ilprincipe Posted December 27, 2009 at 05:52 PM Report Share Posted December 27, 2009 at 05:52 PM Hello, I see from many threads that this issue has been discussed, but maybe not fully clarified. Apologies if I missed some threads that provide the answer. I am basically looking for a etymology/breakup/decomposition of most chinese characters, which a good explanation, a helpful 'story' that can be used as a way to remember the character, without any academic rigor, if it does not help. For example: a) the character 药, medicine. "Traditional Chinese medicine uses herbs, hence the 艹. When curing woulds, a thread is used, hence 约, and a spoon 勺 is given to the patient to feed the medicine. Alternatively, 勺, pronounced (sh-ao), provides the sound component, ao. (ok..ok..I may have made it up and may not be correct, but this way it is difficult to forget) 2) I am not looking for the evolution of ancient characters into modern Chinese..ie. why the sun becomes 日. We take as a given that we learn the radical and we know all their meanings, already. 3) no pictures, sometimes they just occupy precious page spaces! ..just a list of entries, with a paragraph/few sentences that explain why the character is like that. 4) quite a comprehensive list, say 2,000 characters at least. 5) better if it is online or electronic format, but not entirely necessary I have asked several Chinese teachers, most times I get a blank look..or 'it is just the way it is'..so I give up. I have looked at yellowbridge, it is a start, it breaks up (sometimes) sound and meaning component, but there is no 'story' or mnemonic behind. Wenlin appears to be simple too. Tuttle book is the closest I have seen to what I am looking for, but Vol 1, only has a few hundred characters, and still not quite as detailed as I wish. I once saw a great book that did this, but for Japanese Characters (which is even trickier than for Chinese because the sound portion gets lost in Japanese), I believe it was called a Guide to (remembering) Japanese Characters. If anyone has any ideas, most appreciated. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ailixia Posted December 27, 2009 at 06:57 PM Report Share Posted December 27, 2009 at 06:57 PM I think I've read that the Tuttle book is similar to the Heisig book I've just recently began using. Is this what you're looking for? http://discoveringmandarin.blogspot.com/2009/10/preparing-for-heisig-remebering-chinese.html http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/06/30/ode-to-heisig-and-rtk http://chinesequest.blogspot.com/2009/10/heisig-files-part-i-history-and.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
querido Posted December 27, 2009 at 10:06 PM Report Share Posted December 27, 2009 at 10:06 PM The ABC via Wenlin has been the cornerstone of my character studies. T.K.Ann, Cracking the Chinese Puzzles, is probably the ultimate. I have it but haven't started on it. There's a new book out that also looks good: Hoenig (2000 chars, 496 pages). Here is an excerpt (pdf), and some commentary. This was my comment, based on the above linked excerpt: "The mnemonics look unstrained and natural to me. Pinyin included but not incorporated into the mnemonic- good. Numerically indexed component graphic blocks- good. Inclusion of some lower frequency chars, such as "small bird", because they are components in many of higher frequency- good." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trien27 Posted December 28, 2009 at 12:18 AM Report Share Posted December 28, 2009 at 12:18 AM (edited) a) the character 药, medicine. "Traditional Chinese medicine uses herbs, hence the 艹. When curing woulds, a thread is used, hence 约, and a spoon 勺 is given to the patient to feed the medicine. Alternatively, 勺, pronounced (sh-ao), provides the sound component, ao. Actually, 药, yao is the simplified form of 藥, which retains the grass radical and used a similar sounding character, 约, "yao" as a phonetic = 艸 [cao, grass], simplified to 艹 + 樂 [le, happiness]. 樂 = a drum in the middle, with two cymbals on each side on a wooden "stage". Possibly a person who's happy, not paying attention to the pain will take their medicine? 勺 is NOT the phonetic for 药: 约 IS! 纟is the silk radical, but in CURING wounds a pot is used to make the medicine. For the diagnosis of an ailment, a SILK thread is used, most notably when the patient is a female in ancient China! 2) I am not looking for the evolution of ancient characters into modern Chinese..ie. why the sun becomes 日. We take as a given that we learn the radical and we know all their meanings, already.3) no pictures, sometimes they just occupy precious page spaces! ..just a list of entries, with a paragraph/few sentences that explain why the character is like that. Most characters uses semantics and phonetics, and there's supposedly six ways to create characters: Simple characters, pictographs, abstract characters semantic-semantic characters, semanto-phonetic characters, an already existing character with a re-clarified radical, phonetic-phonetic characters [the first syllable of the first character is added to the second syllable of the second character] Knowing a character's radical doesn't prove a thing. You only know part of the meaning. And sometimes the radical doesn't give the meaning, but the phonetic. Sometimes knowing both radical/semantic and phonetic, doesn't mean you'll know the proper pronunciation: Times changed and the characters were created thousands of years ago, and with borrowings from so many dialects, subdialects & subsubdialects, the pronunciation might or might not sound like the dialect you speak. Sometimes, it's a total surprise, the character sounds nothing like you know. 4) quite a comprehensive list, say 2,000 characters at least. Go to http://www.zhongwen.com & clicking on any character will give its etymology. But note: The characters on this site is mostly in Traditional Chinese, in which the current Kaishu form developed since the Han Dynasty, and Large seal script is from pre-Qin dynasty era. Small seal script = developed by Li Si, shortly after Qin dynasty was created, by order of Shi Huang. Edited December 28, 2009 at 12:28 AM by imron merged adjacent posts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilipLean Posted December 28, 2009 at 06:50 AM Report Share Posted December 28, 2009 at 06:50 AM Two more books that look useful What Character Is That?: An Easy-access Dictionary of 5,000 Chinese Characters (Chinese and English Edition) (Paperback) currently US$17.05 on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/What-Character-That-Easy-access-Dictionary/dp/0962311359/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261600693&sr=8-1 and Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition) (Paperback) on Amazon for US$17.40 http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Genealogy-Dictionary-Mandarin/dp/0966075005/ref=pd_sim_b_1 Both get excellent reviews. Read the user reviews and use the "look inside" feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilprincipe Posted December 28, 2009 at 08:10 AM Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2009 at 08:10 AM thanks for all the suggestions and the detailed explanation for Medicine...I think you should actually write the book...I liked it! thanks I will browse through the forums and books you suggested and will post back my comments thanks to all and Happy New Year Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbradfor Posted December 28, 2009 at 09:36 PM Report Share Posted December 28, 2009 at 09:36 PM The website http://chinese-characters.org/ may provide some of what you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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