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I like the Gen Z humour in this video and tbh this is a problem i run into a lot. I’m a “banana” person (people called me that because I couldnt speak chinese) but recently I have been trying to learn how to read chinese characters. But simplified mandarin and traditional mandarin is throwing me off lol. Traditional is harder to write but unironically easier to see the logic behind/ and simplified is easier to write but the characters have nothing to do with their actual concept at times
1. The six methods of character composition are not exclusive: they are mutually reinforcing! 2. Every character is a combination of image, sound(s) and ideas. 3. Many characters in fact have an initial sound clue and a final clue as well. Chinese spelling tends to be read from top down and from right to left but i have seen examples of bottom up and left to right. a) FOR EXAMPLE wo wu ou wo3 戊 is the inital sound clue. 手 is the final clue. The ideograph here is hand+spear, spearman since every man in antiquity was also a soldier. b) there are many other examples. 声 for example has an initial sound clue sh- above 士 though with this one the picture is probably better a masterly man above striking chimes below as a representation of the idea of sound. 4 明ming is not en example of a phonetic character. It combines the two brightest objects in the sky to represent the idea of bright. 5 CHARACTER COMPONENTS CAN BE REUSED TO REPRESENT OTHER THINGS as indeed 月 is both a picture of hte moon (the line in the middle calls attention to the idea that the moon is bright) but 月 is also a picture of ribs, a slab of meat with ribs visible. Meat, muscle. 6 thus 口 may be a mouth, windows in a building, walls of a city seen from above or perhaps also walls of a manor house seen from above. Cantonese is in fact even prettier than mandarin. You are best to study pictographs and ideographs first. They are then reused as phonetic and semantic elements in complex characters and are easier to remember because they are much more common. They are few in number but are all high frequency! In contrast the phono semantic characters are many in number but each of them is infrequent. The pictograms are highly simplified stylized pictures which may be seen from various angles. This is a good example 虫 is a bug, it is a picture of a snail from the side, or a beetle from above, but it also contains phonetic element 中zhong which rhymes with chong. the other component is 厶si so perhaps the ancients thought combining S and ZH made CH. Chinese is amazing and it is frustrating for newbies because it is badly taught. I wrote an entire series of books about learning Chinese using the innovative methods above. It is called "quizmaster learn chinese" you may contact me for review eBooks.
Actually, 可 and 河 are pronounced differently in Middle Chinese (khaX and ha, respectively). So, even though it's true that on average Cantonese is closer to Middle Chinese, in this specific example Mandarin won. The phonetic component is often not precise by design. When a scribe had to invent a new character, he tried to find another character with a similar pronunciation but it wasn't always possible. So often we have characters that differ not only by tone but also by the initial. For example, consider 眼 and 很. They always had a different initial, even at the time of creation.
For the meat radical, the two inside strokes should be slanted. If it's two straight lines, then it's a moon radical. But most fonts don't differentiate between them. Cantonese is about 2000 years old, but what it preserved most of is Tang Dynasty vocab, tones, and some pronunciation.
“有边读边 无边读中间” ... I learn this at very young age, like this is the rule of pronouncing Chinese words, like a secret to cheat. But I never knew why, now I know ! Ha ha ha ... kind of funny ! :)
For all the things about the origin of the characters, can you name some documents that you reference? I am really interested in learning more into that area.
Do you guys like the little jokes or do you prefer like raw information pure education? Im trying to find a good balance. I know some of you want pure education.. So to you I ask: do you find the jokes distracting? 😮
Your videos are good. I think you have the right balance. I suggest using writing for presenting more information and the humorous bits should be oral. Perhaps indicate in the spoken bit to read the video as well as listen for that reason since some auditors will not watch otherwise and just listen to you like ap odcast. I'm personally interested in mando to canto idk how many others might be 我的汉语流利的不会南方语言/广东话.
I actually wonder how much in each of the forms of Chinese have phono-semantic compounds that have gone through a sound shift. IIRC in Cantonese 北 and 背 are pronounced differently but are the same in Mandarin (and some dialects of Wu Chinese).
In general not bad. However, I find getting right to the point of a video to be more helpful. Personally I'm not here to be entertained but to learn mandarin. For the material you discussed this could have been a 4-5 minute video. Hope this helps.
Good video until you felt the need to mock Trump. Not funny; Just annoying. Why not pick on Xi if you want to inject politics? I’ve got @ 300 characters down. Mostly by reading a little every day. The history and development is entertaining but maybe not terribly useful for a student.
0:21 Well... I am a modern liberal person but if you think about it and how women have been treated as property of their husbands in many instances in history and how simplified chinese is based in traditional chinese it kinda... makes sense..?
