Saturday, October 22, 2022

Twitter Exchange About Chinese Characters

Enshrined here is part of a two-year-old link which reappeared in my Facebook timeline this morning. 

JB - Knowing nothing about these glyphs I can discern that the images in the picture are something like cursive versions of the printed ones. When I was learning to write the Korean phonetic characters someone teaching me the proper way go draw them explained there was a distinction between print and cursive writing. Printing takes more time so someone in a hurry is apt to lapse into cursive.

LM -  John At the top of my page I put an album of the calligraphy from The Huntington and you can see the explanations for each picture and how it relates to printing or cursive. Chinese has so many script types probably more than a dozen because the characters reach back at least 3000 years.Hangul is the newest alphabet. And it’s very phonetic and logical. I’m sure they have beautiful calligraphy as well but I think that the Chinese script the characters in themselves so wonderfully to calligraphy! But I guess so does Arabic. 

JB - The Chinese characters are bewildering there are so many. I think about four thousand were commonly used in much of Korean printed material, but daily newspapers and other more ordinary material used the phonetic alphabet.
High school students used little hand-made cards about the size of postage stamps, threaded on a string by the hundreds, as aids for memorizing.

LM - John I don’t think they use quite that many nowadays.

JB - Leanne Martin They may not have had that many then. Possibly what we now call "misinformation."
I was curious once about how a Chinese dictionary was organized. If I recall correctly it is in order of the number of strokes needed to make a character.
A single stroke can have a variety of meanings depending on how it's made, angle, end-hooks, etc. Two strokes can be combined to make even more variants -- each with different meanings, etc...
Characters at the end of the dictionary require many strokes, often combining two or more other characters to make a pictograph. Amazing and endlessly complicated.

LM - John yes they’re divided by the radicals. And if you think about it it’s mine boggling but it’s even really hard to use a dictionary! There’s also a great book about the history of the Chinese typewriter. But yes, like you I’ve always thought the dictionaries are incredibly interesting like you said. Basically divided by radical and stroke order. 

JB - One of the most unforgettable books I ever read was "Moment in Peking" by Lin Yutang, whom I had never heard of before I idly picked up an old book in a used book store.
I later discovered he was quite a scholar, widely known for his version of a Chinese-English dictionary and a spate of other work.
Maybe after my tour of duty in Korea I was attracted to anything of Asian origin so I really related to the details of the story-line.

LM - John How wonderful! I really loved his book the importance of living. He’s a very quirky thinker. But at one time I was a big fan of that book and I’m realizing that I should buy a copy for my new home since all my books were left behind in Japan. I’ll look into his work on the dictionary. It’s really a name I had almost forgotten. I’m so glad you reminded me! Are you watching any of the Korean dramas that Brooks loves so much? Like Mr. sunshine. Or My Mister? She’s written some interesting posts on the TV shows on the blog!

JB - Leanne Martin I would like to do that but I watch very little on TV other than keeping up with the news. My wife does the chick-flicks on TV and my online life is full with my two social media accounts.
I'm aware of the Korean dramas and other entertainment but haven't been drawn to them. I lately watched a bit of BTS when I learned that boy-band was so important to the Korean GDP as Samsung.

LM - John LOL!

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