# Chinese speakers: can you explain this? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 8, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328 "2005-10-08T18:04:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/1 "2005-10-08T18:04:02Z")
Ok, I was reading Jessica Williams’ _50 Facts That Should Change the World_ and one of the chapters sited Canada senator Lois Wilson as saying: > [@](#): > > The eloquently visual Mandarin language uses three symbols/words for peace. The first word for peace literally means rice in the mouth, or economic security. The second means a woman with a roof over her head, or social security. The third means two hearts beating together in understanding and friendship, or human security. Could someone show me what those words are? I’m trying to explain it to my lady friend (who’s Taiwanese), because (1) I’m curious as to whether or not it’s the same in traditional chinese and mandarin and (2) I’d like her to explain it more in depth. Thanks a million… ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2005, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/2 "2005-10-08T18:21:23Z")
The first two descriptions are pretty good. Two characters than mean peace are “an” and “he.” “An” is the character for woman under the character for roof. “He” is the character for grain next to the character for mouth. But this non-native speaker has no idea about the third one. My guess is that its a character no longer used, or that means something slightly different than peace. He also doesn’t mention the most common word for peace “ping.” Which does not contain any heart symbols and in fact derives from morphemes relating to balance, and breath. It is worth noting that symbols/characters do not necessarily equal words in Mandarin. They equal morphemes. So a given word may be only one symbol, but it may be more. The word for peace, as most commonly translated, is actually two symbols: “he” and “ping.” ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2005, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/3 "2005-10-08T20:54:20Z")
I couldn’t find any character that means “peace” which has the heart (xin1) radical in it. Note that “Mandarin” is a spoken dialect. Your friend may speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. The character sets are “Traditional” (or “old style” if you like) and “Simplified.” Traditional is used outside of the PRC, Simplified on the mainland. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/4 "2005-10-08T21:11:50Z")
> [@Zhao Daoli](#): > > “An” is the character for woman under the character for roof. Maybe this is the starting point for the misconception that the ideogram for the chinese word for “trouble” is _two_ women under one roof? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/5 "2005-10-09T00:26:23Z")
> [@NoCoolUserName](#): > > I couldn’t find any character that means “peace” which has the heart (xin1) radical in it. > > Note that “Mandarin” is a spoken dialect. Your friend may speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. The character sets are “Traditional” (or “old style” if you like) and “Simplified.” Traditional is used outside of the PRC, Simplified on the mainland. Good clarification. But it would still be important to know the spoken language of your friend. Since there are so many synonyms in Chinese, the most common word for “peace” may vary from dialect\* to dialect (and hence the written character will also be different). - – many contemporary linguists don’t refer to Mandarin and Cantonese as dialects since they are as far apart as Spanish and Portugese. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/6 "2005-10-09T00:37:23Z")
[Dictionary Search Results](http://www.mandarinbook.net/dictionary.jsp?hello=a&q=peace&go=search) 和 - the “rice in mouth” word. Ususually used to mean “harmony”, “accord”, etc. Also used as “and”. 安 - the “woman under the roof” word. Usually used to mean “contentment”, “tranquility” Here’s a couple of candidates for the third word: 寧 - peaceful, serene 愔 - the two parts of the word are “heart sound”, but I suspect the part on the right is more for sound than for meaning. 息 - it means breath, but it’s used in the compound term 安息 to mean peace or serenity. The two parts read"self heart". Note that the word parts are arranged top to bottom. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/7 "2005-10-09T02:04:23Z")
Yeah, my dictionary doesn’t have the two hearts one either. You should realize, though, that these sorts of legends (like the one about the Chinese word for crisis) aren’t really true. It just doesn’t work that way. Very few characters are assembled from the meanings of their component parts, so even if \ shows a mouth and a seedling, it doesn’t mean that it’s about having enough to eat (and it’s not the rice radical, it’s the seedling radical.) Most characters are assembled from radical and phonetic components - the radical hints at the meaning, while the phonetic hints at the pronunciation, but neither one is particularly precise. So the fact that two components are combined in a character just means that at some point, a couple thousand years ago, the character and its phonetic component had similar pronunciations. This kind of story betrays a certain exoticizing of China that simply doesn’t reflect anything meaningful about China itself - it just happens to be that the teller of the story wishes to make a point, and has managed to scrape together some example that proves that “ancient Oriental wisdom” backs him up. In most cases, the origins of a character are actually a lot more prosaic, and if one particular character seems to show some profound truth, it’s just a coincidence, one that’s easy enough as Chinese has plenty of characters to search for coincidences. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/8 "2005-10-09T04:05:15Z")
[Yingzi: If Engish were written like Chinese.](http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm) This is a thought experiment that also provides a small introduction to the _concepts_ behind the Chinese writing system. It will not teach you anything about writing specific hanzi characters, but it will illustrate the major points involved in creating them and how they are meant to be read. (If this site is, in fact, a load of crap, I would be interested in knowing. I’ve enjoyed reading it but I don’t know enough about Chinese to know if it’s BS.) ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRamenMonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@FlyingRamenMonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRamenMonster)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/9 "2005-10-09T04:27:30Z")
That site is closer to the truth than the OP’s book seems to be. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/10 "2005-10-09T05:20:08Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > (If this site is, in fact, a load of crap, I would be interested in knowing. I’ve enjoyed reading it but I don’t know enough about Chinese to know if it’s BS.) I’ve read it. It struck me as a solid - and pretty fascinating - discussion of the basic ideas underlying hanzi. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/11 "2005-10-09T05:43:07Z")
**csharpmajor** , **Excalibre** : That’s certainly good to hear, damning with faint praise aside. 😉 Exploring his website brings up some real goodies, such as [_English As She is Spoke_ vs. Babelfish](http://www.zompist.com/spoke.html) and [some very odd phrases from phrasebooks](http://www.zompist.com/thought.html). ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/12 "2005-10-09T06:29:39Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **csharpmajor** , **Excalibre** : That’s certainly good to hear, damning with faint praise aside. 😉 Exploring his website brings up some real goodies, such as [_English As She is Spoke_ vs. Babelfish](http://www.zompist.com/spoke.html) and [some very odd phrases from phrasebooks](http://www.zompist.com/thought.html). I just didn’t bother to reread it, so I didn’t want to praise it _too_ highly in case I’ve forgotten things about it. Actually, [zompist.com](http://zompist.com) is pretty awesome in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/13 "2005-10-09T07:14:01Z")
Nice to see a bunch of new Chinese speakers on the boards. I would reiterate that some Chinese characters do actually have meanings that make sense. An awful lot of characters origins have either been lost in the mists of time and made up after the fact to help some people remember them, or there really is no deeper obvious meaning. My Shanghaiese wife laughs and calls it a bunch of “dog farts” when people, especially foreigners studying chinese, try to read too much into the deeper aspects of characters. When I really studied Chinese, my professor was big on the root meaning of key words. After a lifetime of study and a Harvard PhD, he had about 200 of these basic character building blocks. these definately are pictograms with meaning. One of these for example is: xing or hang 行. It’s a pictogram of crossroads. From crossroads, then comes “xing” and the root meaning of “to go”. Today, it is common in Chinese to say something like “can this project be done” (这计划性不行?). The other meaning that stemmed from the root is “hang” which means a “shop”. This is because shops and commerce originally started up at a crossroads. Today this is most obvious in use of silver shop aka bank “yinhang” 银行 or where major/specialty comes from “hangye” 行业. So, there are a multitude of meanings that stem from the original cross roads, and in these compounded characters I think it’s pretty easy to see the direct link. ---
**Author:** ![AmbushBug](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ambushbug/32/4600_2.png) [@AmbushBug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmbushBug)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2005, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-speakers-can-you-explain-this/325328/14 "2005-10-09T09:42:44Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > [Yingzi: If Engish were written like Chinese.](http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm) This is a thought experiment that also provides a small introduction to the _concepts_ behind the Chinese writing system. Curse you Derleth; I went and got that URL from my bookmarks to paste into a reply of my own, before I saw your reply. Anyway, my favorite line from that page, which I feel is quite apropos to the discussion, seems to me to encapsulate the trickiness of analyzing roots of Chinese characters: > [@](#): > > The phonetic sets in Chinese, though still useful, are two thousand years out of date. It’s as if my yingzi phonetics had to rhyme in Proto-Germanic, not in modern English.