Your Favorite Character
Kyle
October 12, 2007, 08:32 AM posted in General Discussion
sparechange
October 12, 2007, 06:58 PMI'm learning both simplified and traditional for practical reasons. From an artistic standpoint however, I agree with pulosm. There is no substitute for traditional characters. pulosm, do you do calligraphy? Just wondering, since we're on the subject. I would really like to get into it, but being smack in the middle of Nowhere, USA puts me at a bit of a disadvantage.
billybobjoebobwilly
October 12, 2007, 09:54 AMI like FogHorn LegHorn but I'm just a loony toons kinda guy ;-)
scottyb
October 12, 2007, 11:21 AMI'm going to have to say: 缘
bazza
October 12, 2007, 11:23 AMWe could include favourite words as well. I think the word for tap (faucet) - 水龙头 is great. The "water dragon head". :)
man2toe
October 12, 2007, 01:22 PM粥 Ｉ ｃａｎ’ｔ ｓａｙ Ｉ ｈａｖｅ ａ ｆａｖｏｒｉｔｅ， ｂｕｔ ｔｈｉｓ ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ ｃａｍｅ ｔｏ ｍｉｎｄ．
pulosm
October 12, 2007, 01:48 PMI like 頭. I don't know why. I don't like its simplified cousin 头 at all, though.
bazza
October 12, 2007, 01:57 PMHow can you not like 头? It's the perfect character for head.
anne
October 12, 2007, 02:15 PMI've always loved 点 and 常. Even before I started studying Chinese. They looked like comics to me: a bug 点 running over the paper. And a friendly person 常 on a bad hair day... And I still love the geometry of 面.
sparechange
October 12, 2007, 02:19 PMI don't know that many characters yet, but so far I get a real kick out of the pictographic ones.... like our friend, the tortoise: 龜
wildyaks
October 12, 2007, 09:54 AMNever thought about it. I have favourite English words, favourite Italian words, favourite any kind of words... I love words. But never thought about characters...
sparechange
October 12, 2007, 04:07 PMhehe...new avatar in honor of my favorite character :D I have waaaay too much time on my hands....
sparechange
October 12, 2007, 04:11 PMhehe...new avatar in honor of my favorite character :D I have waaaay too much time on my hands....
sparechange
October 12, 2007, 04:12 PMsorry, it flaked out on me and posted twice.
jennyzhu
October 12, 2007, 04:43 PMMine is 赢, which to me is like a transformer of Chinese characters. It looks ostentatiously elaborate as a whole whole each part is a functioning character on its own. I still get a kick out of how the teacher taught us to learn the character: say 亡、口、月、贝、凡。
freespirit
October 12, 2007, 05:10 PMmy favorite character ever since I started with chinese is 常， it looks as a smart person who just came out with an idea and that is what the lines on top represent to me. I also like words that have water on the side like 波，浪，湿， 等等。
bazza
October 12, 2007, 05:29 PMpulosm, to fully love the Chinese language, you have love both simplified and traditional equally. ;)
lunetta
October 12, 2007, 06:11 PMI don't really prefer any particular character but I really like writing 马 and other characters that it's a part of like 吗 or 妈。
pulosm
October 12, 2007, 06:33 PMJenny, you win! (Get it? Ha ha ha) Bazza, maybe I am still hurt. Zhao laoshi took off all those points for using "traditional" characters. Yes, it was 7 years ago, but still. Also, I can "do" simplified characters, but I will never EVER think that calligraphy using simplified characters is okay. I have to draw the line somewhere.
pulosm
October 12, 2007, 02:31 PMBazza, I find simplified characters unappealing to look at. Only people who learn them first think that they look nice. They are shells of their former selves and have no meaning. I mean, they took the "heart" out of love! ;-) In Beijing, my professor would mark off points on my essays for using traditional characters. That's just nuts. 头 means nothing. 頭's left side is the word "dou" which gives you the phonetic clue, because "dou" and "tou" are similar. It's even more similar to the sound in other dialects/langauges of Chinese (or Vietnamese for that matter: đầu is "head" and đậu is "bean"--the only difference is the tone!). The right side of the character
bazza
October 12, 2007, 09:46 AM谢 is one of my favourites.