{"id":656532,"date":"2013-05-07T11:46:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T15:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=75606"},"modified":"2013-05-07T12:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T16:18:00","slug":"5-mnemonic-devices-for-reading-chinese-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/656532","title":{"rendered":"5 mnemonic devices for reading Chinese characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ShaoLanHsueh-at-TED2013\"To an outsider, the Chinese language \u201cseems to be as impenetrable as the Great Wall of China,\u201d says ShaoLan Hsueh<\/a> in today\u2019s talk<\/a>, given at TED2013. Hsueh\u2019s mission over the past few years has been to break down that barrier, making reading and writing in Chinese accessible to people who didn\u2019t grow up doing it.<\/p>\n

\"ShaoLan:ShaoLan: Learn to read Chinese … with ease!<\/span><\/a>Her solution? A method she calls \u201cChineasy<\/a>.\u201d To achieve basic literacy, Hsueh says, you need only know 1,000 characters, and the top 200 allow you to comprehend 40 percent of basic literature. Chineasy involves pairing characters with facial expressions, body movements and images that conjure up words in English.<\/p>\n

In her talk<\/a>, Hsueh moves through eight foundational characters, describing mnemonic devices and showing artful depictions. \u201cOpen your mouth as wide as possible until it\u2019s square,\u201d she says. Are you doing it? Voila, the character for mouth: \u53e3. Hsueh shows a graphic her team has designed of a person going for a walk, based on the character for person: \u4eba. Fire is the character for person with what look like two arms waving, as if the person is engulfed in flames and yelling, \u201cHelp!\u201d: \u706b. Hsueh also takes us through tree (\u6728), mountain (\u5c71), sun (\u65e5), moon (\u6708), and door (\u9580), which \u201clooks like a pair of saloon doors in the Wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n

These eight characters \u201care the building blocks for you to create lots more characters,\u201d Hsueh explains. Using Chineasy\u2019s simple, beautiful illustrations, it\u2019s just a hop, skip and a jump to many other words and phrases. In this talk<\/a>, Hsueh takes us through almost 30 characters; here, some more examples based on those foundational eight.<\/p>\n

    \n
      \n
        \n
      1. In her talk, Hsueh shows the Chinese character for person, \u4eba, which looks like a person strolling along. Multiply by two, and you\u2019ve got the character for everyone:
        \n\"everyone\" .<\/span><\/li>\n
      2. In her talk, Hsueh shows us how combining fire (\u706b) and mountain (\u5c71) gives us a volcano (\u706b\u5c71). What happens when we add a mouth (\u53e3) to a volcano? Think about it: the mouth of a volcano is \u2026 a crater!
        \n\"crater\".<\/span><\/li>\n
      3. Hsueh shows us that the character for big (\u5927) looks like a person (\u4eba) with her arms outstretched, as if to say, \u201cSooooo big!\u201d Combine those two, and you get adult (\u5927\u4eba):’
        \n\"adult\".<\/span><\/li>\n
      4. Write two suns (\u65e5) side by side and you get the character for \u201cbright\u201d: \u660d. On her Facebook<\/a> page, Hsueh writes, \u201cI promise you, this is a character that will impress your Chinese friends. This is such a rare character that 99 percent of Chinese native speakers\/readers would struggle to tell you what it is, never mind how to pronounce it.\u201d
        \n\"bright\".<\/span><\/li>\n
      5. Here\u2019s a really clever one that Hsueh brings up in her talk: the character for \u201cto dodge\u201d or \u201cto avoid\u201d is composed of a person (\u4eba) inside a door (\u9580), as if the person is sneaking out! \u9583 What she adds on her Facebook page is that this character has a second meaning, \u201cflash.\u201d As she explains, \u201cthis person is sneaking out at such speed that the shape of him dashing resembles a streak of light.\u201d
        \n\"dodge\"<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n

        \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

        \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        To an outsider, the Chinese language \u201cseems to be as impenetrable as the Great Wall of China,\u201d says ShaoLan Hsueh in today\u2019s talk, given at TED2013. Hsueh\u2019s mission over the past few years has been to break down that barrier, making reading and writing in Chinese accessible to people who didn\u2019t grow up doing it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}