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 havenciku.com and the likes!) But I got a little hick-up when seeing 且 here. If you look at thestroke 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.
#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):
"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).
#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.
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.
. 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 thislittle "Component Video" and thought it might be time to stop doodling and to leave the draft board ....
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 jìngas 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:
(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.
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.
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 forumhttp://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.
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 – ratheroften, 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.
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.
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.
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