pietymoon wrote:The Wieger's book has a full preview by google book link you gave just in case you would like to explore it more closely.
T.K.Ann's main point is that he gives about 1600 phonetic morphemes and lets you learn their derivative characters in these phonetic groups. Wieger gives only 850 phonetic groups and you only 300. Could you please tell besides wrong/right etymology what's the difference in the number of them and why 300 phonetics is enough for you while in most known books they start from 800? Thank you!
pietymoon wrote:The Wieger's book has a full preview by google book link you gave just in case you would like to explore it more closely.
pietymoon wrote:"Cracking the chinese puzzles" by T.K.Ann ... are wide known works and it would be interesting to know their value from the point of view of venerable mr.Tienzen. Thank you very much
Cracking the Chinese Puzzles. By T. K. ANN. 5 volumes. Pp. 3,572. Hong Kong: STOCKFLOWCSo,. , LTD. 1982. N.p.
These elegantly printed volumes are aimed at helping adult foreign students learn to read Chinese. To this end the author, a highly successful Hong Kong businessman whose publication is obviously a labor of love, teaches 5,888 different characters by an "integrated" approach in which characters with common components are taught as a group along with many words and phrases that can be formed from the characters presented. Very little is provided in the way of actual reading material.
This means that students are expected to memorize thousands of individual characters and additional thousands of combinations of characters before they can have much practice in actual reading. Such an approach presumes an almost computer-like memory. It might possibly work for illiterate adult native speakers of Chinese who already command the pronunciation and meaning of the items presented, together with the grammatical and cultural framework in which they occur. But the author, like many highly literate Chinese steeped in their own language and culture, overlooks the special needs of foreign students.
Most language teachers believe such students must be given adequate preparation in the other areas of language already commanded by native speakers before they can engage in extensive character study. They must also be helped to master individual characters and combinations of characters by encountering these in extensive written contexts, that is, by actual practice in reading.
In the course of the author's strenuous efforts to entertain as well as inform, he introduces many interesting and informative tidbits together with a number of useful tables. Of particular value is the last volume with its various appendices, including an extensive list of character components and the characters of which they form part, lists of characters used only in Hong Kong and Japan, and, most importantly, a list of 3,650 "frequently used characters" arranged by order of frequency as determined in a count of almost one and a half million characters of running text in four Hong Kong newspapers.
The five volumes contain a great deal of material which, while academically uneven, is often informative and stimulating. Unfortunately, the individual items scattered throughout the more than 3,000 pages are made difficult to find because of inadequate indexing, chief reliance being placed on the inefficient and frequently arbitrary four-corner system. A pinyin index, supplemented by a radical index, would greatly
facilitate access to the wealth of material so laboriously put together by the author.
JOHN DEFRANCIS
HONOLULU, HAWAII
pietymoon wrote:In addition here is the critical review of T.K.Ann's book by John Defrancis
from Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1986):
John Defrancis wrote: Cracking the Chinese Puzzles. By T. K. ANN. 5 volumes. Pp. 3,572. Hong Kong: STOCKFLOWCSo,. , LTD. 1982. N.p. reviewed by JOHN DEFRANCIS
These elegantly printed volumes are aimed at helping adult foreign students learn to read Chinese. To this end the author, a highly successful Hong Kong businessman whose publication is obviously a labor of love, …
John Defrancis wrote: … teaches 5,888 different characters by an "integrated" approach in which characters with common components are taught as a group along with many words and phrases that can be formed from the characters presented. Very little is provided in the way of actual reading material.
John Defrancis wrote: This means that students are expected to memorize thousands of individual characters and additional thousands of combinations of characters before they can have much practice in actual reading. Such an approach presumes an almost computer-like memory. It might possibly work for illiterate adult native speakers of Chinese who already command the pronunciation and meaning of the items presented, together with the grammatical and cultural framework in which they occur. But the author, like many highly literate Chinese steeped in their own language and culture, overlooks the special needs of foreign students.
John Defrancis wrote: Most language teachers believe such students must be given adequate preparation in the other areas of language already commanded by native speakers before they can engage in extensive character study. They must also be helped to master individual characters and combinations of characters by encountering these in extensive written contexts, that is, by actual practice in reading.
John Defrancis wrote: In the course of the author's strenuous efforts to entertain as well as inform, he introduces many interesting and informative tidbits together with a number of useful tables. Of particular value is the last volume with its various appendices, including an extensive list of character components and the characters of which they form part, lists of characters used only in Hong Kong and Japan,
John Defrancis wrote: … and, most importantly, a list of 3,650 "frequently used characters" arranged by order of frequency as determined in a count of almost one and a half million characters of running text in four Hong Kong newspapers.
John Defrancis wrote: The five volumes contain a great deal of material which, while academically uneven, is often informative and stimulating. Unfortunately, the individual items scattered throughout the more than 3,000 pages are made difficult to find because of inadequate indexing, chief reliance being placed on the inefficient and frequently arbitrary four-corner system. A pinyin index, supplemented by a radical index, would greatly facilitate access to the wealth of material so laboriously put together by the author.
Tienzen wrote:pietymoon wrote:The Wieger's book has a full preview by google book link you gave just in case you would like to explore it more closely.
Thanks for the info. I will read and then comment on it soon.
Tienzen wrote:By grouping the body together is not any different from grouping the head. For example, grouping 嘈 , 曹 , 槽 , 漕 , 糟 , 遭 will, of course, help students to learn those words easier in word forms. Yet, students will not be able to read out the meanings of those words if they do not know the etymology of the word 曹. If Ann knew the etymology of the word 曹, the meanings of those words can be readout directly, and John’s comment above will be different.
T.K.Ann wrote: 曹 cao2 - people of the same kind
This character has a long history. As early as in Bone-shell Script, it was written [bone-shell picture] to mean 'trough' for fermentation to manufacture wines. Later it received the addition of 木 mu4 and became 槽 cao2. At the time of Xiaozhuan, the [bone-shell picture] character was used to denote government official who was to carry out the job of judiciary, not only hearing from the plaintiff and defendant but also doing the talking. Hence the change to 曰 yue1 as the south component. The presence of two 東 dong1 'east' was to emphasize the location of his office which was always on the east side. Libianization caused it to change to its present form 曹. In those days, the plaintiff and defendant were called 兩曹 liang3cao2, later changed to 兩造 liang3zao4 of similar pronunciation. The sense 'people of the same kind' must have derived from such circumstances when the officials were tired of hearing cases.
槽 cao2 - trough, groove, slot
漕 cao2 - water transport (especially of grain) (water trough in a metaphoric sence)
嘈 cao2 - noise, din (sound)
糟 zao1 - distillers' grains, be pickled with grains or in wine, rotten, poor, in a wretched (terrible) state, in a mess (grains in the wine manufacturing trough)
遭 zao1 - meet with (disaster, misfortune), suffer, round, time (the plaintiff and defendant are at a distance, but they will eventually meet)
mariaC wrote:Tienzen wrote:pietymoon wrote:The Wieger's book has a full preview by google book link you gave just in case you would like to explore it more closely.
Thanks for the info. I will read and then comment on it soon.
Are you able to comment on it now?
pietymoon wrote:Here is the etymology of 曹 cao2 given by wiktionary:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9B%B9
Also I have found this character in the 5th volume of T.K.Ann using his 4-corners method. At the page 2722 he writes:T.K.Ann wrote: 曹 cao2 - people of the same kind
This character has a long history. As early as in Bone-shell Script, it was written [bone-shell picture] to mean 'trough' for fermentation to manufacture wines. Later it received the addition of 木 mu4 and became 槽 cao2. At the time of Xiaozhuan, the [bone-shell picture] character was used to denote government official who was to carry out the job of judiciary, not only hearing from the plaintiff and defendant but also doing the talking. Hence the change to 曰 yue1 as the south component. The presence of two 東 dong1 'east' was to emphasize the location of his office which was always on the east side. Libianization caused it to change to its present form 曹. In those days, the plaintiff and defendant were called 兩曹 liang3cao2, later changed to 兩造 liang3zao4 of similar pronunciation. The sense 'people of the same kind' must have derived from such circumstances when the officials were tired of hearing cases.
pietymoon wrote:here also the Bone-shell pictures for 曹:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/Charact ... =%E6%9B%B9
article wrote:The evolution and the revolution:
The evolution of the old school theory is correct before the year 220 B.C.. Between 220 to 210 B.C., there was a revolution on Chinese character system. The revolution moves drastically away from the normal evolution.
Oracle Characters
--> Bronze Characters
--> Large seal characters
--> Small seal characters
--> Standardized small seal characters (around 220 B.C.), implemented by the Prime Minister Li ( 李 斯 ) of the Qin Empire.
The above evolution is correct.
Yet, there was another event happening at the same time of PM Li's work. Mr. Wang ( 王 次 仲 ), a hermit, invented an "entirely different" system of written characters. Emperor Qin Shi Huang read about this and was greatly impressed. The Emperor asked Mr. Wang to come out from his hermitage and to serve the government many, many times, but Wang declined all those invitations. Although the Emperor was very angry, he was unable to change Wang's mind. Mr. Chang ( 程 邈 ) was a high officer and a highly revered scholar in the Empire. Yet, Chang was in jail for some reasons at that moment. So, the Emperor gave Chang an assignment of refining and completing Wang's work. If Chang is successful, he will be pardoned and will return to his high office. With 10 long years (in jail), Chang worked day and night on Wang's system and finally "constructed" 3,000 new characters. The Emperor was extremely satisfied, and Chang was put back to a high position. Chang's system was, then, used as the written system for the governmental papers, and it spread very quickly to commoners. At that time, most of the servants who did the chores of copying governmental papers were drafted commoners or prisoners, and they were call Lii ( 隸 ). As Chang was also a prisoner once and as his system was used by Lii, this new system was named as Lii characters. Very, very soon, the Small Seal characters were no longer used as a communication tool, and it became an art, not a language any more.
Of course, nothing can be truly invented out of the blue. The Lii system, of course, used many Small seal characters or parts of those characters as roots. Yet, the two systems (old evolved system and Lii) are completely different. The old characters (from Oracle to Small Seal) are arbitrary vocabulary with every word as a standalone blob. The new system (Lii) is a root word based system.
Although these two events happened at the exact same time, around 220 B.C. to 210 B.C., there is, in fact, a break, a divide and a huge canyon between the two. Using the old system to explain the new one is the same as describing the human evolution with the facts of Neanderthal, and this is exactly what the "old school" is all about.
At the time of the First Emperor, there were three events happened about the same time, from 220 B.C. to 210 B.C..
Event 1: the standardization of the Small Seal set by the Prime Minister Li.
Event 2: the construction of the Lii character set (the Wang - Chang set).
Event 3: a few years after the debut of the Lii set, the Small Seal set went extinct, not a living language any more. It survives to today as an art, not as a living language.
The Emperor - Wang - Chang encounter was documented in detail in "History Record" ( 史 記 ) , written around 140 B.C., in the article "the First Emperor's Record" ( 秦 始 皇 正 紀 ).
pietymoon wrote:T.K.Ann's etymology in it's turn (trough as a trial process during which opinions "fermenting" like wine) has some etymological value proved by derivatives of 曹 cao2 for many of them have connotation of trough and fermentation. This is the only point concerning this character I tried to underline. Maybe I am wrong so please correct me. Thank you.
Tienzen wrote:I do not know how the genes of 東 and 曰 express as trough. However, I accept they do for the sake of analysis. Yet, how can they express as fermenting? Wait, we might have made a mistake. Fermenting is a high level expression, the expression of trough, not directly from 東 and 曰. Well, I accept this too, again for the sake of analysis. But, what kind of expression from 東 and 曰 to get descendants as 遭 or 嘈.
Tienzen wrote:c. “3” represents “perfection”, such as, 森 (forest), 淼 (flood), 品 (normal or standard), etc.
d. “4” represents “corruption”, such as, 囂 (rude), 葬 (bury, with 4 grass), etc.
This 3 to 4 transformation is one key concept in Chinese philosophy, after perfection comes corruption (物 極 必 反). With this understanding, Ann’s 曹 has two 東 as its roots (genes). Thus, this 東 gene is intensified which must over power the other gene 曰 (intelligent speaking). With an intensified 東 gene + 曰 (intelligent speaking) , it is very difficult to reach the final expression of 曹 without making a long and tortuous story, and it was what Ann did. After all, the 東’s expression is clearly defined. Without a great twist, 東 東 曰 cannot become 曹 (colleague).
Tienzen wrote:For fermenting, there is a gene for it, the 酉; everything fermenting will carry this gene. There is also a gene for making a trough, the root for the words 凶 , 函 or 皿, or the root for the words 匝 or 匱. They both are containers; one has the opening on top, the other on the side. A word for trough can be easily using the radical 皿 as its base. Why abandoning the existing genes in favoring of making up something new?
pietymoon wrote:… that you at the very beginning get rid of fermenting gene regarding it as derivative while he looks at it as one of the primary genes along with group/opinion.
pietymoon wrote:... According to T.K.Ann the two 東 Easts in this case first represented two plants fermenting in square which first represented trough.
pietymoon wrote:… first represented two plants fermenting in square which first represented trough. And then given additional line that square mutated to 曰 "intelligent speaking" which allowed comparing …
pietymoon wrote:Who can prove if 曹 is younger than 酉, 凶, 函 or 皿 or on the contrary? I am afraid the question is rethorical.
pietymoon wrote:Ok, you almost convinced me, but leaving T.K.Ann along I still do not see how in your etymology
一 "unity", 曲 "curved basket" and 曰 "intelligent speaking" could together give us "trough" or "channel"?
It does not follow from any of their meanings or their composite.
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