Re: CHAT: Orthography and maggelity
| From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, January 17, 2003, 15:12 |
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Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
> > Chinese orthography is about the same, only 2000 years out of date
> > instead of only 400 years.
> >
>
> What is Chinese *orthography*?
Well, the overwhelming bulk of Chinese characters have two components, a
radical (semantic indicator) and a phonetic ("sounds like"/"rhymes with"
indicator). Of course, some characters are just radical or just phonetic,
and some few (probably 5-10%) are made up in other ways, like the
famous "two women" under "roof" that means "quarrel". However, a fair
number of characters have bizarre radicals, and a very large number have
obsolete phonetics -- after all, the phonetics have not budged over the
last 2000 years of substantial sound changes, so the relationships they
encode are strained to the breaking point.
Here are tables for 3 phonetics each with a few radicals. This shows both
sane and etab. parts of the system: the phonetics are mostly fairly sane,
but the radicals are frequently a stretch.
reading radical translation
pi2 - skin/hide
pi1 hand split open
pi2 disease exhausted
bi4 speech argue
po4 stone break
bo3 foot walk lame
bo1 water wave
bei4 clothing coverlet
po1 earth slope/bank
di4 - younger brother
ti4 eye glance at
ti4 knife shave
ti4 water weep, tears
di4 bamboo order, sequel
gan1 - shield
gan1 flesh liver
gan4 sun dusk
kan1 knife carve
han4 sun drought
han4 sweat water
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