How Chinese Characters Work

[@bubbletae286]

How to learn chinese: forget about memorizing thousands of symbols,,, watch thousands of cdramas with chinese subtitles and it helps you learn it. When they say the word repeatedly, if you see that symbol again u’ll recognise it and know how it sounds. That how I learnt and I’m fluent in chinese 😉😉 Also cdramas are great af

[@QuizmasterLaw]

i came for the kareoke! ^_-

[@ra-3-388]

armyyy do you watch kdramas too

[@EzequielMartin55vf]

谢谢您

[@Tallahass33]

Can someone recommend me some ?

[@bubbletae286]

@@Tallahass33 yeahhh omg, idk if you like period cdramas but I personally love those, I recommend the untamed, the journey of flower, princess agents, ten miles of peach blossoms. If you like modern ones then the interpreter, diamond lover, my little princess, I cannot hug you

[@Notthatserious6895]

This is the video my teacher assigned to watch

[@ismailsayar8599]

W teacher

[@tripletriple5272]

Mine too

[@ashintheblunt3292]

Lmao a teacher tells you to watch another teacher. Work smarter not harder folks 😂

[@AradEsmailTehrani]

100th like!

[@ethanpetersen810]

Good for you. In all my classes it honestly seems like they never really explained this stuff when they taught characters.

[@henrywong2725]

Fun fact: the common etymology of the character 東 shown in this video is actually a folk etymology The more widely accepted etymology in the professional level is that the character meant a bag tied on both ends but was then borrowed as the character for east in a process called 假借 (fake borrowing)

[@redj1101]

Chinese and Russian language reform were only similar in that the goal was to make learning to read and write easier. That's happened with many languages around the world under various systems of government. Certain Russian letters were dropped in 1917 because they were redundant; there were other letters representing the same sound.

[@randomchina6982]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3STq4uKaraAqc0

[@jaspernemesio3816]

I wish the video was longer. It is very well explained.

[@johnroekoek12345]

When the voice started, it brought me to my days as a kid, playing records of spoken fairytales until I fell asleep.

[@WorldisOurThing]

John Roekoe thanks for watching! And I hope the video is of use, even if only as a sleeping aid :-D

[@tanishmisra2385]

when me and the homies meet us: 2:33

[@panedole]

This was great, I've been looking for "learning powerful methods to build your Chi energy" for a while now, and I think this has helped. You ever tried - Fellmeroni Rudimentary Chi - (just google it ) ? Ive heard some great things about it and my cousin got excellent success with it.

[@t2kazuyasama333]

Heh nice

[@TortoiseBoi33_]

WHo from SRi KDU?

[@t2kazuyasama333]

Hi I am from Sri kdu

[@TortoiseBoi33_]

@@t2kazuyasama333 what year?

[@AaroneStefano]

That was really such a good video! Thanks for creating and sharing it.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Aaron e Stefano thanks for watching and for the encouragement!

[@lydiacitrus4770]

That reminds me of my kindergarten teachers lol , they drew little cards of characters and the meanings they represent for us😄可爱(means lovely)

[@KevinTheMatine9293]

It means cute. Lmao

[@ChathreCJ-jf3bd]

ke’ai ( 可爱 ） means cute

[@don2672]

This was very simple and straight to the point. I really feel like I can go ahead and learn Chinese now.

[@HANSMKAMP]

3:06 Interesting. I would like to make a periodic table of elements, that the chemists use. The name of those elements are in kanji (although this video is about the Chinese language). I already found out that: 金 means: gold; 鉄 means: iron; 銀 means: silver. There must be more such names. Many of them are known in normal conversations, others are only known in conversations between physicians and chemists. I found that: 銅 means: copper; 鈉 means: sodium or natrium; 鎂 means: magnesium; 鋁 means: aluminum. Some (may be all) of these four kanji are either out of use or obsolete, or very unusual (I guess that the Japanese will use katakana instead to write the names of these metals). Etc.

[@きくちよ-p3v]

Most characters of elements are designed last century. You'll find that metals have a 金(means metal).Liquids have a 水 or 氵(means water). Solids have a 石(means stone). And others have a 气(means gas).

[@Simon1356-BJ]

I suppose you might like my video "The periodic table with Chinese characters" in my channel.😀

[@johnroekoek12345]

Hans Kamp I will write this down on my sleeve and when I have that chemistry test... 😁

[@sktzn6829]

These are actually not hard to learn how to pronounce in Chinese, as most of the elements in Mandarin are semi-transliterated from English. i.e. Aluminium is Lu (the Lu in Alu) Sodium is Na (from Natrium/Na) Magnesium is Mei (Mag sound) etc.

[@chicoti3]

Actually, a bunch of those characters are 常用漢字 and therefore are widely used in Japan.

[@handylingua]

Very impressed by your knowledge about and understanding of the subject - too many videos online regurgitate what the creators obviously couldn't quite digest. The accurate pronunciation and an ending scene (sun in the sky, trees on the left, fish leaps out of water, then bird swoops down to catch the fish) that actually makes sense earns you mad props from me, fwiw. :)

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for the kind words H. Andy Lingua! More videos coming soon

[@handylingua]

@@WorldisOurThing - This video deserves the compliment for sure. :) (the only constructive suggestion I can come up with is to actually touch upon the meaning of the 2 characters 魚 and 鳥 in the main body of the video)

[@randomchina6982]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3STq4uKaraAqc0

[@thetruemusichead]

Wow, my mind is blown. Had no idea Chinese worked like this!

[@Graymenn]

so its a mixture of loose symbolism and phonetic similarities? Sounds wayyyyy to complex lol

[@WorldisOurThing]

:-) It's a lot easier than it looks, once you get used to it

[@Graymenn]

The World is Our Thing What is even easier, and often, more funny than that is to just use the google translator 什么是更容易，而且往往更搞笑比是只使用谷歌翻译 See?!?!?!

[@WorldisOurThing]

:-)

[@jerrychina3853]

Many people might disagree, but I think it's fine to use something like Google Translate for translations. Sure, it might not be the perfect 100%, but if I say something like "I much use translating to talk," you can easily see it as "I often use a translator to talk with others. Really, some people are a little picky about their grammar, but communication is still possible

[@WorldisOurThing]

True, machine translation is better than no translation at all! (and sorry for the late reply -- this one must have fallen through the cracks)

[@idkhh8656]

jumpscare at 0:00

[@WorldisOurThing]

Sorry -- maybe the music on the intro bumper comes up a little too quickly. Hope you enjoyed anyway :-)

[@funkuro]

aaaaaaaaaaaa. much scare

[@AJLIM-q9c]

柚 compose by 木由。木 related to tree, wood. Add side stroke to 由 to know more.，黄，油，柚，抽烟，电，申诉，畅通，铀矿

[@blandwinde]

The Chinese radicals are pictographic and conveying meaning through visual representation. Only a minority of Chinese characters are wholly pictographic, like the radicals. And the majority of Chinese characters are a vision-sound combination, which is, having a radical to indicate meaning, and another component character to indicate the (compound vowel of) pronunciation. This video was vividly introducing this vision-sound combination!

[@enemychrome939]

the animation's great, first time knowing what those characters depict as an Chinese

[@WorldisOurThing]

I've finally added some Spanish subtitles -- please let me know if there are any errors! :-) More subtitles (in Spanish and in other languages) to follow...

[@ipermaga4618]

you can always let other people add subtitles in their languages (fan subtitles?). i'd be happy to put italian subtitles, for example

[@WorldisOurThing]

@@ipermaga4618 Thanks much! That would be great! E grazie per guardare questo video :-)

[@QuizmasterLaw]

traditional dragon is a picto-phonetic or picto-semantic. the picture of the dragon is the character on the right. it's not the head it's the whole dragon. the rest is either a determinant or a phonetic clue. li the standing character on the top left could be the phonetic clue. yue the moon or body character on the lower right either indicates the idea of the lunar calendar or of the fact that the dragon is a corporeal entity. otherwise really great intro to a nice character set: causation, uranium, standing ripe grain, household centipede dou yong you!

[@kodfkdleepd2876]

I think the point is missed. It is not about trying to find some "hidden" meaning... it is about coming up with an interpretation so you can remember the symbol. It really does matter what interpretation you use as long as you can remember what it actually is suppose to mean in the language. Yes, there are some simplifications and the point of radicals is to help simplify, but it really doesn't matter about anything except memorization since any symbol can mean anything(all symbols are abstract) and it is only agreement that makes a symbol have any "meaning". The same goes for the spoken symbols(words). If a person had a photographic memory and perfect recall then there would be no need to have any "story" for the symbol to try and memorize it, one symbol would memorize it. Everyone is looking for a trick to memorize since memorization is typically hard for people(it takes time). We typically can more easily remember things in context which is why we use stories.... but they are just stories at the end of the day. It may be better to simply figure out how to memorize things as they are rather than trying to memorize a story because in the long run it will be quicker.

[@ThatLad685]

So I just gotta memorize Chinese, all of their slang and the history behind it, 200 unique shapes and their pronunciation, than I’m good to speak fluent Chinese!

[@shakirobaid2895]

how is that going for ya

[@hingginchu]

It's quite simple really. You have a set of basic symbols. They serve as both sound or meaning indicators. Very effective and versatile system.

[@basitin6909]

no

[@lionelchetwynd9358]

Fantastic! I feel smarter!

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks!

[@SimpleChinese]

Nice presentation! Congratulations!

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks much!

[@jingyunroderickhuang5449]

Damn this is crazy helpful! thanks from a chinese teacher in south America；absolutely great animation as well

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for the kind words! Also on this channel is a 90-minute course on Mandarin Chinese tones if that's of any use as well.

[@Shenzhou.]

I wished they taken the right side of "龍" for Simplified Chinese rather than "龙" since "龙" looks quite similar to "花" (Flower) while the "dragon tail" part of 龍 is quite distinctive.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Yeah, I like the traditional 龍 too. In Japan, by the way, they simplified the same character to 竜

[@Shenzhou.]

+The World is Our Thing Cool, Japanese 竜 does resemble 龍 more than the Chinese simplified 龙. Its because the "Asian Dragon" is a important symbol of the East Asia so its kinda disappointing for its Simplified character to look...err...nothing like a dragon haha. Just my opinion. In Chinese, Tortoise "龜" is perhaps even more monstrous to write in Traditional form. Luckily, the Simplified form 龟 is much easier to write and it still retains some semblance of its original form.

[@gloryxiong6068]

I hope you could know the real meaning of Chinese language.Japanese 竜 looks like turtle( 龟) in Chinese.

[@WorldisOurThing]

For sure, the 竜 resembles the Chinese simplified character for "turtle," though I've seen it used for "dragon" in Chinese sometimes just as it is in Japanese.

[@Shenzhou.]

Actually, now that I think about it, Japanese dragon 竜 looks more like "電diàn" which is Traditional Chinese for "Electricity/Lightning" and Simplified Chinese "电diàn" looks like "龟guī" for turtle. You really have to pay close attention to the differences.

[@YaoMandarin]

Wow, it's informative and helps to explain radicals and character decompositions. May I add this to my playlist? I just started a channel about writing traditional Chinese characters. Thank you. 😊

[@danzhao9709]

Japan also simplified some Chinese characters in Japanese way

[@WorldisOurThing]

... though of course, as I'm sure you know, in Japanese the characters don't always mean the same thing as in Chinese -- just as some characters mean different things in different Chinese languages (like 耐 in Cantonese is the equivalent of 久 in Mandarin, etc.) 谢谢收看!

[@danzhao9709]

The World is Our Thing there are three kinds of Japanese characters. When it comes to Chinese characters. The Japanese unusually have the same or very similar meaning with Chinese and because the Japan is the first country who interacted in western country so there are a lot of new Chinese words are actually coming from Japanese. For example "民主”， “归制缓和”，“原则”.....

[@WorldisOurThing]

For sure most have the same or similar meaning, but no doubt you've heard the famous example of 手紙 ("letter" in Japanese and "toilet paper" in Chinese), even though 手 still means "hand" in both languages, and 紙 is "paper" in both

[@xinguliq]

The word, 民主 and 原則 came from Japan?! I didn't know... i thoght their words and concepts came from china to korea!

[@Ines-yf5kj]

Isn't it more like traditional Chinese characters in Kanji?

[@spiderjump]

knee = 膝 . why ?

[@WorldisOurThing]

The 月 on the left side of the character signifies a part of the body, and the stuff on the right side is the character for "paint/lacquer," which is pronounced similarly to the word for "knee" (though in Mandarin not quite the same -- chee=paint, shee=knee)

[@jerrychina3853]

It's a result of corruption in Chinese, over the years, you can expect somethings to become weird. For instance, the 月 might looks like moon in this font, but it's actually just 肉 "meat" made into a radical (Which is similar to moon) and eventually combined with it too. You can see this in other examples, like 腿-foot, 脚-foot, 肚-stomach, and 胳-arm.

[@jerrychina3853]

Correction: 腿 is leg, I can't edit on mobile

[@danzhao9709]

Jerry Du no, moon also means meat simply because it looks like meat hanging on some stick...in the past 月 is more like the left part of 那. It's nothing to do with the corruption of Chinese government

[@AndrewVasirov]

He didn't say "Corruption of Chinese GOVERNMENT". He meant that the writing itself changed overtime because people wanted to.

[@iamnotsure1351]

木+目+心=想

[@acegonzales8047]

Is this wood, a window, and a shirt??? Meaning getting dressed to go out??? I'm trying lol

[@kfkf7235]

@@acegonzales8047 木 = wood、tree 目 =eye 心 = heart 相 "xiang" = this character mean view (climb the tree and see the distance) 相+心 =想“xiang” 想 = think and miss you (view with heart😂)

[@CanadianPrepper]

Thank god the Egyptians created the alphabet and Arabian people created numbers.

[@philips170t]

But people will go for the traditional “Dragon” character in their tattoo instead of the simplified version. Because the former has more strokes and look cooler.

[@rocketmillion]

native chinese here 东 is not made from the sun + tree 由 is pronounced as you2

[@FalcoAcePilot]

its cool and all, having a real sense behind every character, but that honestly doesnt make it easier to learn

[@ethanchou4906]

True, but understanding how Chinese works may make it easier to remember (easiest example is: 1, 2, and 3 in Chinese)

[@glee5101]

There aren't 8000 characters used in everyday life, trust me. It's much closer to 2 or 3 thousand that are frequently used.

[@hisyamhasbi8257]

so instead of putting alphabets, arranging it in a group to mean words, they make an 'alphabet' for each word?

[@hisyamhasbi8257]

this comment's tone is very cordial i swear, it's supposed to show my surprise without hint of mockingness :)))))))) i love learning language

[@niubi3923]

@@hisyamhasbi8257 no, individual characters ≠ words. You have to memorise compound words seperately since most of the time they can mean completely different things from the individual characters. 大大=uncle，大=big

[@akilajani2840]

I thought my language is the best, but every language has its own uniqueness

[@ethanchou4906]

There is no 'best' language, there are only special parts about each language.

[@stephengoh5456]

Interesting! Love it. Thank you.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks Stephen!

[@NMSPR1]

So cool! Very interesting and informative. Well done

[@WorldisOurThing]

Sam Grant Thanks!

[@floxy20]

I still don't know how items in a list are sorted ("alphabetized"). Or, how a word search is done by a computer.

[@WorldisOurThing]

There are 3 main ways: * Alphabetizing using Hanyu Pinyin (Roman letters) * Alphabetizing using "BoPoMoFo" (a special alphabet used to express Mandarin Chinese phonetically - I think it's still used in Taiwan) * Ordering the characters by radical, which in turn are ordered by the number of strokes (And there is an order to the strokes themselves which breaks any "ties")

[@_no_name.01]

I don't understand, I'm confused. I really want to learn chinese but i don't know where to start.

[@vogod4580]

hey mom i can speak chinese now

[@deepclient1531]

ｇｏｏｄ　ｊｏｂ　ｓｏｎ

[@nicheva417]

Is there any place else goes through the radicals and explains the history of the symbol? Can only ever find a few random ones explained.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Probably what you want is something like this book by T.H. Peng, it shows the older forms and how they came to be www.amazon.com/Chinese-Radicals-Treasury-English-Mandarin/dp/0893462918/

[@Casperbager333]

My brain hurts

[@thegreatindianspammer9906]

I also want to learn Chinese language. Any tips plz.🇮🇳

[@ElvisNoris-zp1jm]

Was I the only person who still didn't understand anything? I also didn't see much resemblance between objects and characters. I was like "seriously?"

[@jefflokanata]

Btw at first ROC was simplifying the written chinese , not PRC altogether.

[@MrMCKlebeband]

aah, so my gut feeling "these look like effin hieroglyphs" was right on the money.

[@anxiouscactus5929]

my chinese friend used to complain to me how Chinese is so hard eventhough he speaks it as his first language for 26 years and how he still can't read the characters

[@ziconghuang7139]

He is being over exaggerating...Not that difficult

[@keepthefaith9805]

well, that’s kinda limited since we are getting into quantum stuff and is basically invisible

[@helenpaul67]

Goddam youtube u tap into my silent mind tooo....spoooky

[@christianadrian28]

Fuck that I'll just learn French

[@littlepeky]

Wade Wilson lol

[@dorawang5451]

but grammar is much much easier in Chinese. Does that help?

[@naelie2288]

Haha but grammar in French is complicated there are so many tense and quite hard to memorize

[@pratiksharma2112]

That is very complex🥵 Why doesn't Chinese have an alphabet system like us?

[@aftokratory]

Chinese does not use a phonetic alphabet because all words in Chinese are only one syllable long. This makes Chinese extremely efficient in conveying information, but it means that most characters are pronounced identically to dozens of other characters with completely different meanings, so you need uniquely written characters to distinguish between them, which is why Chinese cannot be written purely phonetically. In spoken Chinese, characters are usually combined with another character with a similar meaning into a two character word to make the meaning less ambiguous.

[@ethanchou4906]

Because Chinese doesn't have a phonetic system, 1 word usually conveys 1 meaning (some exceptions, but are very rare), this makes Chinese much more information-dense, a sentence that would take 100 words to convey in English, may only need 30 words in Chinese.

[@shubethune5748]

Very good. My video will tell different source for the Hanzi "east"---from a bag.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching! Yes, some characters have several possible etymologies, but the one presented in this video is the best-known.

[@delay2045]

I'm Chinese and I'm watching this video for no reason

[@marwagad3034]

BEAUTIFUL VIDEO ..THANK YOU

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thank you Marwa Gad!

[@lupecazares49]

It's amazing I know 1 to 10 in chinese. And I happy baby steps

[@sandymoonstone855]

🍎™ 水 = water ， 冰 = ice = 😜 ， 雨 = rain

[@xxryuuu.]

So smart-

[@xxryuuu.]

YEA

[@jorlon17]

This isn't how I learned the character for East at 1:50. 西 is how I learned it. I can't find reference for the way you have it.

[@Henry-teach-Chinese-in-jokes]

I’ve spent about 100,000 hours studying English humor and Western culture. My native language is Chinese. I’m teaching Chinese language in jokes and pictures. It makes learning Chinese funny and much easier. Hope you can recommend it. Laughter can help us reduce tensions.

[@davidcoria9264]

I get confused the both Japanese and Chinese characters are look like the same, isn't right? I try to write like this mandarin but I can't memory them. I feel bad that It is too complicated. There are more than 8, 000 mandarins! It's a such a lot of work!

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching the video! Yes, Japanese uses about 500 or so Chinese characters (some simplified, some not) in addition to their two syllable alphabets ("syllabaries"). If you're having trouble learning the characters, I would recommend any of the "Fun With Chinese Characters" series by Tan Huay Peng -- he uses his cartoons to explain the characters, and the books very popular. All together, they cover about 500 characters, which is enough of start to allow to learn other characters fairly easily. Best of luck!

[@slyninja4444]

Although Japanese does use a lot of Mandarin characters, they do also use an alphabet. Hence being able to reconize the japanese alphabet is the way to tell the languages apart

[@yichidance]

Non-native people do not need to learn that much for general application. In Mainland China, the commonly used Chinese Characters are 2500. In Taiwan and also Hong Kong (non simplified) they announced 4500 Chinese characters as commonly used by native. Japan government announced in 2011 that there are 2136 commonly used Chinese characters (kanji) in Japan.

[@sfromme]

Just want to make a correction about the pinyin of “由“, “柚" and "铀". Those three are supposed to be "you" not "yo" at 2:34, 2:50 and 3:10 of the video clip.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching! I thought it was better to use "yo" - otherwise people who don't already know Hanyu Pinyin might figure it's pronounced /yu/

[@markgable1280]

谢谢。

[@TheFelixKang]

the simplpification of chinese characters wasnt initiated by communist party, it was already proposed by scholars and government of republic of china before kuomintang ran off to Taiwan

[@andyw.3048]

Lots of them are also in Japanese, like: 本 (hon) - tree 日 (bi) - day 中国 (chuugoku) - china 漢字 (kanji) - chinese writing

[@user-trrwvfk]

Andy W. 中国 is not pronounced "nakakuni", it is pronounced chuugoku

[@andyw.3048]

Saskia Orihara Yeah, I'm also just learning😅

[@sktzn6829]

hon is book, not tree

[@anthonykuhr9860]

本 stands for "root" originally in Chinese, that stroke shows where the root is (under the 木).

[@brighthorse6981]

@@anthonykuhr9860 you r right,the basic meaning of "本" is "root" in Chinese, when the Chinese named Japan 1500 years ago, because Japan is to the east of China, where the sun rises, so they named "日本（sun root）" means it is the location of sun’s root

[@akilla6166]

I want to learn more about how communism and other industrial age ideologies impacted different languages. Great video!

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks!

[@toribenita_kyo]

So... "dragon" is just the character for "serpent" + another character to modify its meaning?

[@darlamoore8191]

I've watched about 99 videos about these and I still don't get it.

[@themrsnakebitee]

glucose guardian I'm Chinese and my school is English-Filipino-Chinese and I learn Chinese twice a day at school but I still don't get it either

[@CrustyUgg]

Same my brain hurts

[@CrustyUgg]

Are we dumb? Yes or yes?

[@lokofreestyle5430]

I'm glad I'm not the only dumbass

[@ipotatosenpai7002]

@@CrustyUgg twice

[@jsbaldo5556]

So it's like the golden compass..

[@beohoh]

Great video!

[@WorldisOurThing]

andy00 Thanks much!

[@dizzychineseman7445]

@@WorldisOurThing can i ask some questions about chinese?

[@WorldisOurThing]

@@dizzychineseman7445 Definitely -- I'll try to answer if I can (and thanks for watching!)

[@dizzychineseman7445]

@@WorldisOurThing like how to diffrent characters combine to make new words like the character for good or Hào in chinese, the character is also in hello or Nihâo. Is it because they are both greetings? Can you explain how it works? And do raticals have their own noises that combine to make the characters pronoucation?

[@WorldisOurThing]

@@dizzychineseman7445 In the case of 好, it's a combination of 女 (woman) and 子 (child) to mean "good" -- My understanding is that 你好 (ni3hao3 -- literally "you good") is short for 你好吗? (ni3hao3ma -- "Are you well?") Most of the radicals are characters in their own right, like 木 and 目 (both pronounced as mu4 and meaning "wood" and "eye," respectively). But a few are just strokes and don't appear on their own, although they all at least have names If you're interested in where specific characters come from, there are some good online resources, including this Chinese character etymology dictionary: hanziyuan.net/ (though you'll need to be able to input the character you want to research) Hope this helps and thanks again for watching this channel!

[@apg7118346]

In Chinese you can put some random words and combine them to get totally different meaning. For example : 「米」 - rice 「分」 - split 「糸」 - filament 「工」 - work 「女」 - woman 「乃」 - be 「豆」 - bean 「頁」 - page If you put them all together in pairs and you will get : 「粉紅奶頭」, it means "pink tits"

[@WorldisOurThing]

黃柏銘 谢谢收看这个电影! I think 奶頭 would usually translate as "nipple" in English

[@ryuuch.9888]

what a beautiful language

[@Wearenick]

Amazing video.

[@WorldisOurThing]

Nico Morrone thanks for watching!

[@roastedpotato2883]

chinese doesn’t have tenses like past tense present tense something like that

[@WorldisOurThing]

True -- If you're interested, I also have this video touching on that same subject: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJuseoJuo7dkgdk

[@firewizard4401]

The language is so beautiful but is seems unpractical, what’s your opinion guys?

[@MrLantean]

Each word in Chinese languages has its own character and there one must learn perhaps thousands of characters in order to know hoe read and write in Chinese characters. When compared to the simpler alphabet writing system, Chinese written language appeared unpractical. How it has advantages over the alphabet writing system. In alphabet writing system, alphabets are arranged to form the sound and pronunciation of words while in Chinese writing system, it conveys the meaning of words instead of the sound of words. Spoken languages continue to change and evolve with new words and terms being adopted while older ones are drop out. Also the pronunciation of words also changes. In alphabet writing system, written words have to be rewritten in order for contemporary readers to understand. In Chinese writing system, written words do not need to be rewritten as frequently as in alphabet writing system. The meaning of written words are the same while the spoken form has change and Chinese written words change vert little over the course of centuries. That's why Chinese books written during perhaps the 13th Century are still readable and understand by contemporary readers while contemporary English speakers have difficulties in understanding English books written during the same period. Also Chinese people may speak dozens of mutual unintelligible languages are able to communicate and other each other through the written languages. Therefore Chinese written language is very practical.

[@sarwindahdwiyuntari3825]

how many alphabet that i should learn at first when i just start learn mandarin? i lil bit confuse

[@Hamsters831]

Wish they would simplify the language further. Too many different words are pronounced exactly the same way.

[@ethanchou4906]

That's how Chinese works, in Bopomofo (a type of transliteration system) there are only 37 sounds and 5 tones, that's not enough for 8k words, considering that each word can only take a max of 3 sounds and 1 tone.

[@Hamsters831]

@@ethanchou4906 ya.. mandarin will have this issue .. I notice there are less such issues in cantonese though. I wonder how many sounds and tones that has

[@matstomren8152]

So it’s basically little alchemy

[@jackteo4168]

This is traditional Chinese, I learned simple Chinese

[@creative-name5279]

Very interesting. I learned that a lot of Chinese words sound the same but have different meanings, so the character system makes sense in Chinese because you could just swap out one radical in a character and get a completely different word. The problem is that it only works with languages like Chinese. I'd imagine if english tried to write with characters, it would be quite hard to convert and learn because all of our words sound distinctly different. For that matter, I'd imagine Japanese had a similar problem because word construction is very different, although it probably wasn't nearly as hard as an east to west conversion because it came out of the same language family (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong). What puzzles me as well is why some characters have more than 2 radicals in them. Wouldn't 2 radicals be sufficient, or is the meaning too complex to convey in just 2 radicals?

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching! And good point about Japanese: Although it uses a lot of Chinese characters (known as "kanji"), it also has two kana syllable-alphabets which fill in the gaps, such as for adding grammatical endings and other inflections that Chinese doesn't have (the various Chinese languages are all Sino-Tibetan, while Japanese is in its own group, sometimes lumped together with Korean). Kana are also used to spell words that don't have kanji, while in Chinese, almost everything can be expressed using only characters. As for characters with more than two radicals, sometimes they'll take an existing two-radical character and add another radical to change the meaning -- so for example 邦 (one of several characters meaning "country") can take the radical for "silk" to become 绑 (meaning "to tie up"). If you're interested, check out the 11-radical character "biang" from the Sichuan dialect of Mandarin -- it's the first character in the list on this link: www.thatsmags.com/china/post/13288/most-complicated-chinese-characters

[@creative-name5279]

The World is Our Thing Thank you. I am familiar with kana and the biang character. Kana only came into use in the middle ages of Japan though, so before that they had to adapt Mandarin (or whatever the prominent dialect was at the time) to Japanese completely, which must have been an arduous undertaking. Also, it would make sense that Korean and Japanese are of the same language family because they share a similar history. Both Korea and Japan used Chinese writing for their literature at first, but then rejected it in favor of their own alphabets. Korea completely rejected Chinese while Japan only partially rejected it (evidenced by kanji still being used in Tokyo), which leads me to suspect the conversion from chinese to japanese was a lot easier than from chinese to korean, or it could just be that japanese scholars wished to remain more faithul than korean scholars. Also, Korea has been hotly contested between China and Japan, both seeking to colonize it, and you can see that attitude in the use of Korean slave labor and the Rape of Nanking in WWII. I would not be surprised if such animosity is what led to the Korean language being the way it is today. It is fairly ironic, then, to consider that North Korea's primary supporter in modern times is mainland china. Also, how old is stroke order? Did it come about as part of the PRC's efforts to modernize written chinese?

[@WorldisOurThing]

Ah cool -- you might know better than I, but I'm under the impression that the kana -- specifically hiragana -- was created for the reading of Buddhist texts, where pronunciation was important. I'm not sure how old stroke order is -- a Wikipedia article I just looked at dates the current system to Qin Dynasty, and for lack of other information, I would guess that's correct.

[@creative-name5279]

Oh, ok. Thank you. And that would make sense. The oldest texts written in China were the oracle bone etchings, which were used for divination, so it would make sense that Japan would be very similar. Buddhism came to Japan from trade with China, where it originally had come from India, and before that Japan was a pagan "country" (there wasn't a centralized government for a very long time). The irony is that the east overall is considered less spiritual than the west, but their earliest works of literature were spiritual in nature, while the west's work was mostly related to business transactions. I mostly like learning about eastern culture because I like comparing it to the western culture I'm used to to find out which is the "better" culture, but it all seems to come down to opinion really. I forgot to mention clan genealogies were also very important in China, so language probably had signature-writing in mind as well during it's inception, as each individual character would emphasize individuality as well as family of origin.

[@WorldisOurThing]

For sure, a lot to sink one's teeth into in terms of world cultures -- meanwhile, if you're interested, I also have these videos touching on Chinese culture and language: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJuseoJuo7dkgdk kzbin.info/www/bejne/eWTVfHanbM-cZ5I kzbin.info/www/bejne/eonHh4mgmMh-qtE

[@Juanbaez_]

A video like this but for Hebrew/Aramaic language. Love the vid! Thanks...

[@acer2024ac]

But in my perspective east in Chinese character is Electric pole and mountain hahaha

[@danghoangluong2942]

Dragon from Traditional and Mandarin is too different. Wonder if Mainland Chinese people struggle with traditional characters

[@abdelazizbilalfaycallahcen5997]

Thanks

[@向日葵-g8k]

Are there books that explain such topics

[@spiderjump]

Why is car plus owe = soft? 软。

[@WorldisOurThing]

Apparently the cart (車/车) is the signifier, and it's used because in ancient China they would use the wheel of a cart to thresh grain and make it soft. The "breathing mouth" radical (欠 -- with the line on top being the mouth and the two diagonal lines being the breath) is just there as a phonetic. I'm not sure about other Chinese languages, but I know that in Mandarin, 欠 is pronounced as "qian" (4th tone -- as in "haqian" (哈欠) meaning "to yawn"), while 软 is "ruan" (3rd tone), but I guess whenever and wherever this character was invented, the two words would have sounded close, if not alike.

[@WorldisOurThing]

And by the way, thanks much for watching! :-)

[@WorldisOurThing]

Also, I note you use the other meaning of 欠 -- to owe -- which is how it's usually used when alone. This is because the "breathing mouth" radical mentioned below was (and can still be) used as the character for "deficient." Maybe this is because heavy breathing meant a deficiency of strength, but I'm just guessing on this one. Anyway, "deficient" eventually became synonymous with "owe"

[@WorldisOurThing]

Here's a good site for character etymology, with the entry for qian4: www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E6%AC%A0

[@louiswong921]

well i can speak chinese but i almost failed every chinese exam

[@zacharyjohnson2592]

Dude I love u man thanks

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks! :)

[@edwardcone6860]

Hopelessly, hopelessly confusing

[@sodium303]

What's with the creepy background music

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching! And sorry you didn't like the music -- it's called "Afternoon Nocturne" -- I was going for something classical, rather than the Chinese erhu and sona music that usually goes on videos about Chinese, but I realize my taste in music won't always match up :-)

[@sourlemon9226]

这个好视频

[@sunni6610]

Omfg school has been teaching us Chinese since first grade to sixth in my country and they didn't explain any of this I'm- Jjsjsjsjsjsjs

[@ethanchou4906]

I know this comment is 2 years old but, in Chinese, most words can be divided into 6 categories on how they were made (六書), this is a pretty advanced idea, so it's not surprising for schools to teach it later in life.

[@TheMestarit]

can anyone tell me the Chinese alphabet

[@ethanchou4906]

There isn't an alphabet per se, but there are types of transliteration systems, for example, pinyin or bopomofo, these are examples.

[@ronzac55]

It would be a nightmare to browse Chinese dictionary 😂😂

[@amanimtd3890]

Nothing is chosen by chance in China I LOVE IT

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks Amani!

[@ninjapirate123]

Chinese words always looks like pictures that represents ancient times

[@sorayamartini11]

I'm a Chinese speaker and I use traditional Chinese but I never know my language is that kind of incredible and interesting Thanks so much now I love my language so much BTW my dad is a English speaker but I like Chinese more 😂

[@WorldisOurThing]

Soraya Boyce thanks for watching! I think both are great languages :-)

[@BrokenWindows1]

2:46 oh come on that just reminds me of the grape fruit technic

[@idontknowwhattotype4242]

what does this mean 我们

[@viviantan1034]

We

[@idontknowwhattotype4242]

Ok. I just typed randomly in Chinese and I wanted to know what it meant

[@idontknowwhattotype4242]

I do know that 我 is pronounced "wo"

[@taimingchan8818]

we / us

[@teen_queentv]

I'm just self studying chinese 💗

[@aaaaaiatoyomartelaaaa9437]

Are you doing good?

[@teen_queentv]

@@aaaaaiatoyomartelaaaa9437 a little bit

[@nickeliang2470]

Only 2000 characters for daily use

[@WorldisOurThing]

Thanks for watching! I guess the number of characters needed depends on what you read. :-) It's not like we can actually count how many characters we can recognize (though maybe there are tests to make an estimate?)

[@panqihg]

3500 characters can cover 99.5% of all text, while 23000 English vocabulary only cover 99%. You mentioned 8000 in this video, it's impossible.

[@九爷-p3p]

@@panqihg actualy, there's more then 50000 , normal use only 2000-3000.