Chinese Characters in the Wild
I went through some of my photos of my trip to China in June/July last year. I remember encountering some really awesome signs and Chinese characters being a bit different. Chinese typography is quite interesting for me. Here are some pictures of interesting Chinese characters in the wild: This was taken in Shanghai. Can’t remember [...]
Chinese Ligatures
After browsing the Chinese New Year wikipedia page (I was looking about for some greetings) I was instantly struck by the odd character close to bottom. My initial thought was that it was the Biang Biang noodle character, but lo and behold I was greeted by a ligature! This is when two or more graphemes, let’s just [...]
So what color is 青 really? Blue? Green? Help!
Oh boy. Here we go again with Chinese confusing the hell out of me. Today’s culprit is 青. Yes, that one that appears in 青年 meaning youth. I almost want to make a knee-jerk old timer joke about how confusing the youth are these days, but I’d resist. So, why am I confused about 青, [...]
I have a drinking problem
Heyoooo. Gotta love sensationalist headlines right!? Don’t worry this is not a hungover post or drunk blogging, but rather an interesting thing I noticed the other day. I was busy creating a website (which will be online tomorrow, so expect another blog post tomorrow or Tuesday) when I typed the character for drinking. You all [...]
Oddities in Chinese: Hanyu Pinyin Syllables
I’ve been learning Chinese for almost four years now (a few more months to go). I still discover interesting things about Mandarin everyday. I remember back in 1st year of Chinese, we went through the Pinyin chart of syllables, getting the grips of Chinese pronunciation. Syllable after syllable we went: bo, po, mo, fo etc [...]
Radtacular Radicals
I’ve been reading some academic papers lately. I’m trying to find research on the importance of radicals in Chinese Orthography. It basically confirms what we all know, radicals are important in Chinese character recognition and learning. Chinese Orthography is complex, thanks to its logographic writing system. However, I’ve been hard at work trying to figure [...]
The plight of Hollywood Chinese
I must admit, I secretly hope for Chinese to appear in movies so I can impress my friends and smile big time, ’cause I actually understood what is being said. But not only that, but it is interesting to see how actors cope with speaking Chinese. In most cases they do a terrible job. The [...]
Feeling a bit stuck and lost
After coming back from China, I’ve been in a slump with my Chinese. Yes, I still read Chinese everyday and listen to some music, but I feel like I need a goal. A direction. When I was in China, all the new Chinese came easy. It was like I was on autopilot with improving my [...]
Two More Language Stories from China Travels
I just read my journal that I kept while in China again. It was a personal journal, but I noted some Chinese things too. There are some more stories that I missed that are just too interesting not to share! Flavour of Watermelons One night in Xiamen, I went with my girlfriend and their classmates [...]
