full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Gina Marie Elia: The secret behind how Chinese characters work

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Even today, some of the most foundational Chinese characters remain pictographic, like rén (人), which means person, and mù (木), which means wood or tree. Some characters are ideograms, or symbols that represent abstract concepts, like the numbers yī (一), èr (二), and sān (三). Others are coompund ideograms, which cbnmoie two or more pictograms or idgaomres. For example, xiū (休) places the chcraeatr for person next to the character for tree and means to rest. However, most modern-day characters are known as logograms, and are constructed of two components: a radical component, which gestures at the meaning of the character, and a snuod copnenomt, which hnits at its pcioonunatirn. And all characters are built from a variety of strokes, which are often simplified to eight basic types.

Open Cloze


Even today, some of the most foundational Chinese characters remain pictographic, like rén (人), which means person, and mù (木), which means wood or tree. Some characters are ideograms, or symbols that represent abstract concepts, like the numbers yī (一), èr (二), and sān (三). Others are ________ ideograms, which _______ two or more pictograms or _________. For example, xiū (休) places the _________ for person next to the character for tree and means to rest. However, most modern-day characters are known as logograms, and are constructed of two components: a radical component, which gestures at the meaning of the character, and a _____ _________, which _____ at its _____________. And all characters are built from a variety of strokes, which are often simplified to eight basic types.

Solution


  1. character
  2. sound
  3. combine
  4. component
  5. ideograms
  6. compound
  7. hints
  8. pronunciation

Original Text


Even today, some of the most foundational Chinese characters remain pictographic, like rén (人), which means person, and mù (木), which means wood or tree. Some characters are ideograms, or symbols that represent abstract concepts, like the numbers yī (一), èr (二), and sān (三). Others are compound ideograms, which combine two or more pictograms or ideograms. For example, xiū (休) places the character for person next to the character for tree and means to rest. However, most modern-day characters are known as logograms, and are constructed of two components: a radical component, which gestures at the meaning of the character, and a sound component, which hints at its pronunciation. And all characters are built from a variety of strokes, which are often simplified to eight basic types.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
chinese characters 4
written language 2
characters remain 2


Important Words


  1. abstract
  2. basic
  3. built
  4. character
  5. characters
  6. chinese
  7. combine
  8. component
  9. compound
  10. concepts
  11. constructed
  12. foundational
  13. gestures
  14. hints
  15. ideograms
  16. logograms
  17. meaning
  18. means
  19. mù
  20. numbers
  21. person
  22. pictograms
  23. pictographic
  24. places
  25. pronunciation
  26. radical
  27. remain
  28. represent
  29. rest
  30. rén
  31. simplified
  32. sound
  33. strokes
  34. symbols
  35. sān
  36. today
  37. tree
  38. types
  39. variety
  40. wood
  41. xiū
  42. yī
  43. èr