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First: I lived in China for a year studying Mandarin, and spent 3 years studying at school. You're wrong in that there is no way to describe characters in Chin

First: I lived in China for a year studying Mandarin, and spent 3 years studying at school. You're wrong in that there is no way to describe characters in Chinese to other speakers. There are certain words you use to describe strokes. The equivalent in English would be something like "there is a cross on the left and a flower on the right." Chinese speakers do this all the time, so I'm kind of surprised you jump to this conclusion when it's clear you aren't knowledgeable on the issue.

cletus 15y ago
Care to explain how you'd explain this [1] to someone else such that they could reproduce it in a readable fashion? Or one of these [2]? [1] http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/05/most-complicated-chinese-character.html http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/05/most-complicated-chine... [2] http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/437-most-complicated-chinese-character-seen/ http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/437-most-comp...
- brown 15y ago
  That's the equivalent of explaining how to spell "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" -- yeah, it's an English word, but it's ridiculous and nobody really expects you to know how to spell it. Most simplified characters can be explained with a handful of strokes. Furthermore, many of them can be broken down into "radicals" which are commonly repeated patterns.
- fortheoccasion 15y ago
  A challenge! First of all, [1] is ridiculous. Second of all, you just do it recursively. I would describe the first example roughly as follows: Walking radical (162); cave top (116); to the left a left-right combination with "moon" on the left (74) and a thread radical (52) above "long" (168) on the right; in the middle "speech" (149) above "horse" (187); to the right, a left-right combination with thread above "long" on the left, and a knife radical (18) on the right; under all of that, a heart radical (61). Numbers refer to the chart here http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php In practice, it is very common for two Chinese people to meet for the first time and explain to each other which characters their name are. This normally does not involve pulling out pencil and paper.
- est 15y ago
  齉 == nose left, bag right. 龘 == three dragons stack 驫 == three horses stack It's pretty simple and straight forward.
- nwomack 15y ago
  I know #1 looks completely insane, but I have been studying Chinese for about 2 years, and I just started writing 3 or 4 months ago, and the breakdown of it is actually fairly simple. There's actually a somewhat limited set of characters that are reused over and over again, and I have already learned to write every one of the pieces (*edit: In that particular character). It's already been broken down in a post above me so I won't do it again... Some characters would be harder for me to remember than this, because this particular character is made up of common used components.

cletus 15y ago

Care to explain how you'd explain this [1] to someone else such that they could reproduce it in a readable fashion? Or one of these [2]? [1] http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/05/most-complicated-chinese-character.html http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/05/most-complicated-chine... [2] http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/437-most-complicated-chinese-character-seen/ http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/437-most-comp...

brown 15y ago
That's the equivalent of explaining how to spell "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" -- yeah, it's an English word, but it's ridiculous and nobody really expects you to know how to spell it. Most simplified characters can be explained with a handful of strokes. Furthermore, many of them can be broken down into "radicals" which are commonly repeated patterns.
fortheoccasion 15y ago
A challenge! First of all, [1] is ridiculous. Second of all, you just do it recursively. I would describe the first example roughly as follows: Walking radical (162); cave top (116); to the left a left-right combination with "moon" on the left (74) and a thread radical (52) above "long" (168) on the right; in the middle "speech" (149) above "horse" (187); to the right, a left-right combination with thread above "long" on the left, and a knife radical (18) on the right; under all of that, a heart radical (61). Numbers refer to the chart here http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php In practice, it is very common for two Chinese people to meet for the first time and explain to each other which characters their name are. This normally does not involve pulling out pencil and paper.
est 15y ago
齉 == nose left, bag right. 龘 == three dragons stack 驫 == three horses stack It's pretty simple and straight forward.
nwomack 15y ago
I know #1 looks completely insane, but I have been studying Chinese for about 2 years, and I just started writing 3 or 4 months ago, and the breakdown of it is actually fairly simple. There's actually a somewhat limited set of characters that are reused over and over again, and I have already learned to write every one of the pieces (*edit: In that particular character). It's already been broken down in a post above me so I won't do it again... Some characters would be harder for me to remember than this, because this particular character is made up of common used components.