My brother is fluent in Chinese and we were chatting about Chinese symbols (which I don’t understand in the least.) He directed me to this tutorial web site. The first line says that some symbols have “pictographic” origins.
Pictographic. The character originated as a picture of an actual object, such as 日 or 羊, which are pictures of the sun and a goat, respectively
That is cool, but I had to consider that I would draw those items differently and at least 99.9% of everything I say and write is not about the sun or about goats. I mean, maybe if I were a bronzed goat herder and experienced a strange mix of incredible daily monotony (sun up, watched goats, sun down) and such a busy schedule as to prohibit me from spelling it out. I can kind of see it; you really don’t want to take your eye off those goats for a second. And then at home you want to send off a quick letter to the folks back in Beijing. Three pictures and you’re done. (Just hope your son doesn’t grow a goatee; that’ll mess them up.)
No comments:
Post a Comment