First all, I’m so thrilled and humbled by your genuine curiosity regarding my mother tongue, Mandarin Chinese. I will seek to be more comprehensive when I want to introduce Chinese characters from now on. Covering the etymology and all that.
Even though I work professionally as an English teacher, I converse in Mandarin at home with my children. Their mum is using Japanese with them, so this leaves me as the only person whom they can use Mandarin with on a regular basis.
Now that you understand my home situation, recently my son brought up the term “大人” (dà rén).
Let’s deep-dive into each of the characters:
You can observe that Chinese is more of a pictorial language than English. Different types of writing script existed in the past, and along with the introduction of a new writing script, Chinese characters evolved concurrently. 人 is meant to resemble a person who is walking 🚶‍♂️.
Moving on to 大
You can see that 大 resembles a majestic-looking person standing with his arms and legs spread out wide. Ancient people considered themselves to be the master of all sentient beings. This may account for the open body language; that’s why 大 means big.
So, when combined together, 大人 refers to an adult.
My son innocently said, “I am a 小人.”
I burst out laughing immediately. 小 (xiǎo) means small.
In the past, 小 was denoted by three short lines, depicting grains of sand. The central stroke grew longer and acquired a hook at the end.
Technically speaking, I can put 小 and 人 together to refer to a child, but hardly anyone does that. We use 小人 to refer to a scoundrel=. I think people will raise their eyebrows and frown if my son walks around, calling himself a 小人.
I corrected him on the spot and told him the cultural connotation of 小人. I have to thank him for letting me realise that language comprises so much more than the words themselves - some words have baggage!
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Amazing! The inspiration of inscribed letters in all languages must have come from Nature and Man.
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35 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 17 Aug
It's interesting! I do a lot of imports from China but I never bothered to learn Mandarin. I employ one person to do the thing. I thing the language of the dragon is so difficult! Many Chinese can speak Hindi but there are only a few Indians who can speak Mandarin
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Nice writeup. Seems like using 小 to describe people of low moral character is common: I remember learning the word for thief being 小偷 (xiao tou).
This post reminded me of your last one explaining the etymology of characters. I recently thought about another example of that (involving yet again 女).
The character 安 (an), which means "peace," is a combination of 宀 (a roof) and 女 (a woman), suggesting that peace comes when there is a woman in the house.
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Thanks for such a lovely comment.
There’s also 小气鬼 - someone who is petty.
You made me wanna learn some Korean so that I can explore the similarities n differences between these two languages - and how Mandarin might have influenced the development of Korean!
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Fun fact: Korean's dictionary is twice the size of most dictionaries as both a native Korean and a Chinese version of words usually exist. The Chinese versions usually make one sound more erudite but are only used in certain formal contexts.
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Electronic dictionaries aren’t in vogue these days?
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Oh they are. Just referring to the number of entries here, regardless of the format. Electronic or paper.
To be fair, Korean in nr 2 (after Tamil) also comes from the inclusion of north Korean dialects.
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What's the story behind so many entries for Tamil?
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A very good question! Seems like this is because Tamil is one of the oldest, in fact the second oldest after Sanskrit, has so many synonyms for every word.
I'm not from the place is where Tamil is spoken. I'm from North India and Tamil is very specific to South India only.
But, I know one or two things about Sanskrit. Let me tell you. Sanskrit is one of the richest languages in the world, it has more words than in any other language. At present, Sanskrit dictionary has “102.78 billion” 🤷words! This is possible only because there are innumerable synonyms in Sanskrit for every word. So, Sanskrit isn't spoken mother of all languages for nothing. I've studied Sanskrit in my school and I can confirm you this.
I'm surprised that Wikipedia hasn't included Sanskrit dictionary in the list.
Link of online Sanskrit dictionary:
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Forgot to tag another SN resident Indian (I think).
Most Indians speak Tamil in Singapore. I always thought it is a minor n obscure language - today, I learnt about how influential it actually is!
I asked my Indian colleague.
He told me that in a sense, Sanskrit is actually based on a very limited number of roots (around 2,000) and that the innumerable number of words are just coming from a very systematic application of specific grammar rules to apply "inflections" and "derivations".
But he says it appeals to the nationalistic nature of people to claim it contains several millions of words (he doesn't know where the number of 100 billion words comes from)... but in reality, the actual uniqueness of words lies in the roots rather in the inflections or derivations.
This could be a reason for not including it at nr 1 in that Wikipedia page. At the same time, you are free to add it... maybe it's a simple omission.
In the end, I guess both sides are valid. It's just a disagreement on how to count a word as being truly unique. It's a matter of definition.
I love how you got other stackers to chime in. SN is truly a microcosm of the world!
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The character 安 (an), which means "peace," is a combination of 宀 (a roof) and 女 (a woman), suggesting that peace comes when there is a woman in the house.
A tear almost rolls out of my eye.. my eyes did watered... that's such a compelling image, it exposes so much about our most fundamentals... I love how every kanji is a poem in itself...
Thank you so much for bringing this to us @cryotosensei and @south_korea_ln
Edit: ok one did
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You are so dramatic 😂
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I know!!! But it did got me :')
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"I am a 小人" I'm always amused by the uncontestable logic of the kids, makes me remember my lil brother occurrences :')
Cute and beautiful as always sensei, I'm amazed chinese packs so much in so little and all along the language it seems. Please keep these coming!! :)
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I’m glad you like these nuggets!
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I'm glad you have them!
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Yes, explaining the significance is sometimes more important than the literal translation. You should ask your son which language he dreams in.
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Great question. I will let you know
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It’s closer to villain, than scoundrel.
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Oh do you know Chinese as well?
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Will most of the kids at your son's school speak Mandarin?
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The young generation these days learn Mandarin at school because we have a long-lasting bilingual policy, but they won’t use it with each other. I think 60% of all households use English at home, so children are more used to speaking Singlish to one another
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Is that in Taiwan, or Mainland China?
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We learn Simplified Chinese in Singapore, so we follow Mainland China’s style
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I just meant the "most households use English at home" bit. I find that incredible, and I'm certain it's not true for Mainland China. Singapore makes more sense. Still amazing, though.
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You mentioned your son being bilingual before. Is he trilingual now?
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To varying degrees, yes
His Japanese trumps mine though
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Chinese seems more practical than English as well! Being an English teacher, it's always remain back in mind that the pronounciation of certain words is correct or not.
English isn't spoken as it's written while I can see that Chinese is also the same but by associating picture and symbol it has become more practical.
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