The culture of «the nation of the center»: art, history and ancestral traditions: Chinese Language
The culture of «the nation of the center»: art, history and ancestral traditions: Chinese Language
BlogLanguagesChineseQuestions and Answers about China: The culture of «the nation of the center»: art, history and ancestral traditions: Chinese Language
Index
Chinese ideograms: how do we learn to write this language?
What is the Spring Festival in China?
Know everything about the Chinese New Year
Chinese tattoos: should we dare?
An anonymous author wrote that “writing, in China, is the highest manifestation of consciousness. Writing on a subject means giving it our soul and dedicating everything we are to it ».
Learning a language involves becoming familiar with an entire culture: to learn Chinese, for example, we must also know the Chinese characters, perhaps prepare a trip to China or Taiwan, understand the linguistic ramifications of the language, learn Chinese vocabulary, discover the intonation of the words, discover the history of China, enjoy its gastronomy and its traditional festivals (such as the Chinese New Year, for example) …
Chinese is a very complicated language. We must learn to master the phonetic transcription (Pinyin) of each word and the corresponding sinograms , but we must also understand their symbolic weight.
Thus, we offer our readers a perspective of China through the arts, ancient traditions and history of the country: the Chinese New Year, Chinese characters, Chinese calligraphy and tattoo art.
Here we leave you a series of questions and answers about China.
Chinese ideograms: how do we learn to write this language?
Chinese characters are the oldest writing system known to date. It has lasted since prehistoric times and is still used today.
Mandarin Chinese is a language that is more than 4,500 years old. According to legend, Cang Jie, a minister of the Yellow Emperor who is said to have invented Chinese characters around 2750 BC. C. observing the impressions that the animals left in the sun.
Are you not fascinated by Chinese calligraphy?: The culture of «the nation of the center»: art, history and ancestral traditions: Chinese Language
He imagined reality with an ideographic code associated with each word: it is like memorizing mental images.
The oldest remains of Chinese ideograms were found in the skeletons and shells of turtles. These inscriptions dated from the fourteenth century BC. C.
Archaeologists found a rich and coherent lexicon of 4,672 spellings among a corpus of 40,000 documents dating from the 14th and 11th centuries BC.
More than 5000 years ago, in 2750 BC, our Latin alphabet had not yet been created; neither did the Greeks, the Arameans, the Phoenicians …
Throughout the first millennium AD, the Chinese writing system was increasingly complex and had countless different spellings that could represent the same object.
Under the reign of Emperor Qin Shihuang (221-210), a policy of unification of China was carried out and a list of 3,000 Chinese characters was drawn up. This continued to increase over the centuries:
Late 1st century AD: 8,000.
In the 3rd century AD: 18,000
In the 11th century AD: 30,000.
In the 18th century AD: 47,000.
Today it has about 55,000.
Today, however, only 3,000 signs are used frequently. Each Chinese character represents not only a letter, but also an idea, an imaginary representation of reality.
To learn to speak and write in Chinese, it is essential to learn its writing system , so you have to understand how Chinese characters are constructed.
In the language of the “center nation” (zhōngguó, 中華), a single Chinese sign carries a graphic, semantic and phonetic dimension. Each Chinese character indicates a syllable and there are four tones for the same spelling.
So it is not surprising that it is a difficult language for a European to pronounce!
It is also important that you memorize each stroke to do it in the proper order as quickly as possible.
What if we already know how to write in Chinese?
The last stage of learning Chinese writing is learning the art of Chinese calligraphy.
The art of writing ( shūfa in the pinyin alphabet, 书法 in simplified Chinese), is ancient.
It is a superior and noble art highly prized in the People’s Republic of China, but also in the Western world.
Why?
Because the curves and calligraphic shapes of the sinograms invite the student on an aesthetic journey.
Formerly reserved for scholars and Buddhists, today it is taught in calligraphy classes. It is a must for anyone who wants to learn Chinese.
If you live in Madrid and want more information about Chinese classes, do not hesitate to contact the Chinese academy Madrid closest to you.
Are you looking for Chinese classes for children ?
