| Whose logic? | |
|---|---|
| Feb 24, 2011 11:28 |   |
 | Today when eating dinner ( duck leg...yummy...) with my wife a strange thought hit the fore section of my brain. I noticed I have a problem with the logic of languages. For example eye glasses. Eye and glass... what could be more logic? Well, in swedish it is glasögon which of course in english means glasseyes. (we call swedes left-handed so they can by all means have their glasseyes) I mean words mean something, yuou know what I mean? But what kind of word is 对不起, duìbùqǐ? 对=correct, 不=no, 起=rise. The only logic in it is that there is no logic whatsoever, or is there? I asked the same from my wife but all she said was that yes, my love, you really have problems... Confused... yes-no-up everyone... Carlos |
| Feb 24, 2011 21:19 | #1 |
| This is what I've learnt from my linguistics class: English is alphabetic writing while Chinese is meaning-phonetic writing or hieroglyphic writing. They are totally two different kinds of languages, so one could not understand the Chinese in a way as they understand English. Maybe you could tell the meaning of a Chinese character by its shape. Complicated but interesting... |
| Feb 27, 2011 03:55 | #2 |
| That´s what I mean, although there was a little joke in it too. I am sure that there must be some kind of ethymology in chinese words but no one seems to know anything about it. I understand that one chinese syllable can mean something but in a word it really does not mean anything....? Like tiger, 老虎, LǎoHǔ. There we have Lǎo, which means "old" and Hǔ, which means "tiger". Together they mean "tiger" I kinda understand that but really... no. So far I have not found any logic in chinese I could grab. So I am shouting after ethymology but only echo is answering... Carlos |
| Feb 28, 2011 21:38 | #3 |
| It has been a long long time since Chinese was produced and it changes as time passing by. There is the possiblity that no one could explain how a specific words came from. But I still believe at the beginning, there was indeed some connections between the words and the characters that made it. |
| Mar 6, 2011 22:19 | #4 |
| If you want a fascinating insight into the Chinese mind, go here; http://www.truton.com/ I would welcome comments, particularly Chinese. |
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