iPhone Chinese Alphabet App

Peter — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:09:19 +0000

Good Characters, Inc has come out with a new iPhone application: Chinese Alphabet. Thankfully, the creators realize such a thing does not exist and this is for entertainment value only, to add “mystery” to your writing. Of course, everything from the Orient is mysterious…

To those gullible enough to think this will translate their writing into real Chinese, for just $1.99 you can sound like an idiot!

三內丁口了!

According to the app, it says “Enjoy”, but it actually says:
“Three inside diced meat/vegetables mouth [past tense marker]!”

On second thought, I might actually enjoy three pieces of diced meat/vegetables in my mouth. Mmm… beef stew.

Chinese Etymology

Peter — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:36:13 +0000

I stumbled across this website while perusing one of favorite etymology websites. Growing up and attending Chinese school, we saw pictographs that eventually became the written characters today. However, after looking at some of the archaic written Chinese, I’m not convinced they weren’t written by preschoolers.

Take for example, 高 gao1, which means “tall”. Here are the historic writing samples.

Is it just me or do a lot of them look like houses?

In any case, I still fail to see the connection between many words and their associated meanings.

*The website classifies characters by time in history with “Seal” characters being the most recent (not counting modern Chinese) and “Oracle” characters as the oldest.

Chipanglish » Writing

iPhone Chinese Alphabet App

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