It's fun to see Chinese characters being incorporated in commodities because misunderstandings are, in themselves, fun.
Here is an example. The character printed on the pillow case, "縞", is a garment. The character consists of two smaller parts, "糸" & "高", "糸" indicates fabric and "高" is related to the pronunciation.
Some people ask me how can we memorize thousands of Chinese characters, and this is the secret: There are these "parts" that appear in characters repeatedly, so thousands of characters are just a combination of these parts; just like with 26 English letters you'll get thousands of English words. And most Chinese characters are made by one part indicating what it means and another part indicating how it reads, so you can make an educated guess if you get this logic. Every word with "糸" has something to do with fabric, so is "縞".
There is only one minor problem: "縞" represents the white clothes that people wear in a funeral to show their grief.
The Idiot in the Room
4 years ago
Nice blog, but the following is a bit misleading:
ReplyDelete"Every word with "糸" has something to do with fabric, so is "縞""
What if a foreigner comes across the word "紛" as in "紛紛", and think it has something to do with fabric?
Thanks for the remark. In fact "紛" is originally a fabric used as decoration or a wiper. "紛" now is most commonly known to represent "multiple, diverse", but that meaning comes from the multiple threads been woven or knitted together.
ReplyDeleteI think it's necessary evil to simplify things when we try to overcome cultural barriers, to introduce the rules first then little by little add some exception and complexity to it. I wish it to be a start of the process to learn about a culture, and not the end of it. Anyways, welcome and thanks. ^^
from 說文解字:
ReplyDelete紛, 馬尾韜也。从糸分聲。撫文切。
馬尾韜, 紮束馬尾的絲麻織物。