Once you get past being able to distinguish the different tones and aside from having to learn thousands of characters, Mandarin is really not that difficult of a language. In many ways it is incredibly practical and straightforward.
For example, the character for day 日(ri) rose out of a drawing of the sun coming up over the horizon. Mountain 山 (shan) also looks like a crude sketch of a peak. And since no new characters can be created, new words must be formed from existing characters. Like when computers were invented, the characters for electronic and brain were combined to name this more recent technology.
And one of my favorite terms is what the Chinese call "everybody." In English, this is such a generic label, showing no relationship, but in Chinese, everybody is said as 大家 or in the Romanization of characters, as "da jia." By themselves, da means big and jia means family. So, "everybody" is a "big family." Isn't that cool? I love the connotation this has. What a great way to think of the populace, not as a mass of people, but as family.
16 years ago
2 comments:
That really is neat. The study of languages can really give new perspective on words and ideas.
Nicole, it really can! Although, I need to try to remember that everybody is a "big family" as I am trying to step on the subway with my "big family" all around me shoving and pushing to get a spot on the train. At those times I tend to think of people as cranky in-laws rather than loving brothers and sisters.
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