wearing a grass艹 hat冃? Hahahaha. Okay, won't making any racist jokes about Mongolians and just leave it at that. (but how did the boar cheat the Mongolian out of the grass hat to cover his head is what I want to know)

Woo...that was fun... more more!

Rich, thanks for such a great post. Those are some great mnemonics and insights you provided.

Rich wrote:
< Of course the time we most write this is as a radical
< 唱, to sing (music of the mouth is prosperous? yes, it
< the phonetic part, but why do they pick that one instead
< of say 长, 等等？)

Couldn't it be that 昌 was chosen over something like 长 because the bottom of 昌 is officially a 曰 [yuē] meaning "to say" as John pointed out?

Rich wrote:
< 卜(bǔ) is now the meaning of carrot, but it is
< suspected that it is 人 modified, a person laying
< down and resting his eyes.

Thanks for clearing this up. I noticed that in some places the character is written as 臥 (as part of words such as 软臥,硬臥, and 臥室 as well).

Bryan, to answer your question, I consulted my very own 蒙古族人 and Chinese expert (my wife!) about your questions on 蒙, and this is what she told me: méng can mean ignorant, as in the word 蒙昧 [méngmèi] -- "ignorant, uncivilized" -- but that it also means "cover" and that měng only refers to the people. The 现代汉语词典 backs that up. However, she also added that in spoken Chinese those pronunciations get mixed up a lot, with (for example) 蒙住, which should be pronounced mēngzhu, often being pronounced měngzhu instead.

I'm personally not the prescriptive type, so I would say whichever way the people around you say it is fine.

Bryan,

Yeah, I was thinking that too, that 唱 is probably due to the "say"... and also all those boxes of 日 曰 and 口 just make your mouth want to dance, yes? :P

Interesting to note here briefly that 听 to listen has the mouth, which you could say is because it has to listening to what people say, yet the traditional, if you ever looked at it, is VERY complex, 聽, and actually has the ear 耳 radical.

John, thanks for checking with your wife. Out of curiosity, do you guys speak mostly Chinese with each other? Seems like a great way to learn :-)

I'm a little confused about 蒙. John, you stated that when pronounced méng the meaning is "to cover". While studying this just now I came across two different sources that state that méng means "dim-sighted" or "ignorant" and that it is the third tone version měng as in Mongolia which can also mean cover. Is this this a matter of what's in the books vs. what is used in the real world or a typo?