Chinese For Dummies (12 page)

Rule 7:
Make the left vertical stroke of an enclosure first. For example, in the word meaning
mouth
—
口
kǒu
(ko) — you write the vertical stroke on the left first, followed the horizontal line on top and the vertical stroke on the right (those two are written as one stroke) and finally the horizontal line on the bottom.

Rule 8:
Bottom enclosing components usually come last, such as with the character meaning
the way:
道
(dào)
(daow).

Rule 9:
Dots come last. For example, in the character meaning
jade
—
玉
yù
(yew) — the little dot you see between the bottom and middle horizontal lines is written last.

Which Way Did Those Characters Go? Unraveling Character Order

Because each Chinese character can be a word in and of itself or part of a compound word, you can read and understand them in any order — right to left, left to right, or top to bottom. If you see a Chinese movie in Chinatown, you can often choose between two types of subtitles: English, which you read from left to right, on one line and Chinese characters, which you read from right to left, on another (usually; the Chinese line can also go from left to right, so be careful.) You may go cross-eyed for a while trying to follow them both.

Right to left and left to right are common enough, but why top to bottom, you may ask? Because before the invention of paper around the 8th century BCE, Chinese was originally written on pieces of bamboo, which required the vertical writing direction.

You can see the role of bamboo strips in the character for
volume
(as in a volume of a book):
册
(
冊
)
cè
(tsuh). The simplified character consists of two bamboo strips connected by a piece of string. The traditional character (in parentheses) looks like even more bamboo strips are tied together by the string. I tell you more about simplified and traditional characters in the following section.

See whether you can tell what the following saying means, regardless of which way these characters are going. First, I tell you what the four characters each mean individually; then you can string them together and take a stab at the whole saying.

知
zhī
(jir) (
to know
)

者
zhě
(juh) (possessive article, such as
the one who
)

不
bù
(boo) (negative prefix, such as
no, not, doesn't
)

言
yán
(yeahn) (classical Chinese for
to speak
)

Okay, here's the saying in three different directions. See whether you can figure it out by the time it's written top to bottom.

Left to right:
知者不言
,
言者不知

Right to left:
知不者言
,
言不者知

Top to bottom:

知

者

不

言
,

言

者

不

知

Give up? It means
Those who know
do not speak,
and those who speak do not know.
How's that for wisdom?

The saying “Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know.” has been attributed to the sage
Lǎo Zǐ
老子
(laow dzuh) in the 6th century BCE. It comes from the
Dào Dé Jīng
道德经
(
道德經
) (daow duh jeeng) (more commonly spelled
Tao Te Ching
), which contains many inspirational sayings; portions of the
Dào Dé Jīng
appear in many Chinese paintings, poems, and works of calligraphy.

Separating Traditional and Simplified Characters

Whether you're planning on visiting Taiwan or doing business in the People's Republic of China, you need to know the difference between
fántǐ zì
繁体字
(
繁體字
) (fahn-tee dzuh) (
traditional characters
) and
jiántǐ zì
简体字
(
簡體字
) (jyan-tee dzuh) (
simplified characters
).

Fántǐ zì
haven't changed much since
kǎi shū
楷书
(
楷書
) (kye shoo) (
standard script
) was first created around 200 CE. These traditional characters are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and many overseas Chinese communities today, where the proud but arduous process of learning complicated characters begins at a very early age and the art of deftly wielding a Chinese writing brush comes with the territory.

Jiántǐ zì
are used solely in the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Malaysia. When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the illiteracy rate among the general populace was about 85 percent — in large part because learning to write Chinese was difficult, especially when most of the population consisted of farmers who had to work on the land from dawn to dusk.