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> In Chinese you have to memorize thousands of characters When I started learning Chinese I just memorized the 214 traditional radicals and from there I could

> In Chinese you have to memorize thousands of characters When I started learning Chinese I just memorized the 214 traditional radicals and from there I could pretty much infer the meaning of every character.

Grue3 9y ago
That's nonsense. For a typical (phono-semantic) character, only one radical corresponds to meaning (which is really vague, such as "tree", "water", "man" and so on), and the rest correspond to another character that this character sounds like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...
- erikbye 9y ago
  You misunderstood, I think... I'm saying if you know the 214 radicals and you see the character for e.g. house, you'll understand the character(s) and even sentences (sometimes). If you know the radical 黑 and 死, then you can easily infer the meaning of 黑死病. Even though the third character is not a radical, you can spot the radical for 'sickness' there. The other component looks a lot like the radical for 'skin'. So that last character's meaning is actually something like 'skin-disease' or 'disease of the skin'. The three characters combined basically means 'black death'. As in the plague.
  - Grue3 9y ago
    Maybe you can guess some hand-picked examples, but that's it. Your analysis of 病 is incorrect. It's a phono-semantic compound of 疒 (sickness) and 丙 (pronounced "bing"). From this you can deduce that 病 is pronounced similar to "bing" (or used to, in ancient Chinese) and has sickness-related meaning. Some characters actually do combine the meanings of several radicals, for example 孝 is a child carrying an elder on their back or something; it means "filial piety" (respect for elders). But there are not that many of them, and you have to know the final meaning anyway, otherwise it's hard to guess.
    - erikbye 9y ago
      At least I was right about 'sickness', which was the vital clue here. And I can "guess" a lot more than hand-picked examples, using this method I've understood everything from store signs and logos to large parts of children's stories. Granted, I've learned a lot of characters also. There are many recommendations to learn Chinese this way.

Grue3 9y ago

That's nonsense. For a typical (phono-semantic) character, only one radical corresponds to meaning (which is really vague, such as "tree", "water", "man" and so on), and the rest correspond to another character that this character sounds like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...

erikbye 9y ago
You misunderstood, I think... I'm saying if you know the 214 radicals and you see the character for e.g. house, you'll understand the character(s) and even sentences (sometimes). If you know the radical 黑 and 死, then you can easily infer the meaning of 黑死病. Even though the third character is not a radical, you can spot the radical for 'sickness' there. The other component looks a lot like the radical for 'skin'. So that last character's meaning is actually something like 'skin-disease' or 'disease of the skin'. The three characters combined basically means 'black death'. As in the plague.
- Grue3 9y ago
  Maybe you can guess some hand-picked examples, but that's it. Your analysis of 病 is incorrect. It's a phono-semantic compound of 疒 (sickness) and 丙 (pronounced "bing"). From this you can deduce that 病 is pronounced similar to "bing" (or used to, in ancient Chinese) and has sickness-related meaning. Some characters actually do combine the meanings of several radicals, for example 孝 is a child carrying an elder on their back or something; it means "filial piety" (respect for elders). But there are not that many of them, and you have to know the final meaning anyway, otherwise it's hard to guess.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    At least I was right about 'sickness', which was the vital clue here. And I can "guess" a lot more than hand-picked examples, using this method I've understood everything from store signs and logos to large parts of children's stories. Granted, I've learned a lot of characters also. There are many recommendations to learn Chinese this way.