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Your question is a bit hard to answer because you can't say a word doesn't exist just because it's a combination of several related characters. This is how most words are made in Chinese. It would be like saying that you can't speak of psychology in a general term in English because you have to describe what it is every time (psychology = psyche + logia ...

I think it would be easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese and vice versa, because too many Chinese characters are used in Japanese.I would like to talk about this from 3 points. Pronunciations Usually, in Japanese, one character has 2 types of pronunciations, "on yomi" and "kun yomi". The "on yomi" (in Chinese,音读) is similar to the pronuciation ...

In the (very) old days, there was a system called 反切 (in English) where two characters were used, one for initial, one for the rhyme (vowel[s] + final), followed by 切 to indicate it was a phonetic notation. For instance, 東 could be represented as 德紅切. Edit #2 I thought I should insert an example from the canon of Chinese dictionaries, 康熙字典. Here's page 1 ...

From Wikipedia (bolding added): The Chinese name is probably a phonetic approximation of the German proper adjective. The Vietnamese name is based on the Chinese name. The Japanese name is a phonetic approximation of the Dutch proper adjective. Noticeably, the characters with which the Chinese name is written have a flattering connotation while ...

I don't think it's a good idea to analogize Chinese from English, as 景洛弘 said. Actually, there is a word which can mean "sibling". It's 同胞(tóng bāo).同胞 could mean: people born of the same parents. people from the same race or nation(here, the mothercountry is used as an analogy of "parents") But in general, we don't use this word with the 1st meaning, ...

Apart from the Kanji/Hanzi, that they (partly) have in common, concerning the written part, there is nothing that can really help you with the other language: Chinese is pretty much SVO, Japanese is SOV; Chinese has tones, Japanese has no tones. When speaking, sentences do have a certain "tone", but not phonemic, i.e. it doesn't totally change the meaning; ...

I could think of some reasons why the stroke order is important. In modern times, especially in the digital times, there should be a standard of the stroke order, so that when people input characters with "stroke order" method, it's useful to program the input method consistently. We have some general rules of the stroke order, such as "from up to down, ...

The stroke order is important, yes. The main reason that explain why the stroke order is so important is that the stroke order helps to write the character correctly, with better speed and in an easier way. Pick a character, and try to write it with the official stroke order, and then with another one: you'll find out that in the second case it will be ...

I can only provide a partial answer: Many of the characters used in the names of non-Han ethnic groups were originally derogatory. After the founding of the PRC, the government conceptualized New China as a 多民族国家, and they changed many of the characters that were perceived as derogatory. I don't know if this process started under the 国民党, as you suggest, ...

From Wikipedia, before Hanyu Pinyin was introduced, the PRC Chinese learnt Bopomofo or 注音符號 [Zhùyīn fúhào]. It comprises of 37 characters (注音) and four tone marks (符號). 注音 consists of consonants, rhymes and medial (e.g. ㄅ,ㄆ,ㄇ,ㄈ) 符號 is similar to the four tones in Pinyin except there is no marking for the first tone (ˊ,ˇ,ˋ) An example: 大 (ㄉㄚˋ, dà) where ㄉ ...

Based on the web search, It was first appeared in "<三国志·蜀书·庞统传> with annotations by 裴松之", it first appeared as "天下智谋之士所见略同耳". and then it was used as 英雄所见略同 in some later books. 英雄(Heroes, Great Leaders...) instead of 智谋之士( aka 谋士, counsellors to emperors). Literally, It can be interpreted as: Heroes ( to kings/emperors) share same points of views and ...

The single most important reason for stroke order being adhered to is probably the handwriting problem: Imagine, if you will, someone writing an english text in cursive, consistently crossing the t's and dotting the i's before writing the stems; and making it part of the flow of the line. Now imagine that same scenario, only with each character having ...

I found PART of the Japanese language easier to learn after studying Chinese. Japanese has two basic strains, an "indigenous" strain, which its own hiragana and katagana script, and the "Chinese" based strain, in which the Japanese adopted the Chinese Hanzi as "Kanji" for many words, as well as a pronunciation similar to the Chinese for those words. ...

There were no punctuation marks such as comma in ancient Chinese writings. It's stated in "Punctuations in Chinese Language" and in this forum's thread, "Punctuation Marks in Ancient Written Chinese", where there are two links to some ancient writings. As it's said there, having no punctuation at all, ancient scholars knew the meaning thanks to some ...

I am Chinese. Mr/Ms.Yozloy's answer is correct, and may I add something more here. Here is what I know: some transcriptions of contries' names in Chinese came from Japanese (they share some same letters, which is called kanji, as you may know) in late 19th century. Here are some examples: Japanese / Modern Chinese America 米利坚 / 美利坚 England 英吉利 ...

My teacher says there are two main reasons for stroke order: Depending on the stroke order, the character will look one way or another. This is mainly a matter of style from times when writing was made exclusively with paint brushes. Now in the era of computers, stroke order is definitely not important for writing. As it's been said, for systems that ...

As far as I know, Bopomofo and other schemes were based on the pronunciation of Beijing dialect. That is, Bopomofo and pinyin are a representation of the phonological inventory of Mandarin as pronounced in Beijing. I don't believe that this involved standardising 'two or more characters that had slightly different phonemes or sounds and/or tones' with a ...

This is a HUGE topic, which I think is impossible to thoroughly cover in one answer here. As usual, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_chinese is a good start. As for mainland, the simplification efforts and processes are inherently tied to the geopolitical history of the turmoils and revolutions in the first half of the 20th century and PRC, as ...

I had studied Japanese before I began Chinese (My father has lived in Japan for 15 years). In my experience, apart from the muscle memory in drawing characters, there was very little transferable knowledge / skills from Japanese to Chinese. My Japanese was extremely limited however, so this may be different for someone with advanced Japanese.

Knowing Kanji can be both an advantage and otherwise. Advantage: You get a good headstart in writing Chinese. If you have been studying Japanese for a while, you probably have a sense of the patterns of Kanji. Even more important is the patience you gained while learning them. (i.e. English speakers who had not enough exposure to Kanji find it more ...

It seems there are several different issues, so I'll address them separately: Was Bopomofo the first system of symbols for use in Chinese phonology? The Qieyun and Guangyun were published about a millenia before the Bopomofo system, and they are clearly analyses of Chinese phonology (although not of Mandarin, as that didn't exist yet). Rather than using ...

For 'phoneme', it is defined as "In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances" in wiki. In different languages, the sets of phonemes would be different, and the difference would include one phoneme in one language would correspond to several phonemes in another. I'm not ...

Your question is totally wrong on itself! “犭”（反犬旁/犬部） is a radical of Chinese Characters (Han-Zi,汉字) which is only for forming/making up some single Chinese Characters. In the creating era aka ancient times, people used “犭”(a radical, the variant of 犬 i.e. dogs) to make some Characters which is with some relation to beast such as ...

As for the question how characters are taught, one important point that all other good answers mentioning 反切 fail to elaborate, though they really give a brief & clear introduction to the traditional academic way of showing character pronunciation in dictionaries, is that when we are talking about "before the introduction of pinyin", a nationwide ...

Actually the comparison between the IPA and pinyin is misleading in another way. In IPA the pronunciation of the letters remains constant... in pinyin, the pronunciation of certain letters changes according to preceding letters - namely - i after q is different to the i after c. Plus iu in qiu is not what one would expect from an IPA. Same for -un ending. ...

Google translate translates "德国" separately, which is a wrong way. In Chinese, "德" is a word which means "Virtue", and "国" is also a word which means "country". So you get the result "德国=Virtue Country". But the right way should be: you consider "德国" as a word. It means the country, German.

Traditionally, the Spring Festival starts from 23rd December (lunar month), 23rd December is also called 小年 (little Spring Festival) There is an old saying... 二十三，祭灶官；二十四，扫房子；二十五，糊窗户 (or 磨豆腐)；二十六，割块肉；二十七，杀只鸡；二十八，贴gaga(嘎嘎音，意为贴春联)；二十九，灌壶酒；年三十，包扁食。 Basically, it describes what people do each day from 小年 to Chinese New Year Eve (三十).

No. Since bopomofo and Pinyin are used as aids to literacy only by native speakers, they are not relying on those systems to learn how to pronounce the words in the first place. Any influence on pronunciation would be no greater than teachers in Taiwan pointing out that there is a difference between sh and x (Pinyin sounds): kids might do it in the ...

Beyond the characters and grammar structures, Japanese has different levels of speaking, Keigo, as it is known, allows a speaker to change one's politeness when speaking to someone in a higher or lower social status, i.e a boss to co-worker and even more adults to kids. Even more so the structures used are also intended to be used when talking about these ...