{"id":65,"date":"2011-11-27T12:54:33","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T17:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/?page_id=65"},"modified":"2013-03-01T19:56:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-02T00:56:00","slug":"chinese-characters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/?page_id=65","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

How I started learning Chinese Characters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was about 10 years when I met my best friend who was Chinese,\u00a0 Thomas Lee, known then as Li Min Kwai.\u00a0 Tom (his real Chinese name should be Lee Ming Gwai) (\u674e \u660e \u8cb4) was Chinese from Fung On village in Toisan county, Guangdong (Canton) province by way of Hong Kong.\u00a0 All my knowledge of Chinese and the Chinese culture started with him.\u00a0 We became fast friends and I took an interest in his culture.\u00a0 He gave me odd things to eat and I ate them!\u00a0 I was one of the few people he introduced to his parents.\u00a0 His mother did not speak English and I wanted to speak to her.\u00a0 I then started to learn a little Chinese.\u00a0 I did not realize that there were any Chinese dialects at that time.\u00a0 I would later discover that my friend was teaching me his village dialect of Toisan.\u00a0 Toisan also called Hoisan is a county dialect of Cantonese. \u00a0Some words I couldn\u2019t pronounce so my friend stop teaching me.\u00a0 I decided I would teach myself.\u00a0 What I could learn on my own was the Chinese characters.\u00a0 Knowing Chinese characters became helpful since I did not have to speak as much!\u00a0 My friend had shown me the basics and I kept a book with the Chinese I had learned. \u00a0Tom also gave me my Chinese name \u53f2\u63d0\u82ac that I still use to this day!\u00a0 The Chinese character unites the Chinese since the spoken language (8 major dialects & many sub-dialects) don\u2019t really matter since everyone reads the same Chinese character.\u00a0 The Chinese language\u00a0 during ancient times split into two forms: written and spoken languages. Written Chinese and Spoken Chinese became very different. There are some regional or Chinese characters but most Chinese read standard Chinese characters.<\/p>\n

Many years later my friend wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese which is the national language of China, Taiwan and Singapore. \u00a0He invited me to go to a mini course given in a church \u00a0\u00a0So I went and started learning Mandarin as well as Chinese Characters.\u00a0 I even was using the Chinese brush my friend had given me years ago.\u00a0 The teacher after looking at my work remarked that I should find a Chinese calligraphy teacher.\u00a0 One day walking around my job during lunchtime my friend & I stumbled on the China Institute on East 65 Street. \u00a0The China Institute is where I met Professor George Young.\u00a0 I signed up for two classes: \u00a0Cantonese and Chinese Calligraphy.\u00a0 I would now get a better understanding of Cantonese and learned that my friend had been teaching me Toisan and not standard Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect \u2013 the capital city language).\u00a0 From my Chinese Calligraphy I formed a special relationship with my teacher and learned from him until his death.<\/p>\n

The best two books that helped me the most were Read Chinese by Wang fang-yu<\/strong> and Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification, and Signification by Dr. <\/strong>L. Wieger, S.J.\u00a0 <\/strong>Below is a review of one of my best Chinese books.<\/p>\n

\"READ<\/a> \"READ<\/a><\/p>\n

\"READ<\/a> \"READ<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"CHINESE<\/a><\/p>\n

\"CHINESE<\/a> \"CHINESE<\/a><\/p>\n

Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification, and Signification by Dr. <\/strong>L. Wieger, S.J.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the book (820 pages) that helped me to be able to memorize Chinese characters!\u00a0 Many years ago I was with a Japanese friend and came across this book.\u00a0 I recognized the importance of this book immediately.\u00a0 The author breaks down the Chinese character and shows the reader how the Chinese character evolved.\u00a0 This is one of my most prized possessions.\u00a0 I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Chinese characters and how the written language evolved.\u00a0\u00a0 The author is a member of the Society of Jesus better known as a Jesuit priest.\u00a0 Jesuits are Catholic scholars that study a subject to the fullest.\u00a0 The author has done just that in producing this great masterpiece.<\/p>\n

Another great book is Reading & Writing Chinese by William McNaughton and Li Ying<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a><\/p>\n

This book is composed of 348 pages which contain 2,000 Basic Characters, an Alphabetical Index and Stroke Index. An important book for one’s library.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How I started learning Chinese Characters? I was about 10 years when I met my best friend who was Chinese,\u00a0 Thomas Lee, known then as Li Min Kwai.\u00a0 Tom (his real Chinese name should be Lee Ming Gwai) (\u674e \u660e … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":7,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-65","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P1ZkkK-13","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/65\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scallender.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}