The secret behind how Chinese characters work - Gina Marie Elia
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Trace the history of Chinese characters, and find out how this writing system has changed and evolved over thousands of years.
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According to legend, in the 27th century BCE, the Yellow Emperor of China charged his historian, Cangjie, to develop a system of writing. Sitting alongside a riverbank, Cangjie noted the imagery that surrounded him. From this, he created the first Chinese characters. So, how has Chinese evolved in the last 3,000 years? Gina Marie Elia explores the history of one of the earliest written languages.
Lesson by Gina Marie Elia, directed by PeiHsin Cho.
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I love when people read chinese with the proper pronunciation in the middle of an english sentence
As a native Chinese person, I must say her pronunciation is totally correct!!!🎉
Her name is pen pen Chen and doing narration on mandarin related topics for years.
Bruh I'm fluent in Chinese and English but switching mid sentence messes with my brain so much
Like , they talk about Mortal Kombat like a westerner, and when they get to the character's name, 'Shang Tsung', they sound like a foreigner...as if it were their first language?
Me too.
Switching between Mandarin and English is just such a Singaporean thing to do that's how we get Singlish (also mixed in Malay)
Can we talk about how beautiful this animation is? I love how drawings of objects transform into the Chinese characters that represent them. Very creative!
I think we need to de-mystify Chinese characters, once you know the logic, you can understand most of them
@@danielzhang1916The most discouraging part of learning Chinese are the classifiers, there are hundreds of them.
@@danielzhang1916 yeah but the animation was cool
Yup fascist anti democratic characters
@@danielzhang1916 I think this is a good way to do it
I’m Chinese, and my childhood was spent hammering these characters into my brain. This system of writing is daunting even for native speakers. But while there are many characters, the number is finite, and as I gradually learnt more and more of them, the beauty of my language revealed itself to me. It has opened the door to countless amazing books and ancient texts, and I thank my past self every day for spending all that hard work and tears drilling these characters so that I may benefit from it today.
How many years did it take to master written chinese? Most children learn to use the roman alphabet in three to four years around here.
Chinese feels like the most primitive written language that currently exists
@@sharzo7728 it is very complex and logical, so it is not primitive just because it's not an alphabet
@HayashiManabu - 🥰
@@Masterpsychoo almost each word is a different symbol or character, native speakers sometimes may have problems identifying some less used characters.
As a Chinese myself, I felt a sudden thrill because I just realized how daunting this video made it look like for a foreigner to learn Chinese.
As a forgeiner whos learning chinese , characters personally arent too hard for me lol , in my opinion speaking / tones and pronunciation are the hardest
Actually, this video made it even more approachable.
I just started learning Mandarin a couple weeks ago, and while it's a challenge, I'm in love. This video actually did make it more approachable; I thought characters just had meaning. Such an amazing language! The tones are my biggest difficulty.
Why would that be thrilling? You dont want others learning your native language?
@@Flyingsearat Agree. I remember characters better than I memorise the tones for reading those characters
“The limits of my language means the limits of my world” damn that hit me hard! I want to learn a new language now!
There are chinese characters and words that even native chinese don't know. That's how difficult chinese is. Its not even like what the word means sometimes you dont even know how to read it.
Yep, there’s like 80000 different characters and I sometimes struggle to find which character is the correct one when typing cos I forgot spelling or it’s not a common word.
Yes. As a native Chinese, I don't know a llot of words (also I don't know why my English is always better than Chinese)
@reubenong8728
80,000 characters are too many for anyone to memorize.
same with English language, a lot of shakespearan words or those not in common use anymore are usually not learned by people
It's the same as with English. The average native English speaker probably only knows 10-20% of the English words that exist.
as a current mandarin student, this is really helpful and interesting. thank you!
眞神至上
Wow this is perfect timing, I'm studying chinese in Taiwan, and I've always loved the traditional characters because of the radicals and beautiful strokes 致每一個現在學習中文的人；加油加油！！！
Just looks like you're telling me to add oil lol
@@nichan008 加油 does mean to add oil, it means keep going!! you got this!
謝謝 謝謝
What a bad choice of you to learn Chinese in Taiwan. You know, Taiwanese mandarin sounds so weird to most of the mainlanders. The only standard and natural Chinese can only be learned in mainland China.
@pizzacatred-velvet9952 If we are just talking about survival level, of course English is much easier than Chinese. But if we are talking about business level, I can assure you that the effort needed to master Chinese characters for that level shall be much less than what is needed to master the same level of English words. I am a Chinese and has kept learning and using English for almost 40 years and still have a lot of unknown words when reading articles like new reports on internet. Days ago, I saw a news title: Will Mr. Trump ignore the subpoena... I tried to figure out the meaning of that word by context but in vain and therefore I could not catch the meaning of the whole sentence because of this single word. In Chinese, this kind of thing will never happen after you learn it for 2 or more years. Take the word subpoena as an example, the corresponding Chinese consists of two characters, one means call or summon and the other means ticket. About 98% Chinese phrases are built up in this way on the basis of roughly 3500 characters which takes up >98% use cases. Bear in mind that even those 3500 most frequently used characters also bear a lot of regularities and are co-related. In other words, if it takes you half a year to memorize the first 1000 characters, then you need only three months to memorize the next 1000 character and another two months for the rest of 1500 ones.
You gotta pay your respect to TED. This is by far the most comprehensive yet simplistic description on how Chinese language works. No one could do better than this. And I am a Chinese.
Tips for learning a new language.
1. Start with foul words.
2. Explore more foul words.
3. Explore more new words and start learning.
Well, recently the word 'sun' '日' has taken up the meaning of the f-word. 😉
No
3. Compose rude limericks...
@@DarkBlade37yes
@@cheng8516I did not know that
As a native speaking ABC I'd say the best way to learn chinese is to read and listen (to TV with subtitles) a lot. There are no shortcuts given the complexity and volume of characters, although the radicals can assist with a clue to meaning or sound when you already have a good idea of the rough meaning through context or knowledge of the remaining language.
Im so Happy that finally someone Said that 木means Wood and Not tree. (As she Said it can also means tree, but in Most modern Chinese contexts IT means Wood)
Yes, tree 樹
After a tree is cut down, We called its physical body is wood 木
Any reason to capitalize almost every word when it's completely incorrect?
无意思。
如果这象若木，这真是木。
无边落木萧萧下，不尽长江滚滚来
It can mean tree in some cases as well
As a Hong Kong resident, I can confirm that we painstakingly find every character one by one when typing 漢字
how do keyboards work?
@@wren_.Like this.. wait I can't show you...
How long does it take to type?
Can be written using "strokes"(idk if it is called like that. Basically, the one that you literally write the whole character to write the word), "倉頡" and "速成"
@@wren_. I can't really say for the Cantonese keyboard, but usually it's very easy for the program to know what letters you're trying to type. For example, if I want to type in qíshí, due to the frequency of that word being used, the first option is 其实, followed by 七十.
The simplified keyboard is basically just using pinyin, the traditional one is just using zhuyin/bopomofo. If you're still not getting the word you want, you have an option (on mobile) to write in the characters yourself using touchscreen (which I usually do).
I've been studying Chinese for about 8 years now and I've just finished my degree in Teaching Chinese as a second language in Taiwan. I'm fluent in the oracle bone inscriptions and know about 10k characters (reading and writing) and as a future linguist I think Chinese characters are definitely the most intriguing piece of linguistic invention in the history of human civilization! Most importantly they make much more sense than what 98% people believe.
How did u memorize the words ? I'm finishing hsk1 soon yet I still can't memorize half of the vocabulary I learned , also the only way I can read them is through pinyin, without it the words just scare me . Any advice ?
@@loubna2213 the more you study the easier it gets. it's exponential as characters build on other ones you know. don't sweat it, it gets a lot easier. if you don't use flashcards already, i would check out anki.
@@loubna2213 Instead of trying to brute force memorize each word by itself, break each character down into its components to understand them, just like in the video. Just like how 筷子 has the phonetic component of 快，with the radical component of bamboo 竹, which becomes ⺮. This component is to show that chopsticks are made of bamboo. Try understanding the components of the words you learn and you will probably have an easier time.
@@loubna2213 I think memorising the words is easier when you focus on writing them and using them in sentences. As a native, sometimes I struggle or forget what certain words sound like, but I understand what it mean, which is weird! It's the opposite of English; I might know how to pronounce certain words, but I'll have no idea what it means.
@@loubna2213 We had to memorize them by writing them repeatedly when we were in elementary schools, so I guess there really isn't a better way to memorize them. But you definitely should endeavor to learn all the radicals first. It will be easier to learn them through patterns.
I'm an American born Chinese and this actually made Chinese words make more sense!
He meant to say that this makes Chinese words make more sense to him.
@@ndnxneh yeah as a chinese who's not on mainland or speak chinese normally, They don't teach chinese like this AT ALL.
They will give you a frame to repeat writing to remember them instead.
난 淸眞飮食 먹는 걸 좋아하거든
go back chang.
@@AnonUser6969why are you doing here? Go back to your basement and cry
我是越南人，正在学习汉语，看到你们的video, 我感觉很补益❤
补益好像没这个词吧，怪怪的，你想表达不易（音同），还是，满足/受益匪浅（意义相似/相同）😂
你的词汇量怎么回事？怎么就没有“补益”这个词汇了？只不过一般说“有补益（补益当名词）”或者“很受益”而已。@@lesswrks3628
很补益→大有裨益 that looks more like a native speaker😁
@@ranshen5466 , Or, "很有助益."
Actually native speakers dont use this kind of word when speaking or writting something casually. It just like someone talking to u with the sentence of Shakespeare.
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu 🎑
I needed to read this comment today
Is that an emoji??
The evolution of Chinese characters and the poetry protesting pinyin (most famously "The Lion-Eating Poet") will always fascinate me.
施氏食獅史 ？
@@DNAcat yeah
无人日常会那样说和用词。
@@DNAcat 还有季姬击鸡记
It's pretty funny to me to see people claiming these as protesting romanization when in reality they protest pronunciation.
"Stop highlighting how dysfunctional my language is >:("
As a newbie chinese language teacher, this animation is an absolutely perfect and smooth way to understand, and shows students about this complicated ahh language and it's writing rule✨️ GREAT WORK
Complex, yes. Complicated, Nope!
3:47 "As characters went from being etched in bone, to cast in bronze, to brushed on paper." Between bronze and paper, silk clothes and bamboo slips were used.
bamboo slips and wood slips.
I studied Mandarin since I was in grade 1 and this brought back a lot of memories. I don’t speak mandarin at home or anymore but I miss learning it since the Chinese writing system is so beautiful
Must say I am in awe that the Chinese can understand their writings. Kudos to you.Awesome!!!
As a Japanese, i can understand roughly 60-80% written Chinese(we use not-simplified Chinese characters tho)
Of course there are plenty of exceptions. For instance 来, 区, 参 resemble the simplified characters
來/来 區/区 參/参 for reference
Small correction: The (common) Kanji also are simplified from the original Hanzi, just in a different way than modern Hanzi (though others use the same simplification like 国 being virtually the same in Mandarin and Japanese when it's originally 國).
學（繁）， 学（Simple Chinese ，Japanese）
比我想象得要多，我几乎完全看不懂日文
I'm greek but i suddenly became obsessed with Chinese 2 years ago. Everything about them seems beautiful. So i started learning Chinese and they don't seem hard to me. Throughout summer i forgot most of the characters, but with revision everything is possible
Good to hear, good luck with your revision
@@sparrow3394 thank you
加油
Like everything, use it or lose it.
That's so interesting! Language can teach so much about a culture.
I would say language is 70% of the culture, if you can't speak it, you're missing out on a lot
Believe it or not, the Chinese characters for "male" and "female" also indicate the role that they play in a society, i.e., one being a bread earner (男) and child bearing for the other (女).
Im real glad I know traditional Chinese and Cantonese. The writing is so meaningful and beautiful.
Makes it so much easier to learn Japanese too.
Now I am a student and my major is Chinese Language. It is too hard to me at the first time I try to learn new vocabulary, but after I become enjoy . Even thought it's so difficult to remember
您可以介紹自己多點嗎？
favourite UA-cam video, can't put in words how good the animation style, story is!!!
It's great that a video like this came up, thank you TED- Ed!
The thing about learning simplified characters as a subject in an English-speaking school while surrounded by traditional characters in the city and at home is that it causes SUCH a headache. Sometimes I recognise certain words in simplified but not traditional or vice versa or write a sentence switching between! Also, while simplified characters are technically 'simpler' and 'easier' to write/recognise, I actually find traditional characters easier to recognise because I can link the shapes to their meaning. TBH I'm not the most literate in Chinese despite speaking Canto fluently from childhood... TT TT
it's because the "simplifying" logic is basically no logic most of the time.
Fun fact: There are many times more Chinese people who can use traditional Chinese fluently than the entire population of Taiwan. China has attached great importance to traditional cultural education in the past 40 years.
if you know the traditional form, you can see where they simplified the characters
Simplified characters didn't come out of nowhere. They're based on cursive forms in calligraphy. Learning calligraphy will help you to understand simplification much better.
Remember that simplification was not done for political reasons. Much of the country at the time was illiterate; they did it to make Chinese writing easier to learn. I know you may disagree, but you do not know how Chinese was taught and learned during the dynastic periods. So give the linguists who made the simplification some benefit of the doubt. The same goes with Pinyin.
@@jerrygu5316I do know about that, I’m just speaking from my own personal experience of trying to learn each type and being in contact with both from different directions at the same time for years and how that really confused me. Tbh I’m seriously not very literate in Chinese, I tend to message people with very simple sentences or Canto speech-to-text when there’s something I want to convey that genuinely doesn’t translate very well to English (if that makes sense) 😅
A really informative, beginner-friendly video. On a personal note, I've been interested in writing/reading Chinese characters but haven't been sure how to begin. This video is seriously helpful, thank you!
Edit: Credit to the voice-over actor and the animators as well!
I would get a beginner book, don't focus on the vocabulary, learn the characters and tone etc first
3:58, Simplified Chinese characters were NOT introduced by the communist party!!! Most of them existed long long ago and apear very often in ancient calligraphy works. The Kuomintang party actually initiated the idea before the communist party, but they just didn't have the capacity to implement it before they had to retreat to Taiwan. When the communist party carried on with the idea and succeeded, Kuomintang wanted to be different, so they didn't put forward the same in Taiwan. This is why Taiwan now still uses traditional Chinese characters.
you need to go up the comment section, that part is heavily politicalised in this video and i dont like that misinformation especially its coming from a ted ed video.
@ I’m in general not surprised by politicised misinformation or disinformation against China by any Western media, no matter how well they do or how reliable they are on other matters 😂
3:09 "Yet, how each character is pronounced depends on dialect"
This is flat out wrong because what is spoken in Chengdu is a different language, not dialect, versus what is spoken in Nanjing. This is no different than Italian and Spanish. No one would ever say they are dialects, so why discriminate against Chinese languages?
@@iu2 Not really, people in Chengdu speaks Mandarin, same as those in Nanjing. Cantonese is an actual different language spoken mostly in Guangdong. You are merely exaggerating the linguistic differences in China without being there.
Besides, I can say Italian is not a language, but a collection of regional languages like Neopolitan, etc going by your logic.
@Mystic-Dust I've lived in China, little boy. Stay in school, kid. Perhaps you'll learn something.
My sis and I confuse each other constantly since we mix our English and Canto constantly. Our parents are also Chinese, but grew up in Peru so then Spanish is also thrown into our household
That sounds somewhat interesting, confusing, and fascinating to hear
I’m going to go out on a limb but I can pretty confidently say that the sky didn’t not rain millet as the ghost cried in response to creating a written language 0:35
证明给我看
@@LARKXHIN 对不起 我看不懂
@@VeryFunnyJk對不起，我也看不懂。請用英文或繁體。
How can you be sure. You weren’t there
I mean, someone could've just slipped & spilled a sack from an upper floor & it rained down on someone. Poets in particular & ancient people in general tend to be dramatic that way.
I started late to learn Chinese, when I was 40 years old moving to China as an expat. It helped me a lot in writing, to first learn the basic root characters, which all more complex characters are made up of. All root characters 部首 come from pictograms, so the are easy to learn and many, if not most are even a word when used alone. Like people, human rén 人 🕺🏼or mountain shān 山 ⛰️. Then later it's easy to remember a complex character by telling yourself a story with those basic signs and remember. Like to miss, to think of, like, xiǎng 想 is made of tree 木 and eye目 and heart 心. That helped alot. And basic characters are only around 128 (some more or less, depending which book or time)
The animation, the sound effects, everything fits perfectly to the spirit of the video. Beautiful!!!
as a visual learner, this was well illustrated
2:39 Estimates..? YOU MEAN WE DON’T EVEN KNOW-
The fact they pronounced the words correctly really show how dedicated they r 😭😭
Shout out to the animation / music team, amazing work!
the animation and art in this episode is SO pretty !!!
It has a classic storybook style, very inviting.
As a native speaker, I would say this video is one of the most accurate presentations in English about Chinese, as I found no mispronunciation, misspelling, or inaccurate explanation.
The classification concept of pictogram (象形字), compound ideogram (会意字), and logogram (形声字) probably feels foreign to non-native speakers. The closest equivalent concept in English is probably prefix, root, and suffix of a word. And you can find the classifications of each character in dictionary.
To communicate the pronunciation of characters, we use a system called PINYIN (拼音) to “spell out” how to read a character, kind of like a specialized version of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). This is also one of the many ways we type Chinese characters in a standard QWERTY keyboard.
There are a lot about Chinese that this video haven’t covered, such as how to connect characters to form “phrase” and then sentences, and in what order. There are also so many idioms in Chinese (thanks to history) that are daunting for anyone learning it to understand.
Anyway, as a Chinese native speaker, it took me at least 8 years of learning and using English to reach my current fluency, which as you can tell, are still far from native English speakers. The point is that Chinese is so different from English or related languages that it’s an arduous endeavor to learn one from another.
For those who are learning Chinese, feel free to ask me anything, and I will be glad to help.
Your english is great and a lot better than many native English speakers. Good job! One day when I have the time I will learn chinese. I read a lot of chinese webnovels but they're already translated into English. I would love to read the original text one day!
Nut not accurate enough.
3:09 "Yet, how each character is pronounced depends on dialect"
This is flat out wrong because what is spoken in Chengdu is a different language, not dialect, compared to what is spoken in Nanjing. This is no different than Italian and Spanish. No one would ever say they are dialects, so why discriminate against Chinese languages?
Although I cant speak Mandarin well, I do find joy in learning about the characters and practicing writing them. its like a puzzle of stories
Perfect for RedNote
There is one error though the past is not described by that symbol that symbolizes completion not a true past statement you would have to use time indicators
an informative video for me to watch this Chinese New Year! 😆🙌❤️
Regional variants of Chinese aren't 1:1 mappings of Standard Chinese, it's just that everyone writes in Mandarin. When you actually use characters that match what people are saying, the writing can look a bit different.
"close enough"
@@pierrecurienot that close, Cantonese sentences looked different from Mandarin sentences, and is sometimes incomprehensible by Mandarin sentences.
First of all, people should realize that you don't write in Mandarin! Mandarin is speech, one of many spoken Chinese dialects. In order to promote a universally understandable form of speech, both ROC and PRC designate Mandarin as the official spoken "language". However, almost all Chinese people, in addition to being able to speak Mandarin, still speak in their own "native" dialects which more often than not sound totally different from Mandarin.
You kind of do, though
All the formal written Chinese uses Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary
And I'd like to add that variants of Chinese are often considered distinct languages
the animation is so good, love it
Vietnamese used to use 漢字 too, like the Korean. Although we don't write 漢字 anymore, more than half of Vietnamese vocabulary is made up of 漢字 words. This can rise up to 90% in an academic environment. We also have 𡨸喃, a modified Han character script.
領導一致𢱜孟合作𨑗各領域關重恪如農業、敎育陶造、文化、遊歷、交流人民、合作地方𠄩𫭔
(Lãnh đạo nhất trí đẩy mạnh hợp tác trên các lĩnh vực quan trọng khác như nông nghiệp, giáo dục - đào tạo, văn hóa, du lịch, giao lưu nhân dân, hợp tác địa phương hai nước)
The characters are so complicated, even my phone can't show some of them
support 喃遺產保存會 for preserving the Hannom
@@Hero_My_Beloved At least, they are visible on the computer...
Only one of the characters doesn’t render on my phone, interesting
@@Hero_My_Beloved yeah I see some boxes too, they don't show up
I remember learning Mandarin Chinese when I was in a language immersion school, I remember being so fascinated with the fact that some of the characters that I was learning were intended to look like what they symbolise, like 人, 水, and so much more.
I didn't know these characters were over 3000 years old. Learning them would be be like diving into the past. It's like being able to read egyptian hieroglyphs or something like that
a little like that.
but still, the characters have evolved a lot so that for some characters you can tell their meaning by their shape, but for some of them, theyve evolved so much that you can't do that.
Exactly and that's the basis of the controversy between Chinese citizens from HK, Macau, Taiwan, older overseas Chinese immigrants vs Mainland Chinese, the "loss" of cultural meanings and history. This controversy is in fact nothing more than political ideology and national identity domination to push back against China's international position of being the 1 country 2 systems political perspective. Those in HK suffer from Stockholm Syndrome since the British colonized HK and made pseudo-Brits of native Chinese citizens in HK and the New Territories. There has always existed a power and cultural status clash between the urbanized Hong Kong citizen vs the rural hillbillies of Mainland China or "cousins or uncles and aunts" as they are referred to. This was exasperated and explosive when in 1997 HK was returned and the HK people rebelled endlessly for independence from China because they saw themselves NO LONGER as Chinese citizens but a newer international citizen with NEW privileges and freedoms NOT AVAILABLE to them as Mainland "Chinese". Macau's Chinese did slightly better in their transition back from Portuguese control. The overseas immigrant Chinese didn't really care as they had their newspapers and media all in traditional script from Hong Kong (TVB) and their descendants where not reading or learning Chinese abroad most likely.
Taiwan on the other hand is completely using this controversy to dominate the academic and cultural war of "loss Chinese identity" and they are the upholders of historical and traditional Chinese as the bearers of cultural Chinese heritage vis a vis traditional script. It is their foothold to denigrate China as the legitimate government of the Chinese people, worldwide. Political ideology aside as China has been administrated under numerous political paradigms since the Han, the Taiwanese position of democracy is the preferred system to represent "The Chinese People" they feel rather than the present Communism of present day China, hence the controversy and underlying truth behind this popular issue.
In truth, any Chinese person fluent and practiced in 1 system can easily navigate and intermingle both traditional and simplified scripts over time such that both systems become unified and usable by all OVER A PERIOD OF TIME without all the screaming, shouting that is going on. Academia, everyday, business usage, personal usage are examples of all the DIFFERENT CONTEXTS in which TEXT exists in our society and lives. By having a population EDUCATED, PRACTICED, and ACCEPTING of learning and using both EVERYONE WINS. You are already 1/2 way there. Stop the insanity and lets's get together without THE HATE for ONE ANOTHER.
Amazing animations! They really helped understand why mountain and insect are written that way.
The word written at 1:53 contains all basic strokes a character can have. Its meaning? 'Infinity' or 'Eternal'.
As a Chinese, this video was interesting because now I see how hard it truly is for non native speakers and foreigners to learn , speak, and read Chinese characters
It really is hard. I'm at level HSK2 now and to think I've still got a very long way to go. But I do feel like I'm certainly getting the list of how the characters work.
2:11 the radical 艸 can be written in its own. The meaning is Herbaceous plants.
2:34 the radical of the character 魚 is 魚, not 火, which is also written as 灬.
I lived in China for 12 years and stayed in the Shaolin Temple for a couple of months. The headmaster of the gongfu school there said to me "Chinese is an ocean, you've drunk a cupful, I've drunk a bucketful".
this showing up on my feed right as everyone is going to xiaohongshu 📕 is insane
really good video on learning new Chinese words by understanding the system behind how Chinese characters work.
Learning Chinese by myself. Simplified writing really eases newbies like me. Traditional is too difficult to remember.
Simplified writing fools you at first, confuse you at last.
@@1swingofsword only if you started learning traditional first
That animation is amazing
A very Educative video.
This is very Enlightening.
Student of Japanese here...I recognized so many of these Kanji.
kanji 漢字 hanzi, literally means Chinese characters
Real
I studied Mandarin and whenever I read Japanese it looks like squiggle cat squiggle noodle squiggle sun.
@@pinkgreenmelon2209 yeah it looks like characters thrown in a sentence with hiragana
kanji literally come from hanzi, so naturally you can read some of it
As a person learning Vietnamese, it was insane hearing just how similar the two were
As a Chinese mainland person, I have to say that learning all those characters in elementary school is such a torture lol. But it did contains the excellent traditional culture and the wisdom from our ancestors. There's one thing to pay attention, that Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwan Chinese characters are not the 100% same, cuz Cantonese sounds quite different from Mandarin.
yes, because cantonese will account for different characters being used
Some Cantonese words can't pronounce directly or even not exist in Mandarin because those words don't have a accurate sound or meaning on that
(e.g 唔該、掂晒）
The main take of this video is, whatever language I'm going to learn, it's never going to be Chinese. Thanks a lot for the help. 😊
Beautiful animation ❤🫶
Loved the illustrations ❤
3:22 for those wondering, 他 is able to be used for anything human, corrupted from 佗，它 being "it", and the human radical is used to distinguish it from non-human connotation. 她 was introduced as a pronoun iirc because of westernisation during the 1910s, only as a written distinction for translations of literature. In other Sinitic languages such as Cantonese and Hokkien, people still only use 佢 and 伊 respectively.
Edit: 她 was also used as the variant form of 姐 due to phono-semantic reasons.
"它"(it) is snake.
That is terrible "it".
IIRC 她 was originally a variant form of the word for sister 姐
@@PeterLiuIsBeast yes, that's also correct.
I've never seen 佢 being used, but the other one is used sometimes
@danielzhang1916 佢，渠 are used in other sinitic languages, like Cantonese, Hakka, Gan, and several regions of Min. Its equivalent is the mandarin 他. 伊 is used as the standard for Southern Min languages, ie Hokkien, Teochew, and Hainanese.
0:38 I -want- need this hat
Same lol
@@Rando_Shyteyou can not have that
🙌
It is a ceremonial decorative for emperors coronation only and some other cases in other words, you can not wear it that
@@IスペクターI There's no more monarchy or a huangdi to restrict me from doin that
@@IスペクターIThere's no more monarchy or a huangdi to restrict me from doin that
i came here expecting to be able to write more chinese letters but it just told me stuff i already knew. nevertheless, a great video!!! Also, as a native speaker of mandarin i still find it very very difficult to write most characters as theres just so many. i am able to read them and understand it the moment i see it but i cant write it off the top of my head
Who else here for red note
中文果然博大精深👍🏻
正體中文保留了最完整的字體和意思，而且學完後自然也看得懂簡體中文和差不多全部的日文漢字
4:04 Macau:
“正体”或者说“繁体”，虽然具备你提到的几个优点，但是其结构复杂不利于书写，教授和传播，当时新中国成立后，识字率太低了，简体更利于教授和书写。不过在大陆，大部分繁体人们都认识的，并没有因此而消失。
Studying japanese myself and i love to see the patterns in Kanji and it just makes sense. It used to be completely alien!
Amazing I love this video❤❤
As a learner of Japanese and Korean, seeing all the kanji and hanja is I’ve learned is really interesting! I’d like to learn Mandarin some day, such an amazing history
Mandarin sounds more proper, like kanji is Han Zi with the tone and pronunciation stuff
I grew up with a family that taught traditonal chinese and each worksheet had the original characters from thousands of years ago and how it had evolved over time. I often tell people how ironic it feels still not to be able to read chinese characters only recognizing key ones
american born chinese here who regrets not spending more time learning the writing when younger. I can read some stuff but if you hand me an article or book in Chinese to read you will hear lots of "什么“s 🙃
oh god the animation style is very beautiful!
well, to be precise, not only the dialects of the same 'word'/'character' have different pronounciation, sometimes the character representing the meaning could also change in colloquial use. For example, the word 'eat' in cantonese is 食, while the one in mandarin is 吃. On the other hand, the grammar words of different dialects are also different. Take the examples presented in the video again, you would use the words 吃了 to show ate or eaten, while in cantonese, the words would become 食咗
interesting how Cantonese is like have you had the food instead of have you eaten, different way of saying it
Chinese is a beautiful language, both written and spoken. I can't wait to learn it ^^
The narator seems like chinese. The pronounciation is correct.
The narrator* seems to* be* Chinese* ...
top quality educational content. thank you TED-Ed.
身為一個繁體字中文使用者，我覺得漢字很漂亮：）而且我愛我的語言
The animation is so pretty and well-made!
I am from Taiwan, speaking Mandrin and Taiwanese. These information and pronunciation are very correct.
BTW, Vietnamese also uses Chinese in the past. Their ancient buildings or temples also had traditional Chinese words.
Taiwanese is not a language. It's just a dialect of the southern Min, or Banlamgu.
You mean Taiwanese Hokkien
guys i think by taiwanese he means traditional chinese
there are some phrases that are said differently in mainland china and taiwan, but still i would consider them part of the same language
Thank you for teaching me the language of our future masters
I’m very grateful that the Phoenicians took a different approach; so many languages encoded with maybe 30 symbols and some accent marks. I use the contrast between the Chinese and Phoenician systems to explain RISK processors to non-technical people.
2:13 In real writing, it never stand along indeed. But in daily chat, it can stand along. It’s a bad word, if it stands along. Because it sounds like another word - 「操」. You can search it.
How do you know this?
so... for fxxk, the actual chinese character is a combination of 入 and 肉 (which means to enter the flesh), but because the words 操 and 草 sound similar, they are used in daily chat to replace the actual character.
and i also wanted to say, there are infinite ways of cursing in chinese, usually the best way is a combination of a random relative + random body part + an adjective
still the most commonly used one is just fxxk your mom
The narrator means that the radical ”艸 (meaning things related to grass, or plant, such as 草 [cǎo](grass), 花 [huā] (flower))" never stands alone but is always a part of a word/character, not meaning the word "草 [cǎo](grass).”
As to the character "操 [cāo]," it means " to hold, to drill, to exercise, to act, to do, to take in hand, to keep, to manage," and so on.
what a wonderful video.
Thanks a lot!!!
I find it wild that a Chinese person could theoretically read a note in Japanese but not understand what the writer was saying.
Im from Hong Kong, and I always try to read Japanese without knowing anything about it, for simple message like road sign/ description/warning behind a product, the guessing usually works quite well,
I tested it once and I find myself understand 90%of Japanese newspaper headlines since they tend to be succinct and use more kanji,
but for something more sophisticated/complicated like a book or a paragraph, it starts to fail very quickly.
if it's not mostly characters, it would be difficult for a Chinese person, it would have to be 60% at least
This was really interesting. I learned a lot. I speak 3.5 languages, but I have never been able to learn any Asian language because the sounds are so different to European languages.
4:03 Macau left the conversation. Oops Macau was never invited
I am Chinese and when l was a student, l also learned the rules of making Chinese characters. I remembered that those lessons were taught in senior high school Chinese classes and most of my classmates felt the rules were hard to understand. I believe Chinese is one of the most difficult language for People speaking language originated from Latin system. Chinese characteris are diffcult to write even after they are simplified. And that could be the reasons why Europe developed the typing machine much earlier than China.
"Did yall know Chinese actually originated in Korea" said every Korean I've ever met.
they don't even know that Hanja means Chinese characters
But the fact is Hanja exists after the Chinese Characters.
More explanation:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul?wprov=sfti1#
Fantastic introduction about Chinese characters, great work!!
Very beautiful but extremely complicated
I studied Mandarin for 2 semesters in college back in the 1970's. A few years back, I came across an old text book from that class with pages of hand written homework (my hand writing) with a few corrections from my professor. The irony is that today, even though I wrote it, I can read it anymore. Or speak it. But I guess that shouldn't surprise me since I can't handle calculus anymore either. Dare I say - it's all Chinese to me now?
I always thought of learning Chinese ,I still do, but no timeeeeeeeeee
Mostly a very good and informative short video.
There is one glaring point of misinformation, though, that is common among even Chinese people -- Simplified Chinese characters were NOT _introduced_ by the CPC government of the PRC in the 50s. Instead, many simplified Chinese characters were actually the original forms of those characters in ancient times. Characters gets more complicated over time given the need to distinguish nuanced meanings, thus became more and more complicated. However, many simplified forms of the characters remained in daily use by commoners in unofficial writings. In the 30s, scholars in the then KMT government of the ROC proposed a standardization of simplified Chinese characters, which didn't get to be implemented nationwide due to the ensuing War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and WWII. After the foundation of the PRC in 1949, the standardization of simplified Chinese characters eventually got to be implmented nationwide in mainland China by the CPC government. Due to political difference, the KMT government in Taiwan Island chose to abandon the same effort, so as the showcase a difference between the two governments across the Strait.
That's a brief history of how "simplified Chinese characters" came about, as the Chinese writing system went through a cycle of development -- simple, complex, simple again. So, it is wrong to state that the current simplified Chinese characters were "created" by the CPC government in the 50s. What the CPC government did was merely to _standardize_ what already existed/proposed by predecessors.
I see why Chinese people are so smart, even their language is complicated
Not complicated, but complex.
most flexible sentence structure one can get (minimal rule), but it becomes complicated when used.
its like the dagger vs crossbow.
how one uses a dagger is going to be much complicated compared to shooting from crossbow.
the animation was smoooooth
Chinese: Why have a writing system when you can just draw what you mean?
*a bunch of time passes*
Chinese: Sh*t
Japanese: Well now we have a writing system which is easy to learn and we can mirror what we say on paper. But it's quite annoying, it's hard to see the edges of the words, I wish there were some kind of separation
Europe: Why not use " "?
Japanese: What do you mean, there is nothing there, if I separate them with nothing, then it's still the same...
Chinese: *Walks by*
Japanese: 🤩Is that a couple of thousand complicated looking characters? If we begin every word with those, then it'll be obvious where a new word starts 🤯