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Etymology for learning hanzi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 1 of 13 14 August 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've recently begun working on Mandarin again (using my preferred no-memorization system – but I won't go into that any further here), and I've noticed that I learn characters almost effortlessly, and with much more enjoyment, when I understand the symbolism and historical development of the character. The classic example, of course, is 好 – once you can see the woman holding a child, the meaning of "good" is instantly unforgettable.
What I would love to find is a book that explains the symbolism behind all the characters. Since that's obviously unlikely to exist, I would however settle for a book that explains the symbolism behind a LOT of the characters. :) I had a look at "Remembering the Hanzi" and hated it. It seems completely unnecessary to make up all these complicated stories, most of which felt very contrived, and more importantly have nothing to do with the actual meaning of the character. I vastly prefer something like this – although it's rather amateurishly put together, it's charming and will give you a rough idea of what I'm looking for. Does anyone know of a character-learning text based on this etymological/symbolistic approach? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 14 August 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The problem is that the relevancy of the original etymologies isn't very relevant today. The characters were invented
for a bronze age culture and for a language entirely different than the Chinese of modern day China. Certain symbolism is misogynic, other just irrelevant, and lots of characters were remade during the 600 century to increase clarity (i.e. the radicals were added in a common way all over China). Thus three women signs together in one character means quarrel, a woman under a roof means peaceful, a pig under a roof means home (how..?), a picture of wheat means "to come" – and many words that are pictures of their meanings had radicals added because the phonetic use of them was more common than their original meaning. Alas, Mao's simplified signs takes them even further from their original look and feel and what once looked like (if you really squezed your eyes) a flute is just a stroke. What looked like doors... well.. a stroke. There are however quite many books that deals with the etymologies of signs! And it's fun to look at, I fear however that it might not be as useful as one might think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 13 14 August 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps take a look at "Cracking the Chinese Puzzles" by T. K. Ann? It's previously been discussed here, notably by furyou_gaijin.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 13 14 August 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
What's more, the "etymologies" (this isn't really etymology, since etymology deals with the history of words, not signs) you find in many books are often not very accurate. The scholarship in this area is thousands of years old, which means it's often of very low quality. It gets more complicated when certain signs turn ito others over the course of history (名 was originally 月+口, with the 月 part a phonetic because back then it had also the meaning which is now written as 明) and often two signs will completely switch place (like 來 which originally meant "wheat" and 麥 which originally meant "to come"), or one sign is borrowed to represent something unrelated but which shares a similar sign (like borrowing the character 的 to represent a vernacular grammarical particle which had no character since it was dialectal), and so on. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 13 15 August 2012 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I like this book a lot: A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Henshall. I like the Ann book too but it doesn't provide the etymology for many characters and some of those provided seem to be more mnemonics than etymologies.
I can scan a page of Henshall's book if there is interest. Edited by newyorkeric on 15 August 2012 at 4:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4960 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 6 of 13 15 August 2012 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||
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The book "Whats in a Chinese Character" by Tan Huey Peng (New World Press) seems pretty good, it gives you the information about the character, along with a drawing. I actually just got it yesterday and I'm really lookign forward to using it myself.
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| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 7 of 13 15 August 2012 at 8:57am | IP Logged | ||
I second this recommendation! It gives scholarly etymologies along with suggested mnemonics (which are helpful in cases where the etymology is really obscure). The downside is that like most kanji texts, it introduces the characters in the rather arbitrary, government-approved order that kids learn in school, whereas Heisig introduces them in a more efficient way by giving you the building blocks and showing what characters you can make by combining what you've learned so far. You might find it the most enjoyable and helpful to follow the Heisig order while cross-checking Henshall for the accurate etymology. Edited by Lucky Charms on 15 August 2012 at 9:01am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 8 of 13 15 August 2012 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great suggestions, thank you everybody!
Hampie and Ari, I know it sounds weird, but this kind of stuff actually does help me quite a lot. Ari, the example descriptions you gave of how meaning changes throughout history is exactly what I'm talking about – understanding that type of information really helps me to remember the character. (Thanks for the reminder about "etymology", by the way – of course you're right.) Volte, newyorkeric, NickJS, and Lucky Charms – thanks for the specific recommendations! I will look into all of these and see how they compare. newyorkeric, if you do get a chance to scan a page of that book, it would be much appreciated – it looks like Amazon doesn't have the "look inside" option. Lucky Charms, thanks for the combination suggestion, that does sound like a pretty good way to go about things. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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