Friday, January 26, 2007
Characters are tricky
Reading an article the other day about whether or not Chinese characters represent ideas or sounds made me think a bit. I've been helped by (dubious?) explanations of the origin of some characters that made it easier for me to remember their meanings. eg ren = person
symbol like a curved upside down V, supposedly like a person walking. Da = big, the same person with their arms stretched wide.
But actually I hadn't come across a single character which I could unambiguously understand as a picture of a concept until yesterday when I saw the characters for "lamb" and "meat" followed by a new character for me which I immediately understood - in context to be fair - two rectangles one above the other with a vertical line bisecting them and continuing above and below.
I find learning the pinyin (but not the tones) for new words relatively easy, but characters very difficult. The explanations help me to remember the shapes and practicing in the correct stroke order (which makes me feel like and certainly empathise with a five year old learning to write English) also helps.
I don't think in words except when I'm being consciously analytical. I do think quite quickly in concepts and images. I don't normally construct (English) phrases before I utter them. Sometimes what comes out of my mouth surprises me - and I don't mean last night's curry. I sometimes find my own witticisms very funny because I've never heard them until I say them.
When I read in French I don't translate into English, I just take in the meaning in French, as it were, until I hit an unfamiliar word, or a difficult piece of phrasing or grammar.
I'm getting that way a little with pinyin (albeit with a tiny vocabulary), but I recognise characters so slowly that I can't help but word for word translate into English when reading characters.
symbol like a curved upside down V, supposedly like a person walking. Da = big, the same person with their arms stretched wide.
But actually I hadn't come across a single character which I could unambiguously understand as a picture of a concept until yesterday when I saw the characters for "lamb" and "meat" followed by a new character for me which I immediately understood - in context to be fair - two rectangles one above the other with a vertical line bisecting them and continuing above and below.
I find learning the pinyin (but not the tones) for new words relatively easy, but characters very difficult. The explanations help me to remember the shapes and practicing in the correct stroke order (which makes me feel like and certainly empathise with a five year old learning to write English) also helps.
I don't think in words except when I'm being consciously analytical. I do think quite quickly in concepts and images. I don't normally construct (English) phrases before I utter them. Sometimes what comes out of my mouth surprises me - and I don't mean last night's curry. I sometimes find my own witticisms very funny because I've never heard them until I say them.
When I read in French I don't translate into English, I just take in the meaning in French, as it were, until I hit an unfamiliar word, or a difficult piece of phrasing or grammar.
I'm getting that way a little with pinyin (albeit with a tiny vocabulary), but I recognise characters so slowly that I can't help but word for word translate into English when reading characters.
# posted by David @ 1:12 pm 
