Learn Characters by tracing the etymology

mandarinboy
 September 05, 2008, 05:58 AM posted in General Discussion

By looking at the elements in an character i learn faster and remember the characters longer. This is what i do:

. Take the new character e.g.peace

The character is ān, peace, calm etc. the two left pictures are the pictograph of the character.  This I look up in an Character dictionary. The bottom part is a woman and she is under a roof =A woman under the roof of a house is something that will bring the man peace. It was the woman who cared for the household

Now, by looking at the radical here, the roof part (mián) we can find many other characters with this as a radical such as:

字  letter, character, word (zì) If we break down this we get a Child (子 zǐ) under the roof = word.  A child in the family leads to communication. In this character the roof part is the radical and the child part is the pronunciation part.

Like this we can go on and look for other words with the same pronunciation part such as 仔 (zī) responsibility. Person and child = it is a persons/parents responsibility to take care of the child.

We can also go the other way and find words with this character such as:

安排 ānpái to arrange; to plan

安全 ānquán safe; secure; safety; security

平安 píng'ān safe and sound; well

I usualy concentrates on words that are on the top 2000 list when breaking down the characters. The words i get from on line dictionaries.

After a whort while we will notice that most characters can be traced down to a few elements. There is only 214 radicals in simplified Chinese. All characters has an radical so it might be a good idea to learn the radical in the character. Since the radical tells us something about the meaning of the character it is an vital part to know. My brain needs the sort of structure. Just learning to paint the character does not work for me. I need to know the structure. This is my structure:-)

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chanelle77
 September 05, 2008, 10:41 AM

That is a nice example: I find this topic very interesting. Does anyone know if Chinese Etymology is taught at universities in China? Is that a subjetc? Thx.

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mandarinboy
 September 05, 2008, 11:40 AM

As i know of there are many universities that have this as part of the eduction for forreigners. When i studied in Bejing a decade ago we had a teacher who did this very well. She always showed each part of every single character. I foudn that to be very helpful. She played small games with us students. Each person where given a card with a radical and then we should go around to join up with other students to combine our parts to various characters. I liked that. A silly game but it did stick in my tiny brain. Since there is no real study plan for forreginers the exact way they teach Chinese in China may vary between each university. You have to ask them beforehand i think. At ligong daxue in Beijing we had this education 2 hours a week but that is a decade ago. 

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mandarinboy
 September 05, 2008, 12:38 PM

There is a serie of books that deals with this in an very good and fun way.: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Straits-Times-Collection/dp/1932457003/ref=pd_bbs_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220617308&sr=8-9

I think those where the first books i bought when i where in China the firs time. They deal with characters, the backround to them, stroke order and many examples of each character. They are very fun and gives a very good understanding of why the characters look the way they do. The fun drawings makes it easy to remember the meaning behind the characters.

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changye
 September 05, 2008, 01:37 PM

Hi mandarinboy,

I’m impressed with your beautiful explanation of the importance of radicals and etymologies. As you nicely explained, mastering radicals is very helpful in learning Chinese characters. Fortunately, most of radicals, such as 人，女，子，马，are also basic characters. Conversely speaking, learning basic Chinese characters automatically means learning many radicals at the same time.

In ancient China, “radicals” were generally called “文”, and “characters” were referred to as “字”. In short, 字 (a character) consists of some 文 (radicals). Let me show you a good example of this usage. There is a famous dictionary called “说文解字” published around 100 A.D. in China. And the title is translated as “explain (说) radicals (文) and interpret (解) characters (字). 

The etymology of “字” is a little tricky. Its very original meaning was “give birth”, as the radicals (a roof and a child) clearly suggest. Unfortunately, it seems to have nothing to do with a current meaning “a character”, so some scholars say that the original meaning “give birth” later changed into “a character” just based on “假借” (borrowed characters), which is one of 六书.

On the other hand, 许慎, the author of 说文解字, says in this dictionary that 字 is equal to 乳 (give birth) and 字者言孳乳(= 繁殖)而浸多, which is translated as “characters multiply and gradually increase” by combining radicals (文). This etymology of “字” by 许慎 is very attractive considering the character’s original meaning. Of course, it’s only one of some etymologies.

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chanelle77
 September 05, 2008, 03:53 PM

Changye and Mandarinboy thank you for your interesting posts. I will check if i can find a course on this. Does anyone know how to you say a "Chinese Etymology course" in Chinese? :-)

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chanelle77
 September 05, 2008, 03:54 PM

Changye and Mandarinboy thank you for your interesting posts. I will check if i can find a course on this. Does anyone know how to you say a "Chinese Etymology course" in Chinese? :-)