quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
Pfffft. It's pretty hard to explain. In some cases, most Chinese people will find it hard to explain what only one character means, because we've only been taught what a combination of two characters mean. |
It's all right - it's the same in Japanese. That's why I'm often confused when people around here make the correspondence "Ideogram" = "Word" like you mentioned later... and, except for some rare words that are indeed written with just one character, such as 水, 冬, and 力, I often wind up giving people a long speech about Japanese grammar, which I think listeners either find too complicated or just too long to be correct.
quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
Often it doesn't even make sense to think about what each individual character means. For example, the most correct way to say "happy" in Chinese, is 快樂. But 樂 covers that meaning more than 快 and is often being used indepently (in names, for tattoos). Because what does 快 mean independently? Just fast. |
Yeah, that's the sort of thing I had in mind.
quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
There's not one character or a combination of characters that cover every way of the word "life" we use in English. 生命 is life like you said. But in some situations, we only use 生, and in others, we only use 命.
For example, if you'd say "my whole life..", in Chinese it's "我一生人..".
"人生" is also used for "life", though it literally means "a human's life"
Or "He has a very fortunate life" - "他真的好命".
"I was born in Brazil" would be 我是在巴西出生.
"When my mom gave birth to me.." - 我媽生我的时候 |
Interesting
quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
There is no better way to translate "alive" than 生 and it means "alive" more than any other meaning. Actually, raw as in 生牛肉 (raw beef) is derived from the meaning of "alive". The idea behind it is that when meat is raw, it's not dead yet - so it's "alive" so to say. |
Heh, now that's something I didn't expect, but that makes perfect sense.
quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
平 also means balance, so it's not that far fetched. Most people from the West just want to use one Chinese character in general, because they don't know much better and think that one word = one character. But I agree with you that the most correct way to translate "peace" would be 和平 |
I think that's also because one character is cheaper than two
By the way, I had no idea you spoke Chinese. Were you born there or are you Dutch Chinese?
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