Chinese Building Blocks

[zhouhaochen]

We are creating "building blocks" where Chinese compound words do make sense (like red-green-light = traffic light). Does anyone have any other ideas for good compound words in Chinese to use?

 

We have 16 so far (http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-mandarin), but ideally would like to turn this in a much longer list. The idea is to go by HSK categories, but I am struggling a bit to come up with words for the lower levels.

 

Any other feedback welcome too.

[Hofmann]

Some of your analyses are questionable, like 圖書館. But anyway, what are you criteria for selecting words? It seems you can use just about any word because the morphemes in words tend to make sense (unless you analyze them wrong).

[朱真明]

I don't agree with some of your analysis, 自行車 should be self~moving~vehical, and 圖書館 should be picture~book~building. 感興趣～興趣 should be a single word. There are alot of you people that seem so eager to help others learn Chinese, but if you are not going to do it in a linguistically rigorous manner then you will probably just spread more misinformation about the Chinese language.

[zhouhaochen]

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree with the 图书馆，自行车 comments and will have a look at 感兴趣 .

Will report back one according changes have been made!

[Demonic_Duck]

动物园 is also not quite right. On its own, 物 doesn't mean "creature". Also, treating the three characters in 动物园 as units with equal relationships to each other obscures the fact that 动物 is itself a word.

Suggest an approach more like the following:

动 moving + 物 thing = 动物 animal

动物 animal + 园 garden = 动物园 zoo

Also, 图书 in 图书馆 just means books, nothing to do with seeking. Etymologically it's to do with pictures, though you could have a 图书馆 without a single picture in it (so not the best choice for a word to show how wonderfully logical Chinese word construction is).

Seems like a decent idea to use for mnemonics for new learners, not sure how far you plan to take it. Either way I'd suggest you consult native speakers, preferably ones who know a bit about linguistics and etymology.

[zhouhaochen]

Ok, so as an explanation, the translations were done by a colleague of mine (whom I am happy to announce does not work at LTL anymore) and there are obviously mistakes in there (even more than were mentioned by posters above, for example the 记 in 笔记本 should be "record", not "write" etc.).

Thanks a lot for pointing those out, this has been very helpful (and I should have discovered myself before putting this here....) and it confirms again that Chinese Forums as the ultimate test and community for anything Chinese learning related on the web.

 

I spent quite a bit of time today with our Director of Studies going through these together and we will make changes were necessary.

 

One comment, regarding three character words or phrases that include two characters that also form a word together, like 动物园 or 感兴趣. The idea is to deconstruct a word into all it's original parts, so while 动 and 物 together have a meaning, they have individual meanings too. So as Demonic Duck rightly pointed out, it is both a combination of two characters into one word, plus another character and it is a combination of three characters into one word. Both are correct, however, for consistency reasons (and to make it easier for people to remember the word - which is the actual aim of the whole exercise) we will separate it into all it's part (in this case into: "moving" "object" "garden").  To show that that 动 and 物 make a word together two would be for another building block card.

[朱真明]

@zhouhaochen

Actually from a morphological perspective only one is correct, separating them into three individual characters distorts the actual structure. Also, adding parts of speech would also be helpful.

For eg.

1～〈(動物 n) + (園 n)〉 n

2～〈(感 v) + (興趣 n)〉 v

Where 1 means noun plus noun equals noun and 2 means verb plus noun equals verb. This shows people that just because a word is formed with a noun doesn't mean that the word is going to be a noun and vice versa.

[zhouhaochen]

Ok, so we checked, updated and changed the building blocks, have a look if you want. All feedback is most welcome: http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-mandarin/building-blocks/

 

@朱真明 Thanks a lot for taking so much time to go through this and giving feedback! The aim of the cards is to keep help people to remember the word, so we really tried to keep it simple. We played with adding more grammar to it, but then it just started to look more like a text book and not something that just quickly helps you to remember/learn a word. I see your point regarding separating them into all parts or keep the words like 动物 together. For consistency reasons we continued with the same structure of separating them into all parts. I think a good next step would be additional cards for two character words like 动物. What do you think?

[Hofmann]

圖書館 is made up of the word 圖書 and 館.

圖書 is further made up of 圖 "image" and 書 "text."

館 is a guest residence, later expanded to mean a facility with services.

 

But hey, just because somebody here said something is something, you should still do your own research. And IMO that's how you solve all these accuracy-related problems in one go.

[Demonic_Duck]

I don't think "keeping it simple" is a valid reason for obscuring the actual structure of the words. It feeds into various myths about the importance of characters in Chinese which place them as equivalent to words or morphemes, whereas in fact they're simply the written equivalent of syllables (with some added semantic baggage). That might be self-evident to us as advanced learners of Chinese, but it certainly won't be self-evident to your target audience.

[zhouhaochen]

I am not sure if I would agree on seeing a Chinese character only as a way of writing a syllable. Characters do have a meaning that is independent of the way they are pronounced or used in the context of compound words. And learning compound words through the meaning of the individual characters can be a very good short cut to quickly memorize new words.

 

I remember for example studying the word 马上 and having trouble to remember it, until someone told me to look at the meaning of the two characters (both of which I knew - I just hadnt figured out what they could mean when connected) and once I understood that, remembering it was very easy.

 

The beauty of a compound word is that you might be able to use the characters and words you already know to very quickly learn a new word - you just need the explanation how they should be combined.

[Demonic_Duck]

I should have been clearer. Characters-as-characters are simply the written equivalent of syllables, with some added semantic baggage. Note that syllables in English can also have semantic baggage, though it's not so explicitly present in their written form. For example, the syllable "post-" has semantic baggage when used as a prefix. The syllable "box" has semantic baggage both used alone and as part of the word "box-cutter". However, it has semantic baggage of a different kind when used as part of the word "boxing" (cf. “须” in “必须” vs. “须” in “剃须刀”).

 

Characters-as-words (i.e. one-character words, such as “狗”) are words. Syllables-as-words (i.e. one-syllable words, such as "dog") are also words. Though that's all tautological, anyway.

[eddyf]

Sorry to be negative but I'm not really sure if there's much point in these cards. Mandarin has thousands of "good compound words". Probably the majority of words fall into that category. Most of the time, the logic behind the compounds is pretty obvious. Are you going to make thousands of these cards? Are you trying to actually come up with a new method to learn vocabulary more easily (which for practical purposes means learning thousands of words, not just a couple dozen)? Or is this just meant to be a cute way to reduce the intimidation factor for absolute beginners?

[zhouhaochen]

@eddyf

Do not worry, negative feedback is also welcome.

 

Nobody will learn Chinese just through those cards, nor is this the aim (I thought that was rather obvious). The aim is to help someone to quickly learn a new word. Often the logic of a compound word is obvious - but often only once it has been explained to you.

 

For example the attached 健身房, which is a word you will probably not know up until you are quite advanced (unless you or your friends go to the gym)

 

A student who studied for example for about two months, however will probably know and have a basic understanding of the character 健 (most likely from 健康 - and as such is aware of it's meaning as "healthy", but not yet of the connected meaning of "strong"), of 身 from 身体 and 房 from 房间。The student knows all the building blocks of the word, yet not the word itself yet. The aim of the card is to show how these three characters (which the student is at least partly familiar with) fit into a new word.

 

It would be possible to also separate the word into 健身 (exercise) and 房 (room), as these are the two meanings that were probably combined when some Chinese guy had to come up for a new word for a place where people lift iron bars and run around in circles without any obvious purpose or reason, however for that the student would need to know what 健身 means, which he at that level probably does not yet. It would be possible to show the steps of how 健 and 身 first became 健身 and then was married with 房间 to become 健身房，which is how a teacher would explain it, but then the purpose of a quick and easy way to learn a new word by just looking at a card for a few moments might not be achieved.

 

[Demonic_Duck]

The card itself states the meanings of the components, though.

 

Anyway, assuming you're only planning on making electronic versions of these for online use, it's very easy to hyperlink the word “健身” in the “健身房” card to the “健身” card.