Until recently I thought that Chinese characters are just as they are and that either you know them or you do not. If you do not, I thought, there is no way of knowing what it means.
Now I have come to understand that that is not correct. It seems that there are basic characters (some 200, I believe) and that these basic characters can be combined to make other words.
For example, the character for fire is a basic one and so is the one for cart. If you combine these two into one, more complicated, character, it means locomotive.
If this is true, I would like to give it a shot and try to get to understand a few.
Could someone help me, please?
Yes, what you said about combining characters is true, but I don’t know about the specific case of locomotive. In Japanese, which also uses Chinese characters, the word for locomotive is kikansha, composed of ki (machine), kan (close, shut) and sha (car, wheel).
If you want to discuss Chinese, I suggest you join this forum http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb. There you can post in Chinese and whichever other language using their original scripts.
Oh dear! Yet another very appealing forum. Thanks BD.
However, there seems to be a problem. Probably something to do with my settings, but I do not get the Chinese characters. Just little squares. Do you know how to fix that?
I guess that by the time I have read all those interesting threads too, I will be too old to learn Chinese anyway.
In Internet Explorer, try "tools"; "internet options"; "general"; "languages"; "Add"; scroll down to "Chinese" (there are more than one entry for different kinds); highlight the one you want; click "OK".
Chinese word for locomotive does not combine two characters into one. What is known variously as Hanzi, kanji or Chinese character a morpheme as well as a syllable. If a new kanji is created to represent a new idea, it should be assigned with a reading comprising one and only one syllable.
This would require representing a whole new idea by one syllable, which —with a few notable exceptions—is more difficult to hold on than a new word derived as compound.
[quote author=Guichelheil link=board=translate;num=1131547365;start=0#2 date=11/09/05 at 10:41:56]Probably something to do with my settings, but I do not get the Chinese characters. Just little squares. Do you know how to fix that?
G, it sounds like either you do not have the Unicode fonts installed on your system that are required to present those characters, or you have your browser set to use a specific font that is not Unicode.
[quote author=Guichelheil link=board=translate;num=1131547365;start=0#0 date=11/09/05 at 09:42:45]Until recently I thought that Chinese characters are just as they are and that either you know them or you do not. If you do not, I thought, there is no way of knowing what it means.
Yes and no.
Traditionally, characters are categorized in six groups (a.o. pictograms, ideograms, ...).
But + 90% of the modern day Chinese characters consist of a radical and a phonetic. Though the radical might give you an indication of the general meaning of the character (or, erm, the semantic field), it sure is not that easy to find the meaning by looking at the radical alone.
Since the phonetic is an indication of the pronunciation (but not necessarilly of modern putonghua, mind you), a lot depends upon memorizing individual characters.
Now I have come to understand that that is not correct. It seems that there are basic characters (some 200, I believe) and that these basic characters can be combined to make other words.
I have the impression that you’re mixing up a few things here: depending upon the classification system and the script (simplified / traditional) +/- 200 radicals are discerned (from 186 till 227 these days, if i’m not wrong).
Huo (fire) is a character of its own, but it also appears as a radical in other characters.
For example, the character for fire is a basic one and so is the one for cart. If you combine these two into one, more complicated, character, it means locomotive.
Not completely so: the character for huo (fire) + the character for che (cart) gives huoche (train), which consists of two separate characters.
To nitpick a bit: huochetou, lit. "head of the fire wagon", is the locomotive (if i may trust my dictionary, that is). Any which way, huochetou consists of three separate characters, not of one character consisting of the three elements fire, cart, head.
It’s a pity that this board still doesn’t have unicode, but the moment you manage to read Chinese characters on your computer—i can’t help you with that—, i can send you a Word-file with some more examples.
Also, Wikipedia gives a fairly decent introductory text on characters.
Bellator and Tim, thanks for your help. Uhmm, I am afraid that I did not manage to fix it, even though I did everything Bellator suggested and selected everything with "Chinese" in it.
Anyway, never mind. Maybe I will see if I can find a clever chap to do it for me, or maybe I will just abandon the thought of impressing the waiter of my favourite Chinese restaurant. Ordering by numbers has allways worked fine and Flaminius and Frank (thanks guys) make me think that it is indeed as complicated as I initially thought.
[quote author=Guichelheil link=board=translate;num=1131547365;start=0#8 date=11/10/05 at 15:32:24]maybe I will just abandon the thought of impressing the waiter of my favourite Chinese restaurant. Ordering by numbers has allways worked fine
Then there is bad news for you: the average waiter in a Chinese restaurant over here speaks Cantonese and writes in traditional ("even more complicated") Chinese characters.
Which allows me to wonder aloud about the Chinese "communities" in Europe. Wondering about how, when and why they came to Europe, and which route they followed. Once heard that e.g. a lot of Chinese arrived in Belgium via the UK.
Does anybody know some literature about it?
I do not know about the route they followed, but I seem to remember that there is a Dutch television documentary about just that. I believe that it is called "Achter het luik." ("Behind the shutter.", I guess, in English). I did not see it, but in the TV-guide the comment said that people would sometimes come from China without any culinary experience whatsoever. In search of a better life they would for instance come to Holland and start a Chinese restaurant. Chinese/Indonesian actually.
In Holland, if one would dine out, until about thirty years ago one was bound to go to a Chinese. (But we have now learned from the Belgians). Remarkable, by the way, how different Chinese restaurants in for example the UK are from those in Holland.
The very limited grasp of the Dutch language of the first generation has added an idiom to it; " ;DSambal bij? ;D" (Correct Dutch: "Wilt u er sambal bij?") This refers to the last question Chinese would allways ask before you left with your take-away. ("With sambal?") They still ask, but their Dutch is now much better.
Sambal is a flaming hot, Indonesian red pepper paste.
For those who have not eaten yet:
Maman tse, selamat makkan, eet smakelijk, enjoy your meal.
[quote author=Guichelheil link=board=translate;num=1131547365;start=0#10 date=11/10/05 at 18:46:38]I do not know about the route they followed, but I seem to remember that there is a Dutch television documentary about just that. I believe that it is called "Achter het luik."
Thanks for the tip! Over here there was once a documentary about second and third generation Chinese on a local channel. And that’s it. There is a huge literature (books, articles, programmes) on jews, Moroccans, Turkish in Belgium, about Chinese i found one (1) book and half a dozen of news paper articles (over 20 years).
[they] sometimes come from China without any culinary experience whatsoever. In search of a better life they would for instance come to Holland and start a Chinese restaurant. Chinese/Indonesian actually.
Yep, yep, that’s what i read and heard from Chinese themselves too. At least in the "dorpschinees" (village Chinese restaurant), you know, the stereotypical red/yellow/golden resto with the aquarium, where you order by means of numbers .
Luckily, Antwerp has a "Chinese street" crammed with the real stuff. Probably (hopefully), bigger cities in The Netherlands have those too (?).
The very limited grasp of the Dutch language of the first generation has added an idiom to it; [...] They still ask, but their Dutch is now much better.
I think it basically follows the usual pattern:
first generation: Chinese,
second generation: Chinese-Dutch,
third generation: Dutch-Chinese
Though the actual situation might be slighly more complicated , the best language teacher for a whole community is time…
I can write the Chinese characters on my computer, but they won’t show up here. They just come out as random numbers and other things. Someone fix this!!! It would make the content of this site so much richer to be able to have this on here.
This site isn’t Unicode enabled. We’re restricted to a very basic set of symbols here. Try BD’s suggestion of Nov 9, or a place like http://www.chinese-forums.com. I understand that you have installed CJK support on your Win XP (or similar) computer/OS. Then, those other sites should work perfectly.
Some years ago, I visited Museum Plantin-Moretus. Unfortunately, I could only spare one day to look at all the printing equipment, the printing plant and the font foundry and ...
But when I return, I think I’ll use the better part of a week. So,
[quote author=frank link=board=translate;num=1131547365;start=0#12 date=11/11/05 at 03:39:59]Luckily, Antwerp has a "Chinese street" crammed with the real stuff.
address, please. I didn’t find it, despite my roaming after museum hours.
Kijk eens in uw "privé brievenbus"
