Enjoy Your Future- Culture (1)Carmen Lifrom Hong Kong SAR, China

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Chinese Culture - Language6 categories of Chinese Words

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Chinese Language

Unlike English alphabets, each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic Chinese word or morpheme (smallest grammatical unit in a language)

In 100 CE (AD 100), the famed Han Dynasty scholar Xu Shen classified Chinese characters into six categories:

Pictographs ( 象形 )

Simple Ideographs ( 指事 )

Compound Ideographs ( 會意 )

Phonetic Loans ( 假借 )

Phonetic Compounds ( 形聲 )

Derivative Characters ( 轉注 )

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Pictographs

The oldest Chinese characters

Stylized drawings of the objects they represent

Of these, only 4% were categorized as pictographs, including many of the simplest characters

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Have a Guess!

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Also…

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Simple Ideographs

Characters that are direct iconic illustrations

Examples上 (shàng) : up

下 (xià) : downoriginally a dot above and below a line

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Compound Ideographs

Xu Shen placed approximately 13% of characters in this category

Translated as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters have been interpreted as combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning

Example:休 (xiū) : rest

composed of the pictograms 人 : person and 木 : tree

酒 (jiǔ) : winecomposed of 酉 : wine brewing container and 水 : water

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Phonetic Loans

Covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar or identical pronunciation

Sometimes the old meaning is lost completely

Examples:自 (zì) : its original meaning of "nose” has lost completely and exclusively means "oneself” now

萬 (wàn) : originally meant "scorpion" but is now used only in the sense of "ten thousand”

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Phonetic Compounds

Xu Shen placed approximately 82% of characters into this category

Composed of two partsone of a limited set of characters (the semantic indicator, often graphically simplified) which suggests the general meaning

another character (the phonetic indicator) whose pronunciation suggests the pronunciation

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Phonetic Compounds

Examples:河 (hé) : river

湖 (hú) : lakehave a radical of three short strokes on the left, which is a simplified pictograph for a river, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator

鎂 (měi) : magnesiumhave a radical of 金 , which is a simplified pictograph for gold, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with metal; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator 1

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Derivative Characters

The smallest category of characters

Also the least understood

The term does not appear in the body of the dictionary, and is often omitted from modern systems

Examples:考 (kǎo) : to verify

老 (lǎo) : oldsimilar old Chinese pronunciations

may once have been the same word, meaning "elderly person", but became lexicalized into two separate words1

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Cultures in Hong Kong

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Hong Kong (HK)

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Cultural Background

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Majority of Hong Kong's people are ethnically Han Chinese

From 1842 to 1997, HK was under the rule as a separate British colony for 155 years

Political separation from the rest of mainland China have resulted in a unique local identity

Cultural Background

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Elements of Traditional Chinese culture combining British western influences have shaped Hong Kong in every facet of the city

Spanning from law, politics, education, language, food, and the way of thought…

Languages

“Biliterate and Trilingual”

Official Languages(Traditional) Chinese

English

Spoken LanguagesCantonese

English

Mandarin

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Let’s try!!!What’s your Chinese name?Let’s learn to write your Chinese name andsome Chinese blessing phrases on Red Banners!!

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Examples

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Chinese New Year (CNY)

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Chinese New Year is an important traditional Chinese holiday

Also known as the Spring Festival

1st day of the 1st month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar

CNY OriginAccording to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian

Nian would come on the first day of New Year to eat livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children

To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people

One day people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red

Every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls (RED BANNERS!!) on windows and doors

People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian never came to the village again 2

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Common Blessings

恭喜發財 : Wishing you prosperity

招財進寶 : May money and treasure be plentiful

生意興隆 : Business prospers

出入平安 : Wishing you safety wherever you go

萬事如意 : Everything goes as you hope

青春常駐 : Full of youthful vigour

和氣生財 : Harmony brings wealth

學業進步 : May you excel at your studies 22

Common Blessings

一本萬利 : May you make great profits

步步高昇 : Be promoted to a higher position

花開富貴 : Fortune comes with blooming flowers

身壯力健 : Be healthy and vigorous all year

金玉滿堂 : Treasures fill the home

新春大吉 : Good fortune in the New Year

心想事成 : May all your wishes come true

龍馬精神 : The energy of a dragon and a horse 23