Tuesday 24 November 2015

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 意

Today we continue our learning to "意". During our last two lessons, we know that "意" is composed of "音" and "心". What is its meaning then? "Sounds or Tones of your heart"!  It is then extended to mean "Feeling" or "Ideas" which is from your heart. And it is later further extended to mean "Feel" or "Think" with your heart as a verb.

As we have known its meaning, it can help to appreciate the evolution history of "意". ( image get from http://www.vividict.com )
Learn one Chinese Character a day - 意
Bronze Script is to add another "口" to to emphasise "speaking out of (thoughts, ideas, views)".  

Seal Script  is then evolved to plus , by replace "口" with "心" to make it clear that "意" means "Sounds or Tones of your heart".

Clerical Script, Regular Script and till current way of writing - "意", they are just continuation of Seal Script with simplifications along the way.

Now let us enjoy a Chinese Calligraphy with "意" inside:


醉翁之意不在酒,在乎山水之间也。

Monday 23 November 2015

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 音


In our last lesson, we have learnt 億 that its right part is 意. Look carefully at 意, you will realize that it is also composed by upper part - "音" and lower part "心".

Today we will see what is the meaning of "音". As usual, let us see it evolution history first: (  image get from http://www.vividict.com )

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 音
Oracle Script of “音” is actually created from Oracle Script of “言” - , which we learnt a few lessons ago, by adding a few dots. It is kind of hard to know what exactly our Chinese ancestor meant for the Oracle Scripts.

However it is kind of clear from Bronze Scripts. 音 -  is to add an indicator  inside the mouth "口" of 言 - . It refers to different tones our mouth makes while talking. So 音 - can mean "Sound", "Tones" or even "Noise".

Seal Script is a continuation of its Bronze Script. While it came to age of Clerical Script of Seal Script is simplified to  is very close to what we are writing now - ""

Let us now enjoy a Chinese Calligraphy with "音" -
少小离家老大回,乡音未改鬓毛衰


And as you now know the meaning of "音", what can be the meaning of "" then?

Saturday 21 November 2015

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 亿 | 億

Now we are fully prepared for the next Chinese character which means "100 million". Following the logic path of creating "十", “百”, “千” and "万", How will be the next milestone of a person after having offspring?

Let us look at the evolution history of "100 million" ( image get from http://www.vividict.com ) -
Learn one Chinese Character a day - 亿
I guess at age of Oracle Script, there is no need for counting numbers at base of "100 million", thus there is no founding of it in Oracle Script.
When it came to Bronze Script , recall what we have learnt in our previous lessons, it was "言" on top and "口" on bottom, which means "keeps talking and talking". Is not this a typical behaviour of a elderly person? They would like to share with you all their good or bad memories, tears or joys in their lives.
When it came to Seal Script , I guess Chinese ancestors note that "百" contains the meaning of talks a lot as well, so they decided to add more Radicals to  to differentiate it from "百".  is composed of  and ( is in term composed of  and ). It emphasized the meaning of "a person keeps speaking from their hearts".

Or maybe we can view it from a different angle to reach the same idea. Kongzi ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius ), the creator of Confucianism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism ), once said that at age of 70, a person () should be able to follow [ what () speaks from ] his heart () freely without transgressing. It can also be concluded that refers to an elderly age.

So Bronze Script or Seal Script used the Chinese character creation principle "Logical aggregates" to mean elderly age of a person. And this meaning is then borrowed to mean "100 million".

Clerical Script and Regular Script simplified it a bit to become "". At age of Regular Script, a simplified version of "亿" appeared, as "乙" has the same pronunciation as "意" (意 is right part of 億). People started to borrow "乙" to replace "意" while writing "100 million".

Traditional Chinese uses "", while Simplified Chinese uses "亿".

Please take note that 人 (亻)is a commonly used Chinese Radical. Same as "心".
Whenever you see a 亻in a Chinese character, that 亻always refers to a person.

Below is a explanation of Chinese Radical from wikipedia.org:
A Chinese radical (Chinese部首pinyinbùshǒu; literally: "section header") is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator (that is, an indicator of the meaning of the character), though in some cases the original semantic connection has become obscure owing to changes in character meaning over time. In other cases the radical may be a phonetic component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character.
Now we have finished almost all Chinese numbers. Using almost here is because that we have numbers now in trillions. One Chinese character was borrowed to mean "Trillion" recently. But we can leave that alone for now.

Some example numbers:

123,456,789,123 - 一千二百三十四亿五千六百七十八万九千一百二十三。

Let us enjoy a Chinese Calligraphy with "億 | 亿" inside to end today's learning:
钟声传三千界内, 佛法扬万亿国中

Friday 20 November 2015

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 心


Before we continue to check "100 million", we need to learn another Chinese character first - "心", which is a Pictographs character.

The oracle script of "心" is missing, while its Bronze Script is. Do not think it to a wrong direction, but can you guess its meaning?

Before revealing the answer, let us see its evolution history first: ( image get from http://www.vividict.com ):
Learn one Chinese Character a day - 心
"心" -  is a simplified drawing of following diagram. We have to say that Chinese ancestors must have known clearly the Cardiac structure.
Heart
So "心" means Heart, as time passes, extended abstract meaning were added to "心" as well, like "Feelings" and "Emotions"

And as time passes, not only "心" is to have more meanings, but its writing has been continuously simplified. Seal Script , then Clerical Script and finally at around later stage of Clerical Script , it became almost the same as what we are using now - "心".

As usual let us enjoy a Chinese Calligraphy with "心" inside:
手把青秧插满田,低头便见水中天。心地清净方为道,退步原来是向前
Have you gotten any ideas on how to create a Chinese character to mean "100 million"?