The Kanji Hanzi Hub

Radicals/Components 101 - 002

2009-02-05T11:04:00.020Z

#chinese #hanzi #mandarin #japanese #kanji .

Radical/Component 3

The second radical - gǔn "line" - is used as the radical index in dictionaries for characters like 中，卜，临，师 and 且. As I mentioned in the first part of this series I don't use radicals as a look-up tool for dictionaries, so I lack in experience here. (Today we have nciku.com and the likes!) But I got a little hick-up when seeing 且 here. If you look at the stroke order diagram (animation) here 丨is indeed the first stroke, but so it is in radical 109 - mù 目eye, so I am rather happy not having to dig deeper into these radical radicals. They work perfectly well here as a menu for components.

A vertical stroke ..... In a character like 中 (zhōng - middle) it doesn't need any elaborations: a vertical stroke dividing a rectanglar right in the middle. Heisig uses the keyword walking stick (or cane, rod) for this component. In 丨+ 日 (rì - sun/day) we get the new character/component 旧 (jiù - past, worn, old), i.e you need a cane to take you through the old days.

Brush Strokes

In the first radicals/components (2-6) we will have to move below the "atom" level of the characters - components - and look at the "elementary particles" as individual brush strokes. This has little to do with the meaning, but the aesthetics of characters and how to improve handwriting. Yes, handwriting is an essential part of learning here.

The most important feature of vertical strokes is that they should be absolutely vertical. As you can see with horizontal strokes - like Radical/Component 1 - it's rather a rule than an exception that they are slanted upwards, but no angle whatsoever with strictly vertical strokes.

All Kanji/Hanzi as we see them today are created with a brush. To learn how to write them well you need to have a font - or examples - making this clear. - The nciku animations use a very similar font. - To use a font created for printed matters in small type is a very bad model: see the white on black characters below.

These strokes even have names: the one to the left is called "dropping dew" and the one to the right is called "suspended needle". The thin black lines show the approximate paths a brush would take when painting these strokes. When writing with a pen - nag, nag: preferably a fountain pen - it's not necessary to make the long trip back upwards in the dropping dew stroke, but the important point to distinguish between the clear tapering off in the needle stroke, where you gradually ease the pressure of the pen until the stroke fades out. In dropping dew you keep the same pressure and make a distinct stop and make a small upwards movement before releasing the pen. This is all about making the writing look ALIVE.

Stroke Order Diagrams: 引 - 中

Radical/Component 1

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Radical/Component 3

Today's Word: Nun's Dragon

2009-02-04T22:35:00.011Z

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #japanese .
There is a goldmine of "funny words" to be explored in the "hanzification" of imported words. This is one area where Japanese has the edge, so to say. Where Chinese only uses Hanzi to write foreign words - and then you have to know how the character is pronounced - Japanese has the phonetic Katakana to make the pronunciation easy; more later.

It would be tempting to search for some correlation between the meaning of the individual characters and the word they represent, but I think this is in vain for 99% of the time. So what is a Nun's Dragon, or if you prefer, Nun Dragon? Ní + Lóng = Nylon. To satisfy out never ending quest for interesting images, we can visualize a nun putting on her Nylon Dragon Stockings in her cell. Beware though: 尼姑 is a Buddhist nun and 修女 is Christian nun.

We have already explored various dragon characters here, but I am still too fond of the traditional Dragon Character to skip it here:

A beauty, isn't it? (Would be interesting, though, to learn how the Masters of Simplification arrived at the version above!) Finally a look at Nylon from the Japanese perspective:

As you probably know Japanese has two scripts on top of Kanji: Hiragana and Katakana. The latter is used mostly for foreign loanwords - and do they have those in tons in Japanese? - and some emphasis in ordinary text. This means that once you have learned the 48 syllables in Katakana you can pronounce most loanwords, but there is a black hole here: these loanwords are not always what we think! アルバイト arubaito, from German Arbeit, does not simply mean work, but part-time work. And so on....

Radicals/Components 101 - 001

2009-02-04T07:41:00.007Z

#chinese #hanzi #mandarin #japanese #kanji .
Question: What is the difference between a radical and a component (or primitive)?

Answer: First of all it's a question about how they are used. The radical listing - Wikipedia: List of Kangxi Radicals - was basically "invented" as an indexing system making it possible to find individual characters in a dictionary. They can thus also be called classifiers, used as headings in dictionaries.

A component is either the smallest unit - "atom" - in a character or more than one unit "bundled" under one label/keyword. The character for sun/day is an indivisible unit/component for all learning purposes here, but when you for the sake of memorization combines 日 + 一 you get a new label: 旦 sunrise (Heisig: nightbreak). This is then a component used in other characters.

Question: Why at all bother with "Radicals" here and not stick with, say, components or primitives?

Answer: It's the most common term for character components and are used a lot in China, Japan and other countries where Hanzi/Kanji make up the basis of the writing system. Eventually there will be a time when we need to find a character/word in a dictionary using the radicals.

Radical/Component 001: one (yī)

In the beginning there was ONE. As a radical 一 has that meaning of "one" in 三 only, as far as I know: 一 + 二 (radical 7) = 三.

As a component it has several functions and meanings. First of all it's a horizontal 'delimiter': horizon, floor, heaven, ceiling etc. It's very common to have things hanging down from 一 or reaching up to the roof/ceiling/top:

不天下干平雨

The other way around it can symbolize the ground/floor/horizon/bottom in the characters

上旦丘

So what's the purpose of turning "one" into other meanings? Memory! Not all of us have perfect visual recall or a memory able to store very abstract concepts. It's simply easier to memorize a story than strokes or abstract concepts/symbols. To take a very simple example here (a character you probably will remember as a visual):

卜 + 一 = 下 (links to nciku.com)

"The wizard keeps his magic wand hanging down from the ceiling" or "The fortune teller has his divining rod/staff hanging down from the ceiling". (卜 [bǔ] = fortune telling 下 [xià] = under/down).

Questions/comments are appreciated.

Today's World: I Ching or Economy?

2009-02-02T22:28:00.001Z

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #japanese #kanji .
[ See also Tomorrow's Chinese/Japanese Radical(s) ]

I am a man of honor keeping my promises, so here is something easy:

It is easy: change + scripture = Book of Change = "I Ching" or Yìjīng as preferred in China. The simplified character for "easy/change" is a sun. On top of .... rays? An animal? Since it's not so far removed from the character for pig - 豕 - it would be possible to assign the label piglet to it, but Heisig has gone one step further and views it as the curly tail of the pig/piglet. Suggested story: It's easy to change a huge pig to a small piglet - or even nothing but a tiny piggy tail - when you put it under the hot, shrinking sun. 'Nuff said.

Let's dig deeper into Chinese tradition:

The Yin/Yang ☯ duality is probably even more CHINA than I Ching, for many of us living in the west. The Female Principle vs. the Masculine Principle, some would say. Sun vs. Moon (as in the simplified characters above) , Day vs. Night, Light vs. Darkness ... Darkness? Yes, if we look at the traditional characters the YANG principle is dominated by the top Sun, but all those strokes to the right in YIN is actually telling us that it's in the SHADE, and what's more refreshing after too much sun than to get into the shade? (阝 = some sort of hill/pinnacle).

From the world of Chinese thought to the ups and downs of the Brave New World we're living in : economy:

It's just like it should be. In the combination of the characters easy/change and sutra/scripture we got The Book of Change. OK, the character to the right above has many more meanings apart from "cross (a river)", like aid, relieve, help, be of help, benefit but it is still a stretch to arrive at Economy. That' is, if the ancients were clever enough to predict that the economy in the future - our time - would be "a religion/philosophy in need of help"??

See: I am making this easy, not getting deep down into any character details. Until now. I can't help getting very fascinated by how these characters have traveled through the ages, from China to contries like Korea, Japan and Vietnam. When you think about it, it's really amazing that there hasn't been more "corruption" of the originals.

Here are three versions of sutra (WikiPedia):

The component for thread 糸 is the same in all three versions, apart from the three strokes at the bottom reduced to a single one in the simplified character, as usual. The old character/component 巠 presents some familiar items like 一 (one - yī) and 工 (work - gōng) with sandwiched <<< style="font-weight: bold;">

Update: This project follow the technique/method of James W Heisig ("Remembering the Kanji" and Remembering the Hanzi"). It's nothing more than doing exactly what's been done here: break down the characters to smaller "atoms" (radicals/primitives/components) and turn them into actors in a story to help you remember the character. In Heisig speak the two components ス + 工 in 经 are a spool. In my own mental image the entire character is a Tibetan Prayer Wheel (Wiki) where prayers - sutras! - are sent rotating on threads from the center spool. Click image from WikiPedia below to enlarge.

Tomorrow's Chinese/Japanese Radical(s)

2009-02-02T22:25:00.005Z

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #japanese #kanji .
After setting your neurons into crazy loops with all the complex characters here, I am happy to announce that tomorrow - February 3, 2009 - is the day when all will be peace and ease here. Then I will start to post everything from step one, hopefully with a couple of updates every day. No promise, though.

The entire idea with this site is to demonstrate that it is NOT very difficult to learn and remember even the most complex character. This is not to say that it will not require time and effort, but the process per se is not something to fear or loathe.

Instead of seeing 2000+ Kanji or 3000+ Hanzi as your dreadful future, you can instead see a limited amount of friendly components, radicals, primitives, or graphems (a term used in the book Kanji ABC) where each of them is fairly easy to learn and memorize.

Despite the fact that I have never used these items as part of the list of RADICALS, I have chosen to start there since they are easily available on the net: List of Kangxi radicals - Wikipedia. Suddenly we have a limited list of 204 radicals, which will be boiled down to even a smaller number here for learning reasons. (If you look at the list you will notice that the final radicals are complex characters, which can be broken down to smaller components. Not what we need here.)

Until tomorrow I leave a character animation from nciku.com as something to look at and perhaps even meditate over. "One" is the very beginning. This is a brush stroke, but we should try to get as close as possible even when using a pen, preferably a fountain pen.

If you can see this, your browser doesn't understand IFRAME. However, ve'll still &amp;lt;A HREF="http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/searchorder/1317826/"&amp;gt;link&amp;lt;/A&amp;gt; you to the file.

Today's Word: Electric Brain

2009-01-31T09:35:00.015Z

#chinese #mandarin #hanzi #kanji .
Yes: computer. You guessed right.

I have not found any frequency list so I am not sure which of the two words for computer is the most common one, but I guess it is the second one below:

电脑 diànnǎo -- 计算机 jìsuànjī

Nevertheless, I think an Electric Brain 电脑 is more fun than a Calculation Machine 计算机.

电脑 diànnǎo -- 计算机 jìsuànjī

Nevertheless, I think an Electric Brain 电脑 is more fun than a Calculation Machine 计算机.

As mentioned earlier here, I was not very happy with Chinese Simplified Characters when I started to go from Japanese/Kanji to Mandarin. - Here you find the posts on Simplifications. - There still are some simplified characters that I would like to have reverted to their original, traditional version, if I could. Electricity is one of those hanzi:

Not all characters are immediately offering a view of the original idea/object, but here is an excellent time-machine. The top part of the traditional character - same as the Kanji - is the rain radical/primitive 雨, used in so many characters for weather etc.: 雲 cloud, 雪 snow, 露 dew, 雷 thunder and so on.

The bottom component is the most interesting, though: is it a turtle, tortoise or a dragon? The blue, middle characters are tortoise and a simplified version of dragon (Kanji, but also a less frequently used Hanzi). So the first 'vision' of electricity was some sort of dragon in the sky appearing when it's raining. Neat. What's left in the simplified form is thus only the dragon part.

Confession: I was too much in a hurry when I wrote Today's Hanzi: Very difficult?

As you might remember I confessed ignorance regarding the bottom components of the "mane" character below.
If I had given my memory a bit more time to work, it would possibly have arrived at "hmmm.. doesn't this remind me a bit of BRAIN??" Let's look at the simplified brain character again (to the right below).
First there is what we can call the moon-flesh component signaling a part of the body. Then we have a) a lid of some sort, b) X and c) a container shape. We can agree that the brain indeed is a huge X - seen a brain recently? - contained in our skulls. No argument there. But.... here we go rats again!

I know, I know.... You might go rats here in the beginning, but the whole idea with this project is to show show you that each and every Kanji/Hanzi - simple or complex - is painted from a very limited palette of components/radicals. There is no absolute consensus on exactly how many radicals we should use, but consider slightly over 200 as the maximum.

To make it more interesting the ancient scribes added their own twists and misreadings, and we will never know exactly what. The traditional brain has the "hair" trio <<< and [x] with a little dot or accent´. No doubt: a head. If we go further back in history you can see that head of the ancient mouse/rat had the same head, but without the extra dot.

Trust me: Your memory is vastly superior to any computer! There will be a slight memory overflow in the beginning as you dive into this, but the dust will soon settle. Electric Dragon (in the Sky) settles into the Body Part called Brain. Now quickly: put on the lid!

Today's Hanzi: Very difficult?

2009-01-30T19:51:00.017Z

#hanzi #chinese #mandarin #kanji
Chinese Characters can be difficult to remember, not doubt about that. But there is probably a notion that "difficult" character - that is: complex character with many strokes - are more difficult to remember than more ordinary Hanzi/Kanji. What about these mainstream character:

They might be easier than the more complex and stroke-rich character we will look at soon. but remember that you can fill an entire page with these "medium" characters, and the individual characters will soon start to get fuzzy.

I continued exploring animal words/characters after posting Today's Word: Cat-Headed Bird-Bird. I think my experience from Japanese can be applied to Chinese as well: animal names can have pretty tough characters. Here is what caught my eye: Iguana - lièxī.

The right character is the generic one for lizard: insect (see below for another one) + "chop" (divide, separate = tree + axe), i.e. something that chops up insects. A lizard tongue? But it's the left one that is Today's character: mane. I didn't manage to download an image where it's very clear that iguanas have some sort of mane on their back, but this was pretty good:

And here is a close-up of only "mane" liè:
Hmmmm.. A lot of stuff, isn't it? But wait: the difficulty is to identify the components. Once you have done that, it's very unlikely you will forget the character. The left part is a component meaning ... hair. And the bottom part is also meaning .... hair, or to be more precise, a head with hair and beard. Once again the doubling-up we have seen before: hair + hair = mane.

If you look at the most common traditional character and Kanji for hair you find the first component again (on top of the component for "friend"):

髮

The bottom part is slightly more tricky, but if you ignore the fact that < < < style="font-weight: bold;">Taped/crossed over mouth is the symbol for the head here.

And then I have to declare defeat! I have not found any etymological suggestions regarding the lowest 7 strokes, looking like some sort of legs, really. We have already seen these "legs" in the character for mouse/rat. (Weiger suggest that these strokes are the whiskers of the mouse.) But here it is a beard! We have to draw them as graphical elements and memorize them as such.

It's interesting - and sort of a relief - to note that the lower component set in "mane" has been simplified in characters like wax/candle and hunt. Note "insect" again - from above - to the left in the first character and the "wild dog" component in the second one. See cat in Today's Word.

The final challenge is to draw this character so it gets fairly equal in size to other character, but it's perfectly OK to make it slightly higher when writing with a pen/pencil. But DO draw it several times. Promise? Then I will promise less complex characters the next several times here :-) Good luck!

Today's Word: Cat-Headed Bird-Bird

2009-01-30T08:41:00.008Z

#Chinese #Mandarin #Birds
This not as immediately funny as yesterday's Bag Rat, but has some interesting twists and turns.

The character for cat will remain really funny for ever, considering the story provided by James W Heisig in "Remembering the Kanji". The left part is a generic animal component, but Heisig suggested wild dogs as the specific label. To the right we have seedlings, i.e. something growing on a rice field. So to remember this you have to see a pack of wild dogs watering the cat plants/seedling on a rice filed, waiting for the chase to start as soon as the cats have grown up. (Unfortunately, Hanzi students will have to wait for volume 2 of "Remembering the Hanzi" to get to this character.)

Head is one of those radical simplifications we find in Hanzi:

頭 > 头

Finally the Bird-Bird character.... Yet another feature of character creation: the same 'meaning' is doubling up. "old bird" + "standard bird"

鹰 = 隹 + 鸟/鳥

This "bird-bird" character is some sort of generic label for several birds of pray and found in words like hawk, falcon, eagle, owl etc. Alone, by itself, it means Eagle. More birds at nciku.com.

listen to māotóuyīng spoken (nciku.com)

Today's Mandarin Word: Ever met a BagRat?

2009-01-29T18:15:00.007Z

#Chinese #Mandarin
Japanese has tons of cute and funny words. As hopefully will be demonstrated here, Chinese/Mandarin is not lacking either.

Pronunced dàishǔ this can be read as "Pocket Mouse", and even "Pouch Mouse". But what sort of thing is this?? A Kangaroo, of course!

shǔ 鼠 is actually one of the more difficult-to-write characters I've encountered. It took - and takes - a lot of practice to get the lower part OK for me. Stroke Order Animation here.

Today's Chinese Character: Simple Justice

2009-01-29T10:23:00.011Z

Today's character/Hanzi/Kanji is a RADICAL simplification. But does it fit into the UGLY vs CUTE categories, previously defined here?

I don't think so. The original traditional Hanzi/Kanji is one of my favorite characters. The most common meanings are "justice; righteousness". But "meaning" is also there as in 意义.

A couple of Japanese vocabulary items: Islamic fundamentalism vs. Christian fundamentalism. These Kanji seems to be possible to bundle to form many words 原義 (gengi) means Original Meaning here, taking everything very literally. 主義 means doctrine etc. and 原理 means "doctrine, rule, principle". Whatever you think of Japanese, "inflexible" shouldn't be there.

As usual I have some nagging feeling that I've made some mistake in my Japanese: "should it really be クリスチャン (ku-ri-su-ta-n) or something else?"

イスラム原理主義
vs.
クリスチャン原理主義

So let's go back to Mandarin. I've found two, rather similar words for fundamentalism:

原教旨主义 yuánjiàozhǐzhǔyì

Where the 教 ought to emphasize the religious aspect ("teach, religion...."). The other word for fundamentalism, 基要主义, seems to be less used so I simply ignore it here. 主义 has the same meaning in Mandarin as in Japanese - doctrine; -ism - which is no wonder since the world probably was imported to Japan from China.

To round up this not so deep-digging post:

義 = 羊 + 我

羊 is easy enough to remember as SHEEP, but the very important and frequent character 我　will get a component destruction any day, week. You have to admit that it's a bit faster to write the simplified version, isn't it? These characters are pronounced as yì in Mandarin. The fourth tone here would be easy to remember if the animation really showed the strokes: dot - down - down. Get a better view at nciku.

Today's Hanzi: Meet General Zong

2009-01-28T10:42:00.009Z

If you look at a comment on yesterday's post nciku.com - Chinese Character Animations you can notice that there are many aspects of "Chinese Characters" - "Kanji" or "Hanzi" - to keep in mind, but only as long as you enjoy it. The entire idea of learning is to make it a pleasure!

So I hope it's a pleasure to meet a new friend of mine: General Zong. Why he was a totally new acquaintance will come later .... If you take some time to read previous posts here you will learn that this blog is based on James W Heisig method to learn Kanji/Hanzi: you make up stories for each and every character to better remember them. Imagination, word play and associations.

Will skip the finer details today and ignore if the top two strokes actually aren't legs or not, or something entirely different. Here they are HORNS. Horns placed on top of a Big Mouth. So here we have a Big Mouthed, sort of devilish General. But wait, there is more: underneath his bullish apperance there is also a Big Heart, so he's not really as bad as he might seem at first contact.

Why "General"? That's the basic meaning of this character: general, overall, always etc. Here come the finer points: This character has - at least! - three variants. The top one (demonstrated with two different fonts) and one traditional and a different Japanese Kanji (and there is No Kanji at all like the simplified version here):

Quite a remarkable simplification, isn't it? In both characters above there is the component version of thread 糸 to the left. In the traditional Chinese character there is perhaps a chimney over the heart. - Told you: etymology is not rocket science! - The Japanese Kanji has the same meaning as it's Chinese origin: "general, overall, whole". 国連総会 = UN General Assembly :-)

I hope this will help you to remember General Zong - actually zǒng - the next time you meet him. Remember: he's really got a Big Heart. so don't let his equally Big Mouth offend you.

nciku.com - Chinese Character Animations

2009-01-27T09:31:00.010Z

#chinese #mandarin
It would be great to be able to add character animations here now and then, so I am now testing those available at nciku.com (the best Chinese/Mandarin dictionary).

Well... It didn't work. I am pretty sure these animations are not Made At nciku, so I will hopefully find an alternative source. ...

Update 09-02-02

I have still not managed to find those animations I think I've seen somewhere, but on the other hand I found a way to show the animations here, if the people at nciku.com think it is OK.

If you can see this, your browser doesn't understand IFRAME. However, ve'll still &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;A HREF="http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/searchorder/1300743/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;link&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/A&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; you to the file.

nciku.com: How to use 必

end of update

In the meantime a GIF animation from this page. Not a bad alternative, really.
Testing something more advanced from eStroke

Too "advanced", too big, too many Google ads....

The reason for picking this particular character is that I tend to forget the stroke order all the time. If you want to get 5 new characters to practice every day, follow the nciku blog. Here is a permanent link to the very first five characters.

Nice Japanese fonts to download

2009-01-26T10:05:00.004Z

Once upon a time I was an obsessive font collector. Now I am happy to pick up some new font here and there. Unfortunately I am not good at bookmarking my downloads, but the most recent one - top - can be downloaded here. The second one - my favorite Aoyagi Kouzan - can be downloaded on this page.

The first one is a strict "ballpoint font", with 2nd Aoyagi more in the Shodo (brush) style, perhaps even scanned from brush writing. The bottom two fonts are intended for more conventional printed material.

Learn Chinese Characters (Components III)

2009-01-24T07:27:00.026Z

This is the third and final post continued from

Component Learning and Analysis II

To get the full background you might/should also study

Kanji Lesson 1 for JapanesePod101 Students

Don't mind the "Kanji" word there. "Kanji" (Japanese) and "Hanzi" (Chinese) is identical for the purpose here: How to learn and remember Chinese Characters.

In the first parts we only looked at the seemingly complex cā character. Now the really easy two other characters. yǎn is short for eye, and according to the etymologists the character contains two components meaning eye.

The black component above is the standard character for eye. And below is a mirror image of an eye, still according to the experts.I agree that it is hard to "see" this, but we'll have to accept it for the time being. This component is very common so it's a very good idea to assign a keyword/label here. Since there is a very similar character ....... meaning "Good" with just one tiny "drop" making the difference. Let's assume it's so GOOD that a little tear trickles (upwards :-) ), then we could call the mirror eye "Dry Eye"? It's really up to you to assign labels/mnemonics to each component according to your own imagination and preferences.

Finally we have a REAL mirror/lens:
This is the simplified character for the full Kanji, traditional Hanziuses the full version of Metal/Gold as the left component in Mirror/Lens
So what's left is the rather peculiar component to the right:
This is make up by adding Person/Human legs to a Sound! Yes, it's a funny world, this.Finally, if we pull "sound" apart
we have the (gray) component derived from the character for To Stand etc. Below (black) might be seen as SUN, but it isn't. It is a mouth with tongue (in cheek). CompareThey are indeed easy to mix up when you don't see them side by side, but you can usually spot the longer shape of the sun.

Now time for do-it-yourself and practices. Copy the character below into nciku.com, search and scroll down the page to see the stroke order animations. Write, write and write! Good luck!

眼目艮良镜金音立日曰

New Global Background Image

2009-01-23T12:36:00.006Z

Seems like today became a "design day" :-) Still not sure if the image below is good or not. It seems a bit BUZY, doesn't it? The original version is live at my Twitter page. Maybe to be replaced by the muted one. Comments?

Original version:

Muted version ....

Frequent Updates on YouTube

2009-01-22T13:00:00.005Z

.
Update: Now you can follow the Kanji Hanzi World at YouTube to the right here. Thanks to the excellent service FriendFeed. - BTW: Art Ensemble of Chicago is obviously still a very interesting group. Got quite a few visits from people searching Google. Art Ensemble of Chicago website. "The Art Ensemble of Chicago featuring Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Famoudou Don Moye, Corey Wilkes and Jaribu Sahid."

The Kanji Hanzi World on YouTube

Seems like a frequent reminder is needed here. There is simply too much amazing stuff on YouTube to keep up with, so I'll do my best to guide you to the Classics and the Best New Stuff. According to my refined taste(s) :-)

Today I added a funky Art Ensemble of Chicago, plus one clip with AEoC playing with Cecil Taylor, and Adrian Belew Power Trio. Happy listening.

Techo News: Twitter SMS Updates

2009-01-22T09:20:00.003Z

I am not a geek or a nerd, but now and then really impressive stuff comes my way. The ability to enter a piece of text on my cell phone and get it INSTANTLY up on my Twitter page, was one of those!

Beautiful 'Distraction': Adrian Belew

2009-01-21T22:18:00.005Z

I am - really - producing material about Kanji and Hanzi, but got a bit distracted on Twitter. Again. Never mind. I had intended to post this video sooner or later. Now it got sooner.

I am not a fan of lists, but I think Adrain Belew is moving to the top of my three best guitarists ever: add Jimi Hendrix and the awfully underrated Guitar God Frank Zappa. Adrian is thus the greatest one alive, in my opinion. On top of that he is an amazing singer.

Silly me: forgot http://adrianbelew.net/

Richard Dawkins: Scientist or Priest?

2009-01-19T08:06:00.006Z

Since I joined the Education Network - scroll down to the bottom of the page, please - I found a little post about one of my favorite .... ahem .... pets: Mr. Dawkins, possessed by The Selfish Gene - no, not Gene Simmons! - and other viruses.

Richard Dawkins: Growing Up in the Universe - Designed and Designoid Objects

Instead of relying on high-minded philosophical reasoning, awesome as it is, Dawkins explains these wonderful insights to the lucky children attending this Faraday lecture through the use of a great number of intelligently designed examples :) from the natural world and computer models.

I could spend the entire day writing about this, but I will condense all this to: WE JUST DON'T KNOW. WE MAY SPECULATE, HAVE FANTASIES, BUILD RELIGIONS, SCIENTIFIC "MODELS" OR WHATEVER, BUT WE STILL JUST DO NOT KNOW. PERIOD.

Anybody who pretends to have THE ANSWER is nothing but yet another fanatic. Welcome to the mothership, Mr Dawkins.

Logo Work

2009-01-18T23:12:00.005Z

Just a note; I've added a new logo, still under work. Added a Twitter widget. Added a very nice ReverbNation player, video player from YouTube, added a clip with Emilie Simon on the Kanji Hanzi World at YouTube, tweaked the lovely widgets from NeoWORX and possibly some more stuff. All in all, a very fun day. Happy viewing, playing and ...... reading?

David Byrne in BIG Hong Kong

2009-01-18T07:16:00.008Z

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It's has some practical advantages to live in "Virtual", China. I get updates about what's happening in China, new blogs in Beijing etc. Here is a more funny one:

The information I got said that David Byrne - ???: more later - would play at the Convention Center in Hong Kong tomorrow, January 19, 2009. So far, so good.... I knew that Hong Kong had been "integrated" into larger China, but I never knew that Hong Kong had grown this much!!

(click on image for 100%)

Of course the first map somehow got it wrong. It's absolutely true that David Byrne will perform in Hong Kong tomorrow - full tour schedule 2009 here - and with a bit of luck the already luck citizens of Hong Kong might get a ticket here.

And luck is with us here too. YouTube is a MAIN distraction. There is simply too much great stuff there to avoid spending at least a couple of hours there each and every day. Make sure to check in at the regularly updated Kanji Hanzi World there. New stuff like Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane has pushed down Talking Heads a few step. Unfortunately this video can't be embedded here, but here is the link:

Talking Heads - Live in Rome 1980
07 Crosseyed & Painless

There is a series of videos from this absolutely stunning concert in Rome. The one above is perhaps my favorite. Partly because you can see (the slightly younger) Adrian Belew perform his magic close up.

Nothing to not used for advantage. Just because I reluctantly pushed down two clips with Art Ensemble of Chicago to make room for Pharoah Sanders, I can post the first AEoC video HERE!! Enjoy Warsaw 1983. Most amazing live band I ever saw! Live.

Welcome to Virtual, China

2009-01-17T08:36:00.009Z

In case you see "China" on some profile, somewhere: My exact location in China is a place called Virtual. Bring out your maps and see if you can find this extremely attractive "township". IN the meantime you can enjoy the video above. It's created by Zhang Yimou, the director of the utterly beautiful movie HERO:

张艺谋張藝謀

It seems like it's very difficult to get decent looking Chinese to appear on web pages, so I will use images to make it possible for us analphabets to see what it actually says.

Video: Straight Talk from Norman Finkelstein

2009-01-16T10:58:00.004Z

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As I wrote recently I will avoid too much off-topic posts here, but now and then I will inevitably stumble upon something that is too good to let go of. (Besides: this is my official living room and I am free to whatever I like, as long as it's legal.) Like this video with Norman Finkelstein:

Do you think this guy can speak like this everywhere, despite the fact that he is a highly respected scholar?? No. The authoritarian intimidation mafia is of course doing everything they can to silence him. On some people the age old black art of intimidation just don't work.

Component Learning and Analysis II

2009-01-15T23:00:00.004Z

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UPDATE 2009:

Time to 'divert' from interesting distractions and bring the blog back on course. This is all about Kanji/Hanzi with a focus on the latter. I repost the very first post here and add the promised continuation at the end. Happy New Year's reading!

Posted on December 17, 2008:

I've been doodling around with this idea for a while, but then I joined ChinesePod.com today and found this little "Component Video" and thought it might be time to stop doodling and to leave the draft board ....

Here is a nice little phrase I picked up at nciku

Does it seem difficult to learn this? To learn it enough so you can write it from memory without a trace of hesitation or need to scratch your head?

The good news are that it is not at all difficult if you use a component-based approach to Chinese Characters. It can be time-consuming, but that is not really the same as difficult. For certain types of memories/brains it does not seem to take more than a matter of weeks or a few months to learn 2000+ characters with a single keyword - "meaning" - associated with the Kanji/Hanzi.

There are different approaches to this but I happened to start with Japanese and James W. Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" (download generous sample in pdf-format) many years ago. After many, many delays there is also a "Remembering the Hanzi" available, that is: the first part of two, together covering 3000 characters. There are samples available of both the simplified and traditional editions. Read the introductions to get a good understanding of what all this is about.

To make a long story short: "the Heisig method" is indeed very smart and works as advertised if you follow the rules, so to say. But ..... Not all of us have the kind of time, patience and creative imagination it takes to get through all the 2000+ for Japanese and the 3000 characters for Chinese before really starting to read and write.

So when I, some four months ago, put Japanese on the shelf for a while to study Mandarin instead, I also started to think about alternative ways to take the best of Heisig's work and to apply it to a more combined approach with learning the proper language, i.e. including pronunciations and vocabulary.

It's not really fair to compare myself with a beginner since I have been studying and writing Kanji for many years, but the totally effortless process of learning Hanzi, pronunciation, and building vocabulary is very, very encouraging and promising. I am very interested in testing how this will work for absolute beginners and intermediate students of Chinese wanting to learn the written language in a more profound way. Note that "written" also means being able to write from decent to great Hanzi as well.

Sounds interesting? Check back here now and then and see what's happening. The first step will be to wipe away the fog from cā yăn jìng as a first demonstration of the Power of Component Analysis.

Continued on January 15, 2009:

(Hmmm .. Didn't remember it was such a total cliff hanger :-) ) Most of the images were already prepared, though, so I will go through this as briefly as possible.

This is possibly a bit overwhelming the first time you get into the details of a single Chinese Character, but stay around for a while and you will notice that this is no different than any new subject: it takes a few minutes to get used to it :-) And it's very much on purpose that I used such a big font. I have found it much easier to memorize characters when I learn them BIG TIME, so I have all the 2042 Kanji in RtK 1 in this kind of size.

First you might want to check this character out a nciku.com and also see the stroke order animation. This is not one of the most complex characters you will meet, but it does belong to the upper division; 17 strokes is not a minor and simple character. It's pronounced cā as you could see in the beginning above.

So the next task is to break this beauty apart and see how it was created, so to say. The very first item that sticks out is the simplified hand to the left:

Since the hand looks like this in its full form (left)
we will be helped by assigning the shorthand :-) for hand as something else, and finger(s), as suggested by Heisig, is perhaps the easiest keyword. BUT... to be able to remember the characters with all the components, the action going on there, you will need a full story. To memorize the full story it's better to transform Mr Fingers into a known individual or some person you just invent. Make this person as colorful as possible. Personally I used a very famous actor, known for his expressive hand movements. Now this poor soul, had to watch from heaven :-), as I made him perform a number of tasks he perhaps wouldn't have approved of himself. Since they are in my mind only, I am sure he doesn't care. Really.

So next in line is the right part of the character, which is a full character too, which you can inspect on nciku.com. I keep on showing new components in the context of the full character cā here:
This (black) character is pronounced chá and there we get a very valuable lesson. This character/component is the phonetic of cā (the full one) and as is often the case there is a slight distortion of the sound, but here cā and chá were once upon a time probably the same sound. Phonetics is one of the most useful things when you learn Chinese Characters and their pronunciation. - There you have the reason why I have departed from the Heisig advice "stick to the characters and learn the sound/pronunciation when you've finished 3000 (or less) characters". - Chá means observe, inspect or/and scrutinize and is part of the word for 警察 jǐngchá police, to take one example here.

To get down to the first memo-combination here, we the have "Mr Fingers" "scrutinizing/observing" something. But what is he watching? First let's establish where this is taking place: In a house, of course! Watch the chimney on top of the roof!
Then we move further down the line and look at what's happening inside the house, and we get down to the really gory details: A bloody ritual with sacrifices! Ghastly stuff. A piece of meat and a cut-off hand on top of an altar. No less. The (keyword) altar looks like this when it's used as a component, but meaning mostly "show, indicate" today when used as a character on it's own merits, but it was nevertheless an altar in the beginning, according to the etymologists:
We need to take a closer look at the "flesh/meat" component to the left, immediately below the roof ...... since time has blended two characters into one, sort of:

To the very left we see the Moon as we expect it. Then comes a slightly simplified moon on part cut off, perhaps covered by a cloud or perhaps it is the crescent moon? Anyhow: "Evening". Two evenings/moons is suddenly meaning "many", many a moon/month? Too many evenings? Suddenly FLESH + DOG is being roasted over a fire (the four dots)! Yes, somewhere along the path to now, the most known character for meat got this moon-like shape. But first the last character: brain where the "moon" to the left tells us that it's about "flesh", usually a body-part.
And above is the most common character for flesh/meat. This is also a rather brutal image: two persons hanging inside some sort of "container", perhaps to become dried meat? :-)

Now, my patient readers, we just have one tiny detail left in the house of sacrifice: the cut-off hand/arm.
How can we tell that it's cut-off? Because this is how it usually appears in various combinations:
There are quite a few components/characters having been used as hands/arms/etc. since a departure from the ancient shapes have taken place. Heisig uses sometimes rather special keywords for components (or primitives as he prefers to call them) and this a crotch. Pick and choose any crotch you like, but once again it's not a bad idea to select one person when you build your stories. I don't know why I once upon a time picked Sean Connery to play this role, but that's the way it goes.

The forth character above is interesting since is the very Han in Hanzi, Chinese Character. When the revolutionaries simplified - some would say ruined - some of the original characters, this was originally something entirely different. Just look and you can see only an arm or a crotch there:
This last part here is entirely for my own pleasure, since I do find the things VERY INTERESTING AND FUN and like going into the finer points of Kanji/Hanzi. The second character above is actually the Japanese one! And since I didn't find the same font for the traditional Chinese "original" it only looks very different because of the font. But as you can see there are two differences: the top two downward strokes have been joined by a small horizontal stroke and the left "leg" goes up to join this stroke. History and time. End of lesson 1!

So is it worth all the trouble to dissect characters like this? The time it takes at first? Yes, I think it is. It's more fun than starting to learn 15000-2042-3000 characters in one sitting, so to say. (It took me three attempts to get to 2042, that is several months distributed over many years.) The components learned in a rather complex characters like this can be re-used in dozens of new characters. Will you ever forget ALTAR? That is: if you follow the most important recommendation here: Write the character and then write it again, and again ..... Look and write!

To be continued and finished with one much, much easier and one not too difficult character:

A rare video here

2009-01-14T07:33:00.000Z

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This will not be a habit here, but since there already was a fanaticism label here, I thought it to be rather meaningful to post this video:

No comments, though. It's pretty much doing all the stuff by itself, with minimal and delicate assistance from Max Blumenthal.

More reviews at Amazon.com

2009-01-13T11:56:00.000Z

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I honestly don't know how much time and space I will get here for all kinds of book reviews. Until I get a better understanding of that process, I will grab some books from the shelf and post reviews here, mostly about all my Japanese books taking vacation :-):

Kanji Hanzi's Profile on Amazon.com

Here is the first sample: "Read Real Japanese Essays", by Janet Ashby

Famous Chinese Scholar John DeFrancis Dies

2009-01-13T08:54:00.000Z

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UPDATE: Now I know: "How the World Works" by Andrew Leonard was open for reading when I looked from another computer in the house. Thus ....

Genghis Khan gets a bad rap

... is recommended reading.

This is a rather funny coincidence. Whenever I get time, I will add a "Scriptorium" section to the Hub. Not in the strict definition "A Place where to Write", but a place to show what other people around the world has been writing through the centuries or millenia, and focusing on various writing systems. I had reserved the first post for the old Mongolian writing system, since I had not looked at it all before. Pretty unique "look and feel".

(I also admit being inspired by Paul Auster's amazing "Travels in the Scriptorium", when I picked the word, but I didn't know that there already were tons of Scriptorium pages on the net.)

Original post:

Since I am not sure about how much of Salon.com is open for non-subscribers or not, I simply paste the short article found at

Salon.com

below. Pretty interesting stuff! In particular I like the McCarthy stuff. Very relevant in these days when suppression of Thought and Speech is spreading like a vicious cancer across the Globe.

I will try to get a copy of DeFrancis' book Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy as soon as possible. Seems like required reading in some circles across the net.

Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009 13:12 PST
A name China scholars will remember

I just retrieved a tattered green paperback book from a dusty corner of my bedroom, where it had lain untouched for at least a decade: "Beginning Chinese -- Second Revised Edition" by John DeFrancis.

A generation of China scholars are nodding their heads. My generation. During the 1970s and '80s, "the DeFrancis series," complete with its intimidating profusion of accompanying audio-tapes, was by far the most popular instructional text for teaching Chinese to English-speakers. Just one glance at its familiar cover was enough to send me spiraling back through the decades into the dreaded language lab.

I learned today that John DeFrancis died on January 2, at the ripe old age of 98. And as usual in these matters, I also learned that the professor had led an astonishing life of which I had hitherto known nothing about. Among the highlights: floating 1200 miles down the Yellow River in 1935 on a raft made of inflated sheepskins, and testifying vehemently in support of one of his colleagues, Owen Lattimore, when the longtime "China hand" was accused of being a "top Russian spy" by Senator Joe McCarthy.

I am tickled to find out that the man whose name opened the door to the Chinese language for me got so angry at Joe McCarthy that he lost his job. Beginning Chinese is dry stuff, but being a China scholar in the 1950s was anything but. Good for you, John!
― Andrew Leonard

New Practical Chinese Reader, Second book

2009-01-12T21:39:00.000Z

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Just testing some stuff here. The full post will come later. Or even later.

Click on the image below to get it in full size.

"Teach yourself Chinese" by Elisabeth Scurfield

2009-01-12T16:40:00.000Z

This has been sitting here far too long! I will thus make it very brief: this is an excellent book, strongly recommended if you also buy the CD:s. As the reviews on Amazon.com suggests, it is a very fast-paced book at first. Don't mind the "I found the tapes to be useless." comment, though, since I can't possibly imagine what this means. The CD recordings are extremely well done, with a mix of various speaker to make the dialogues very useful! Check for yourself below.

Don't forget to Look Inside! There you will find the first lessons. - You will have to spend more time on the first lessons than you might be used to, but it sure pays off in case you are patient. The first 10 lessons are in pinyin only, but with the Hanzi versions published in the back of the book. I found it a bit troublesome to flip back and forth so I wrote the texts on my computer and printed them out.

Download files from the Google Group

Let me know if you have any problems with downloads, etc.

In short: This book is great even if you have a text book you are satisfied with, at least if you are a bit like me: Variation is FUN!

No proof, but a personal experience: I haven't repeated this very much, but I can nevertheless still remember most of what is said after a couple of weeks away from it.

Is Japanese THE MOST DIFFICULT LANGUAGE?

2009-01-08T06:33:00.000Z

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UPDATE 1: What am I doing today? Actually reading the AJATT Chinese Corner (from the very beginning), pages I've merely browsed through when I've found a post in the past. He set up a Hanzi Mnemonics section a year ago, a fact I was blissfully ignorant of. Hopefully he will also add simplified characters so "my" readers :-) can enter characters there. Will focus on simplified characters, but add as many traditional ones that time and space allows.

UPDATE 2: Got a reply from the editor of this book

(see further down in the post for details!)

back to original post >>>

First posted at theJapanesePage.com:

Is Japanese THE MOST DIFFICULT LANGUAGE?

I assume you can comment there as well as here, whatever you prefer.

The Julia Nunes post has received a temporary Top of the World place at ...

The 2nd Kanji Hanzi Hub...

and no matter how great I think Julia Nunes is - and I do! - the real purpose of this is to test Blogger vs. Wordpress. If you want to be kind, please look at both pages/blogs. think about look and feel, ease of access, feature, functionality etc. and let me know what YOU prefer. Experienced bloggers familiar with both systems are of course particularly welcome to add feedback here or via email.

Now down to business, duplicating the post on theJapanesePage.com:

Hi there,

(Disclaimer: The **IS** a LONG post. No need to state what is obvious. Don't like, move on to shorter posts.)

Couldn't find a place to discuss linguistics specifically so this might be just as good as any other section.....

I would really like to get some WELL-FOUNDED thoughts on this matter, i.e. not mere speculations or opinions. I am not sure if there are any professional linguists around here, but people ACTUALLY having studied more languages than Japanese for more than two weeks are welcome

Considering the general recommendation from US Foreign Department Language Studies - at least something like that - Japanese, Mandarin and Arabic get the rating Very Hard To Learn, right? I have PLAYED around with Japanese for soon ten years and have studied Mandarin since last (this) summer.

I have never attempted to study Arabic, but I have a Teach Yourself book and can "read" Arabic, since I know the writing and can translate that into acceptable sounds. Of course I don't understand anything of what I say, but nevertheless.... It's a rather tricky grammar, compared with, say, Farsi ("Persian") which is a VERY EASY LANGUAGE, something I know since I have learned a bit a long time ago. Arabic is kind of difficult to pronounce, but not at all as difficult as Mandarin.

Mandarin is A VERY DIFFICULT language the first months or so, when you have to learn 1) pinyin (a monster compared with romaji/kana) and 2) the rather subtle and varied sounds and 3) the tones. This takes some SERIOUS work. But from there it's a fast ride towards literacy, **IF** you happen to know Kanji really well, as I do. If not, then you of course have to add the problem of learning Hanzi, which is roughly the same as learning Kanji, apart from the fact that MORE characters (3000+) are needed than in Japanese if you to be considered reasonably literate. (I am also very old fashioned since I also count HAND WRITING as a requirement to gain the status of FULLY LITERATE )

When I stopped merely having Japanese as a hobby and recreational activity, and actually tried to STUDY Japanese in a serious and structured way, I had a rather humbling experience: I failed! And I failed miserably!What I did was to basically go for a modified AJATT method, i.e. adding sentences to a SRS program and repeating them until I new them well AND could go from English to Japanese without any effort. No problemo to learn the sentences in Japanese and be able to read them and understand them. BUT... And a MIGHTY BIG BUT: the other way around just didn't work! Soon I found that I had to spend 60-70% - probably more like 80-90 - of my time to repeat and repeat. Not much room to add new sentences.

OK, I thought, I am getting too old and dumb for this kind of Real Language Studies. [Nasty Word] Japanese!!! Then I needed something new to put my teeth into and picked Mandarin as the best candidate as another failure. And voila: I was neither dumb not too old to learn A VERY DIFFICULT LANGUAGE. I am rather shocked by the ease of Mandarin and the speed I manage to keep up. There might be some black hole waiting ahead, but I can't possible imagine what that could be. Mandarin grammar is so easy that many claim that "Mandarin has no grammar at all". It sure does, as proven by the one and only Mandarin grammar book I own (Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar), but as things look right now this single title will be enough for a couple of years.

Japanese seems to a particularly easy target for MERE OPINIONS; even among EXPERTS. Compare these two quotes from

1) Read Real Japanese Fiction, Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/977p3t

and

2) Read Real Japanese Essays, Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/94sbcg

both beautiful books I strongly recommend (like almost every title from Kodansha)!

1) Michael Emmerich:

The phrase "best-kept secret" gets on on my nerves [...] You have heard rumors, no doubt, that Japanese is an extremely difficult language for English speakers to master. Impossible, even! Well, rest assured, fellow students - these rumors are false. One of the best-kept secrets around, really and truly, is that Japanese is not actually that hard. [...] That's the rub, really - It's not that the language is hard, per se, you just have to take your time getting into it, and that's true of any language.

(My emphasis on the last sentence!!]

2) Janet Ashby:

[...] Yet Japanese remains a deeply frustrating language to study. So much so that I remember finding it positively encouraging when my Japanese professor remarked one day that it took seven years to learn the language - I had despaired pf ever being able to pick up up a Japanese magazine or newspaper and read it more or less easily.

The problem is not only the kanji barrier, high though that can be for Western learners of Japanese, but also the differences in the spoken and written language and the unfamiliar vocabulary, set expressions, sentence patterns, and even the way of thinking. And despite all the changes in the learning environment over the years, there still aren't many intermediate reading materials available, especially ones that can be used for independent study.

I quoted at length from Ashby since she summarized what would have taken me much more words very eloquently. I would like to add one point, though: There aren't very many text books for the beginner either. Genki, Japanese for Everyone (which I own) and the likes are excellent for maybe one year, but then they leave you in the dust. Mandarin have already passed Japanese by a wide margin with text book SERIES like A New Practical Chinese Reader offering material for a full three years of UNIVERSITY STUDIES. OK, it will, when the final volume 6 is published. There are quite a few alternatives, even if I don't think anything i FULLY as comprehensive as this one.

Back to Emmerich/Ashby ... Why the contrasting statements? Don't know. I think Emmerich is possibly playing with words. "Difficult" and "taking ages" are obviously not synonyms. Every bit and piece of Japanese is of course NOT DIFFICULT. The problem is that the NUMBER of pieces to keep track of, vastly exceeds any possible and impossible language I can think of. Just for fun, I will send a copy of this post to his Princeton email address, including a link to see if he will respond

Enough for now. I'm all ears

Julia Nunes to Japan and China! Soon :-)

2009-01-06T10:00:00.000Z

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UPDATE: You can follow blog posts containing "JULIA NUNES" here. Still a trickle, but trust me: soon it will be a flood!

Considering my recent experience with Really Silly US High School and College Boys, I will indulge in Julia Nunes, a Really Sweet American Young Lady as a pleasant change in mood (from pissed-off to happy!):

It's really funny how the net takes you to never thought of places:

1) I got a letter from Mr Nibs (HisNibs.com) a couple of days ago when he recommended the Uranus '2018' Multifunction pen

Did I want one ??? YES! But then it's sold out (as Norman wrote in his letter). Can I wait? NO!

2) So I searched for this pen on Google, but it's seems like there are no other dealers than Norman. Nevertheless I took a look at Ruminations, a blog publish in Western Australia writing about New Toys, including this pen. Nice, but not fair. Me too. Wouldn't have rejected the Speeno pen, either.

3) Took a look at the The Fountain Pen Network. Saw that one was for sale at http://www.sharpclaw.com/. Was seduced into looking at Sheryl's wish list and got stuck drooling over handmade Japanese paper at DanielSmith.com ('merely' $6.14/sheet).

4) Found another blog at The Fountain Pen Network, which I got interested in merely for "amish" in the name. Sort of not many Amish around in my neighborhood: Amish Guitar, right in the middle of A Mid Life Crisis :-)

5) And there I got interested in a girl called Julia Nunes, merely because of the nice things Mr. Amish. WOW! I spent an hour or so watching all the funny and cute videos she has produced for YouTube and got totally hooked! Not only is she cute, but what talent! There are really no similarities between what she does and what Eva Cassidy did, but it's the same straight channell from heart to singing/playing. Ukulele too! No walls whatsoever! Just look at the way she treats All My Loving, The Beatles, All Love, Little Respect and Pure Fun from eine WunderMädschen!

This gal can get as far as possible. I missed her T-shirt contest in April so here are my suggestions for the next one. Since Julia is going to play in Tokyo, July 2009, and Beijing January 2010 (other dates not possible since she has to Write Essays!) she really needs to print up T-shirts in advance. Japan and China are a little bit edgy towards each other so some sort of T-shirt diplomacy will do good to:

All those bored of Japanese and Chinese should note that Julia is playing in London/UK this week, in case you are close. Go there. I would do if I was just a tiny bit closer.

I admit that the colors above are perhaps too ... ahem ..."vulgar", but you have to admit that they Really Shine! The Message Is Seen. But I really prefer Chinese characters in red on a black background; that is the incarnation of Chinese signs etc. so I made another sample using different fonts:

The Chinese font in the middle can be slightly hard to read for the Western Eye, but admit that it really impressive with tons of weight! I actually have more fonts than I can handle and even remember. The white one above was totally new when I found it today. It's fittingly cute when you zoom in:
So what about Julia's name in Japanese and Chinese? The Japanese version - top - is very easy since they use a special script for foreign names: Katakana. it simply says ju-ri-a--nu-ne-su (since there is no plain s in Japanese). Easy as apple pie. The extra -- tells us that these syllables are longer juulia nuunes (and it wouldn't surpirse me if Nunes is pronounced in some silly way so I have to remake my design!)

Names in Chinese is an entirely different matter since the use only Hanzi - Chinese Characters to write all foreign names. Here is what New York City and London look like:

These characters are not usually choose because they mean so much in common with what they are said, i.s. they are merely sounds. The first character (niǔ) means button etc. The second one means something like appoinment (yuē), but the finale means CITY. So when the Chinese say New York City they will say niǔyuēshì and most of us will just not understand -hear - what they are talking about. ("Meet Mr Butt in the City"???) London is a much more straightforward lúndūn, something that most of us Westerns will recognize when said.

We are all rather sure that Julia isn't too willing to fall into the too common trap of using characters meaning weird and "wrong" things - think crazy tattoos!!! - so I'll add links to the nciku dictionary here:

举ju - means "raise" - compare weightlifting in 举重
黎 li - means multitude (not in nciku) on it's own, but is part of 黎明, dawn
啊 a - means exactly that "ah", "oh" "aaaahhhh"

努 nu - means "make an effort", but Julia doesn't have to :-)
呢 ne - isn't really much more than a sound and a particle used for stuff like questions etc.
素 su - can mean vegetable and is part of the word for vegetarian, something Julia ought to be, if she isn't yet (all of us should stop eating meat from cows and pigs polluting the air with their farts!)

That's it. Since I choose the character more from a looking nice point of view, I very much ignored the tones, so vital in spoken Chinese. Perhaps a Chinese reader will think the name sound a bit odd, but I don't think so. The sounds are absolutely OK per se.

So now it's time folks, to dig out your calender and make room for Julia in Tokyo and Beijing! And Julia, in case you read this: Don't feel any sort of PRESSURE! (And don't start to pack your bags. Yet.) This is merely some New Year's predictions from an old star gazer. Predictions DO fail, but sometimes they are right on the spot!

Good luck!

PS I forgot:

Julia's Brand New CD "I Wrote These"
and her debut CD "Left Right Wrong" are available here

or download at

An apology to the theJapanesePage.com

2009-01-05T11:26:00.000Z

It's not always entirely ease to rely on your past experiences. In my second post here I wrote

This project owes much to James W. Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji” (RtK). This book could be the Kanji Bible (Koran or whatever) considering the amount of controversy it has created across the Japanese community seen online. There is a very vocal community of Heisig advocates and there is an almost as devoted Anti-Heisig camp, not least among the rather bully folks – some moderators, not the owner - at theJapanesePage.com. Mentioning Heisig there is as close as you get to swearing in the church online J. It’s a welcome relief to go to the other side of the coin at the Reviewing the Kanji forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php, . No matter how devoted the members are there, they are at least polite.

Recent experiences show that I was delusional here. "No matter how devoted the members are there, they are at least polite." was absolutely nothing but a joke! After spending a couple of days there I have learned that 1) the youngsters at RtK forum is nothing but a mob spitting out invectives if their faith is imaginary assaulted by something "new". It's IRONY that I started my very first post ever with a

My first post so I would like to offer my thanks to Fabrice for setting up this enormous site and maintaining it year in and year out! I would also like to offer my appreciation to all users/members able to maintain a very pleasant atmosphere here. (I haven't been to the page where one cannot mention Heisig and which Fabrice doesn't want us to mention here :-) )

What an utterly unfounded optimism. You can easily judge by yourself, but I would consider it a waste of time to wade through eight (8!!) pages of filth to merely check if I am telling the truth.

The next irony is that yours truly get reprimanded for taking the liberty to not allow pure lies stand unchallenged: TOPIC CLOSED. As far as I can tell, those spewing invectives, unfounded insinuations, and a generally childish and ugly language, were NOT reprimanded. A fair and balanced way to handle a public forum?

Since the forum manager can't remember what he is posting in his own forum, I felt the need to fresh up his memory and posted a copy of an old post on theJapanesePage.com (original found here)

I'm fed up with this. KanjiHanzi you are banned

And by the gods, please do not email me, I have no time to quarrel with you by email.

I will try to post something later about this, out of courtesy, certainly not out of "duty".

Silly boy. What an utterly stupid way to present the Heisig Method to the world: By all means post any praise of the method, but DO NOT challenge any of the tenets of Our Faith leading to Kanji Heaven, the only way there according to OUR gospel.

It's not even true that he "banned" me, i.e. prevented me from logging in. He BLOCKED my IP address so I couldn't even read a single line about what was said there. That's very fair and balanced too, isn't it? As you can see this is nothing that isn't solved in a matter of seconds, but don't imagine that I will care to post or write emails.

No. I am rather pleased with the situation as it is now: No more wasting of time there. And despite all the accusations of being there only for the sake of self-promotion, I had no intentions of anything like that. I thought it would be possible to discuss the work I will do here with those already familiar with The Heisig Method. It wasn't. But as it turned out, I got better PR for this blog than I could have dreamed of!!! **If** I had dreamed. :-)

So, yes: My regret for posting the intitial opinion re the politeness level of these two places is indeed sincere. If I only had had a single hint about what I could expect posting on the Reviewing the Kanji forum, I had not touched the place. Not even with a stick nose covered. Sorry.

Is "Kanji" more popular than "Hanzi"?

2009-01-04T14:23:00.000Z

According to a comparison on Technorati there are more blog posts on Kanji than there are on Hanzi:

Just speculating: The interest in Japanese, and thus Kanji, has been very much an off-spring from the Manga/Anime culture, mostly populated by young people. Those blogging are usually more on the young side, still these days. Young + young = more Kanji than Hanzi. This will most likely change dramatically over the next years when more and more people either migrate from Japanese to Mandarin/Chinese and newbies pick Mandarin instead of Japanese.

Simplified Characters: Introduction

2009-01-04T08:34:00.000Z

(Font issue: If you want to get the same look and feel on the blog as in the pdf-files you will have to buy and install the very nice font Attic from Three Island Press. It’s a pretty “Harry Potter font” and will cost you $US49. Yes, fonts are still way too expensive! More people would buy if each font was between $US 15-20. Once upon a time I could afford to buy fonts like this, but not today.)

There will be some small subsections/labels here over time when this blog gets up to full speed next week or so. One will be about the process of SIMPLIFICATION of Characters. Right now I will spare you the historical fact (mostly because I’m too lazy/busy to look them up).

If we let it be sufficient to say that Chinese Characters has gone through (at least) two parallel simplification processes: One in China and one in Japan. Sometimes this has resulted in the same result or at least very similar results. Below is one example where the process has been close but not really hit the mark:

To the left we have the traditional character for what we can simplify to “reality”, shi2. Next is the simplified character in use in China today and finally the Japanese version (jitsu). To complicate the matter a bit, the traditional character is still in use in Japan, but is A Very Rare Character, here merely telling that I don’t know the frequency listing for this character apart from being below 2500 in EDICT.

Below is what will be called An Ugly Simplification (Made in China). In this case someone deemed it necessary to reduce the already simple character for “wagon/car” to the monstrosity to the right. Not only did it not save more than three strokes, but it is also more difficult to write – and get it good! – than the original. I have gotten used to simplified character but the second stroke – the almost, but not entirely 90 degrees ‘hook’ just don’t fit into the already existing hanzi aesthetics.

As if it wasn’t bad enough with the full character, it’s even worse where it appears in composite character as a component:

Yes, the simplified characters are admittedly faster to write, but what a world of difference in Look and Feel!!! ”UGLY” is perhaps too strong a word, but artificial is what I consider this particular simplification.

Below is hat I consider as an entirely successful simplification where the general look and feel of the character has been saved despite a really dramatic simplification: lovely (Heisig) or beautiful.

Once again the character to the left is identical in traditional Chinese and Japanese. The bottom part of the full character above is the “ka” in the Japanese word for baka (na) i.e. stupid:

Why horse (left) + deer became stupid in Japan is something I really have no clue about. In Chinese it merely signifies a particular type of deer, as far as I’ve been able to tell.

According to the etymology sources the character 麗is a pictogram of the “antlers of the deer”. So what is an antler? According to Cambridge it is “a horn with branch-like parts which grows on the head of a usually male deer”. 丽is nothing but the antlers, then. I think it’s kind of cute that the two strokes in the traditional character also have been simplified down to one stroke. A dramatic simplification well done. Neat.

Join the group/mailing list

2008-12-30T07:03:00.000Z

For more extended discussions on posts and topics covered here I've set up a group/mailing list on Google. See you there.

Kanji Lesson 1 for JapanesePod101 Students

2008-12-29T22:19:00.000Z

From the Kanji Hanzi Hub

(This is not affiliated with JapanesePod101 in any way. It’s a personal project expressing the joy of learning Kanji/Hanzi and hopefully of some help for other students of Japanese and Chinese. The 101 logo above has been ‘enhanced’ with “Kanji Lessons” here. Hopefully the 101 poddies will not object to this liberty.

The text and images here are not copyright restricted, but dumped into the public domain. Use and distribute as you prefer, but do not hesitate to add the link to the Kanji Hanzi Hub - http://kanjihanzi.blogspot.com/ - wherever you find it appropriate. You will not reach Kanji/Hanzi heaven, though, if you pretend to have created the stuff yourself. Thanks.)

Please notice: everything below is just as useful for students of Chinese/Hanzi as for Japanese students. There are some minor differences in meaning of the characters, but nothing of any importance.

Available in pdf-format for printing here

Hmmmm... This is the first time I use Google Docs and was too optimistic about how easily the files there could be shared. It seems like you have to send me an email so I can invite you as a viewer. You will also need a Google account. Will try to find a better solution later.

This is one hell of a blog post so in case you decide to read the full text, consider going straight to the much nicer pdf-file. There are probably some more proof-reading to be done there but now I offer it as is. I also have used a nice font for the text and simply copied from Microsoft Wor(d)st so I am rather clueless about how it looks on computers without this font.

First time here? Perhaps you want to read the very first post here before continuing.

As you will notice here, it’s my opinion that Japanese is an almost impossible language to learn REALLY WELL, and I have accepted the sad fact that it will take years before I will be able to express myself in writing and speaking with anything that approaches fluency. That’s the reason why I have switched to Mandarin, a VERY simple language to learn, compared with Japanese.

Despite my misgivings I have no intention to entirely give up the things I have learned so far, but intend to spend a very modest amount of time to Japanese while I focus on Mandarin. Since I am currently using chinesepod.com as one – of many – sources for learning Mandarin, I decided to take a look at japanesepod101.com, a site I haven’t visited in a couple of years or so. Nice. (To be perfectly correct: I HAVE visited the site now and then, but only the very interesting Kanji Curiosity blog by Eve Kushner.)

Personally I am not much of a blog fan. I just don’t like the inverted chronology, and the fact that blog readers expect to get THE information served in each and every top post, preferably one paragraph long or with nothing more than a link to elsewhere. Not so here. I will try to avoid repeating information already posted. As a visitor you will have to learn how to navigate the blog by using the links in the right column: archives and labels. That’s it.

There are many misconceptions about Chinese Character, i.e. Hanzi/Kanji. The first and worst is that “It’s Sooooo Difficult to Learn Kanji/Hanzi” and “The Biggest Obstacle in Learning Japanese/Chinese is the Written Language”. If that was true I would have been fluent in spoken/written Japanese many years ago, since I have never had any problem READING Japanese texts with plenty of Kanji. Trust me: Learning Kanji is a piece of cake compared with the rest of the stuff waiting ahead!

But to be able to learn Kanji as quickly as possible you will need a Strategy and Method. It’s true that the traditional way of learning Kanji/Hanzi is a messy business. One cannot learn these beauties – beasts, if you prefer – as an image or a bunch of lines. Chinese Characters – CC – is not an exact science, but there is indeed a lot of logic in what looks like madness at first. CC has developed from rather humble beginnings some 4000 years ago to the most intricate writing system ever developed in the history of mankind. The shape they have today was mostly fixed at a time where most of the Western World couldn’t write at all. History and Tradition!!!

This project owes much to James W. Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji” (RtK). This book could be the Kanji Bible (Koran or whatever) considering the amount of controversy it has created across the Japanese community seen online. There is a very vocal community of Heisig advocates and there is an almost as devoted Anti-Heisig camp, not least among the rather bully folks – some moderators, not the owner - at theJapanesePage.com. Mentioning Heisig there is as close as you get to swearing in the church online J. It’s a welcome relief to go to the other side of the coin at the Reviewing the Kanji forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php, . No matter how devoted the members are there, they are at least polite.

The first lessons on JapanesePod101.com offer a very representative sample of the situation a newbie encounters: a mixture of basic Kanji and very complex Kanji. This is not a promise, but merely an optimistic desire: I would like to present Kanji in the first several lessons the way I have learned them myself. In the future I might even do like everybody else: charge a bit for the services here.

The first step is to remove one of the stickiest Heisig dogmas: YOU HAVE TO LEARN 2000 KANJI before actually STUDYING JAPANESE.

As I will report in more detail later, the ARE some merits to this notion, but there are equally many benefits to entirely skip this strategy. It took me three attempts to get through RtK and I very much regret that I didn’t learn at least the ON-readings (based on the Chinese pronunciation) the two last rounds. More later on this hot topic.

Lesson One at JapanesePod101.com

The first Kanji in lesson one is

as in hajimemashite (“Nice to meet you”) which is Kanji 2-4 above. So what about the first one?!?! A CC – Kanji/Hanzi – is created from smaller compontents, usually from an abbreviated or simplified full character. The black part in kanji 3 above is nothing but a variant of the first, full Kanji for “garment/clothes”.

Heisig has no or very little faith in our ability to memorize SHAPES and insists on adding a mnemonic STORY to each and every Kanji. Not so here. A basic CC as those above do not really need any handholding to be remembered, in my not so humble opinion. If you need some additional visual input I strongly recommend that you look at the origin of the character at chineseetymology.com: look at 衣 there and you will find numerous examples of how this character has evolved from its roots. This is a typical example of a character with pictorial roots evolving into a more abstract – or here: stylized – shape over the millennia. (Hint, hint: Chinese Etymology is a HUGE undertaking, so please consider a donation to the creator!!!!!)

Writing characters

I have my own dogmas. One is that you are not fully fluent in Japanese and/or Chinese unless you are able to express yourself with an old-fashioned pen/pencil in your hand! Another one is that you learn the characters a lot more efficiently – and profoundly – when you write them. Thus I will focus a lot on writing Japanese/Chinese here. Write, write, write.

“OK, how do I get along writing??” First you have to learn the almost holy STROKE ORDER of each and every character. This may sound intimidating, but it’s not. There are a few and very basic rules you need become familiar with, and this is a process that I almost automatic when you start to learn characters. I have not yet found a way to include stroke order animations here, but there are several sites offering this: the eminent Chinese more-than-a-dictionary nciku.com. Since there is usually no difference between a Kanji and its grandfather Hanzi, you can input the Kanji there too. Bottom of page for “clothes” and same for “hajime”-Kanji 初.

OK…. Back to Kanji One in Lesson One. Now it’s downhill ahead….

Having covered the clothes aspect, we have the component to the right. This is even simpler: a knife. The full Kanji for knife looks exactly the same, apart from being a bit wider. So now we have learned the hard facts of Japanese greetings: It’s a cloak-and-dagger game! Watch your back when you say sayonara! :-)!

Next in line is Private Me above. Students of Hanzi will meet General Zong soon, so considered this as a member of his army. There are several first personal pronouns – I – in Japanese/Kanji and Chinese/Hanzi. This is not what is used in Chinese as the first choice where it’s meaning is more close to the Heisig keyword “private”. (In Chinese we use what I think is an older way to say me/we in Japan: 我 ware etc. Heisig keyword: ego.)

Personally I find that the watashi character is slightly difficult to keep cemented in memory. Probably the reason for this is that there are few hints to anything strictly personal in the components. The important one is found in example 3 above: a tree. To this has been added a small drop (2) of something to signify it’s more diminutive nature: a cereal of some sort, wheat or whatever you prefer. Heisig uses wheat, but there is really no such historical connection with this particular cereal. Just don’t use RICE to add a label to this very common component and all is well.

For me, I am sure it’s the extremely abstract nature of the shape to the right in Private. I have never really sort of gotten a deeper relationship with it, so it tends to slip away too easy now and then. There is every reason in the world to look at how the Heisig community uses the beautifully functional Reviewing the Kanji site. If you would strictly stick to the Heisig method would not encounter WATASHI until learning 901 other more or less useful characters. Take a look at the very creative use of stories to learn the characters!

The problem is that ELBOW has been of little help to me. Neither is the fact that “the elbow” actually is half a (silk etc.) cocoon from a strictly etymological point of view, according to some experts, even though chineseetymology.org suggests a mouth. As I said: not an exact science and I will dig deeper into these layers later. Simply use your imagination and decide what this common component should mean.

A very prominent role is played in the character for public 公 so one might be tempted to contrast the Private Cereal with its Public Self. Looking at this character, so it might indeed be sound to think of it as a “public mouth”, in the proper character for Public there is actually “Eight Public Spokespersons”, with the two upper lines being the character for 8.

Before we follow the strict order we have to add the most basic character of all: The Moon and the Sun, the Yin and Yang of human existence:

The proper character for Moon is to the very left. Next is what we can call a crescent moon as in the character for evening/night. Now it also happens that there has been an overlap from meat/flesh and the moon. What we might be tempted to think is a moon is actually a signal that something corporeal is taking place. “The Moon” is very frequent in characters for body parts, organs etc. All in due time.

Then we of course have the Sun. Note the difference between a very similar-looking character meaning To Say. The difference between the two is in both size and orientation: the sun is slightly smaller and rectangular with more height. You will not encounter the latter character very frequently, though.

The next character in line is

This time it sometimes has rather different connotations in Chinese vs. Japanese, but the primary Chinese meaning “suitable” can be found in some Japanese words. Here it is a rather ambiguous “be kind” meaning in yoroshiku.

The origin of this character can also be disputed. Above, to the left, we have the crescent moons between a roof and a floor (where the character for “one” is stand-in): many, much etc. That was plenty of something in this particular house, with other words. (To complicate matters a bit there are also proponents of the interpretation of the moons as two pieces of sacrificial meat on an altar… )

The evolution of characters then decided that plenty was enough and reduced the two moons to the more shelf-like component we see today. Shelf is the Heisig keyword and I have used it myself with no problems. “Too many greeting cards to my house will eventually fill the mail shelf” or whatever. So don’t be too polite J

Learn the top part as a roof with a chimney since there will be many other characters symbolizing dwellings of various types.

Ouch! A Freudian slip! I missed one of my least likeable characters according to the Heisig method:

The character for onegai – please/wish – is the forth one above. This is built from characters 1) primary/original and 3) page/head. Number 2) is what one can use as the start for 3): a shellfish often used as a symbol for money (which is what was used as money at “that” time: shells as in Shell Out). Heisig has used MEADOW as the keyword for character 1), a fact that causes me endless irritation, since this is not at all the primary meaning of the character and he also uses a particularly silly story with heads on a meadow making requests. Yikes.

For those studying simplified Chinese Characters the versions are

Actually the simplified version is ‘better’ with the heart component at the bottom as the origin of wishes/aspirations. I used the extra space at 4) to show that head/page is not actuall derived from shellfish, but from the character for head/neck where we have the three strokes on top as hair above the character/component used for nose (as well as me/self/etc.). With this brief summary, it’s goodbye to this character, onegai shimasu.

We have already covered the ni-part in Nihon (Japan) so now it’s time for the hon-part:

This is such a simple character that I don’t dissect its two parts: a tree with a line crossing the stem below the branches. Heisig goes straight to the book-meaning of this character. In both Chinese and Japanese there is also the meaning of “basis, origin”, i.e. roots. The small part of the stem below the horizontal line is thus its ROOTS.

(In Chinese this is not a book per se, but a measure word used for books. Number two and three above is the simplified and traditional character for book. I have ordered “Remember the Hanzi”, volume 1, but it’s not still here yet. Now it happened that the character for “book” was available in a errata file at Heisig’s web site, so I could see what he wrote there:

The character in this frame will take special attention and require ome ingenuity on your part. It begins with key and clothes hanger (note the doubling up of the stroke), and then is followed by a walking stick and a single drop. You might think of a particular book you are fond of when inventing your story.

This is rather unnecessary, in my opinion. OK, I have a long experience with Kanji and the simplified characters are sort breaking the tradition with the roots of CC, but I nevertheless didn’t require a single glance and practising writing it a few before it stuck. Visual memory, James W.?? To make this parenthesis complete: the third character above is how the traditionalists write it in Chinese. As things often happened it got a different meaning in Japan: to write. The last character is how Chinese people view writing. But… In Japan this means “copy” and is one of the two characters in the word “Photo”. – Now forget all about this confusion :-) )

The character for person is also one of those simple learn. Nothing to dissect so I use to space to show how it looks using various fonts:

When you write this character forget the two outer variants ONLY intended for printing, not writing/painting by hand. I am sure you need a break from this now so take a look at the first and last Radical Show at chinesepod.com. Due to some mysterious overreaction there the audience could not accept the light-hearted way the team present this particular “radical” (component/grapheme etc.). A pity, even if I think it was too much to cover only a single “radical” in the show. More is better, as you can see here :-).

What’s in a name (na)?

Nothing more than 1) a crescent moon and 2) a mouth. Of course we can use the flesh metaphor here too: mama’s mouth is telling the name to the newborn Baby Flesh J. Otherwise we have to be satisfied with the theory that names where given or uttered in the evenings only. Secret.

It’s actually “in front” but behind the na-part here: mae (zen in Japanese on-reading and qián in Mandarin).

This is a great example where Heisig’s often vivid and brilliant mnemonic stories are right on the spot: sort of a butchers shop with a pair of horns in front. The horns are of course the top component 2), flesh is 3) and 4) is nothing but a knife as a component variant; think of it as a sword or a particular type of knife. Easy as pork pie. Chop, chop, said the butcher.

As sometimes – rather often, actually – happens, there is no connection with the more ancient character and the one in use today. This is really not something you have to bother about, but it’s perhaps not to know? The seal characters at ChineseEtymology.org is quite enlightening.

The old character for “in front” was composed of 1) a foot (now meaning stop) and 2) a boat. It would indeed be very interesting to know how this became the components in the current version.

I intentionally skip the first two characters in Katakana　片仮名

since they are overkill here at present. Later.

Finally we have a rather difficult word not really used in the lesson: kokuseki for “nationality”. The first character (koku/kuni) is very easy to learn as is:

Please, take a look at the stroke order animation here. As you will notice the outer stuff is written first apart from the bottom stroke. This is the rule for all characters where the enclosure (pen or whatever) component appears. Next there is a king pent up (3). Due to some mysterious aversion to monarchy someone added a dot (4) to the king and made him into a jewel/jade. So this is not the leader of the nation, but rather the national treasury. Strange, but true.

Finally – YES: FINALLY!!! – we have a too complex Kanji/CC to be included in a very first lesson, but here we go with seki in kokuseki:

One may wonder how this character ended up in the word for “nationality”, but it’s there in both Chinese (guójí) and Japanese. On top we have the abbreviated version of “bamboo”. IN this case I have used the Heisig method and rechristened this component as “The Bamboo Boys”, actually two cute and funny Pandas. They are doing tricks all over Kanji/Hanziland where they appear. But by alls means be free to to skip this rather silly label/keyword.

Next is what Heisig calls a Christmas Tree, but I sort of dislike that, despite the fact that it looks like a tree with two additional branches at the top. It’s not. Actually it is more of a plough, than anything else and the component appears in the proper for “to plough” in both China and Japan (耕). Heisig has an almost perverted habit of using obscure keywords so instead of a more known alternative to plow/plough he uses “till”, a word I never seen and used in my entire life.

Finally the third component is Once Upon A Time, which starts many a story in Japan (and perhaps in China too??). Heisig has mad a reduction in absurdum here with an unnecessary salad + sun split, but perhaps his method wouldn’t work otherwise. One source I have consulted claims that this is the very opposite to fresh and green salad: dried meat from a change of the character for meat肉over the sun component.

So to sum this character up: The keyword and one of the meanings in Japanese is To Enrol. So my little crazy story has been “Once upon a time the Bamboo Boys used to enrol people to a plowing contest (or Christmas tree club, before learning the proper etymology).” This is not optimal since the story should follow the order you write the components, but it has worked for me.

That’s it: End of Lesson One.

Apart from my trips outside the strict topic here and there I hope I have managed to communicate my conviction that Kanji/Hanzi are not difficult to learn. It takes lot of time and some effort when you start on this path to Kanji/Hanzi literacy, but the more characters you learn, the less time and effort do you have to spend.

The Kanji Hanzi Hub

Radicals/Components 101 - 002

Today's Word: Nun's Dragon

Radicals/Components 101 - 001

Today's World: I Ching or Economy?

Tomorrow's Chinese/Japanese Radical(s)

Today's Word: Electric Brain

Today's Hanzi: Very difficult?

Today's Word: Cat-Headed Bird-Bird

Today's Mandarin Word: Ever met a BagRat?

Today's Chinese Character: Simple Justice

Today's Hanzi: Meet General Zong

nciku.com - Chinese Character Animations

Nice Japanese fonts to download

Learn Chinese Characters (Components III)

Component Learning and Analysis II

Kanji Lesson 1 for JapanesePod101 Students

New Global Background Image

Frequent Updates on YouTube

Techo News: Twitter SMS Updates

Beautiful 'Distraction': Adrian Belew

Richard Dawkins: Scientist or Priest?

Richard Dawkins: Growing Up in the Universe - Designed and Designoid Objects

Logo Work

David Byrne in **BIG** Hong Kong

Welcome to Virtual, China

More videos: MUSIC VIDEOS on YouTube!

Video: Straight Talk from Norman Finkelstein

Component Learning and Analysis II

A rare video here

More reviews at Amazon.com

Famous Chinese Scholar John DeFrancis Dies

New Practical Chinese Reader, Second book

"Teach yourself Chinese" by Elisabeth Scurfield

Is Japanese THE MOST DIFFICULT LANGUAGE?

Julia Nunes to Japan and China! Soon :-)

or download at

An apology to the theJapanesePage.com

Is "Kanji" more popular than "Hanzi"?

Simplified Characters: Introduction

Join the group/mailing list

Kanji Lesson 1 for JapanesePod101 Students

David Byrne in BIG Hong Kong