Twins & Triplets
I want to show you this video. It’s a TED video on Chineasy, a visual-based methodology on learning basic Chinese characters. The creator, Ms Hsueh ShaoLan, introduces the audience (mostly westerners, I think) to 8 basic Chinese characters. Through innovative illustrations and short descriptions / stories, she links the characters up to form another 25 more words & phrases (yes, I counted them).
Value-for-money: Learn over 30 characters & nouns using a 6-minute video
Chineasy highlights how the Chinese characters / phrases are built up using simple and common elements (read more about her background & inspiration here). Instead of forcefully memorising how words have to be written, one can use this building-up approach to learn how they relate to one another. The stories for the relationships between words can serve as useful memory aids, sort of a mental shortcut. For example, 出 chū (meaning: out) is an uncomplicated word that I already know. But after hearing her description – it is made up of 2 山 (meaning: mountain) as ancient Chinese emperors exiled their political foes away to far-flung mountainous areas – I gain a far deeper appreciation of this simple word and will most likely not forget how it’s written. And my favourite takeaway, at 2:14 in the video, was when she said “whichever (story / description) works for you”. Yes, it doesn’t matter how you come up with your own versions, as long as the story helps you recognise the ideas behind the character and its meaning.
With this as a platform, I’m starting 2 series of posts called “Twins & Triplets” and “Deconstruct”. The first is a look at words that are made up by 2 or 3 copies of the same building block (think: 人，从，众 in the video). Putting them together in a summary (starting this post onwards) can hopefully help you spot similarities and remember the words better. The second is an attempt to understand complex words by breaking them down into simpler constituent units (the reverse direction of Chineasy). As with previous posts, I’ll cover a small handful each time so that every serving remains bite-sized.
Twins & Triplets
3 sets of triplets to kick off the series
The first set feels like an anticlimax right? 一 二 三 is child's play and I think most people should know that the number of horizontal strokes, from 1 to 3, goes according to the numeric value.
1 口 gives us the character for "mouth". 2 口 (a smaller one written within a larger one) = 回 huí (meaning to return or answer). Think of it as 1 person initially saying something (the smaller 口) and this is followed up by another person giving an answer (the larger 口).
3 口 form the character 品 pǐn (meaning rank or grade). Here, you can think of an item's grade as the quality that has been ascertained and endorsed by many people (hence, many 口). Hence, the related phrase 品级 pǐn jí, which also refers to the object's quality (e.g. its classification, how refined is its workmanship etc).
You might have come across it as a verb e.g. 品尝 pǐn cháng which means to sample or taste something. Think of the many 口 as if many people are at a food tasting trial!
1 人 = person. If that person is following another, that gives you 2 人 or the word 从 cóng.
We often say the phrase "Three's a crowd" to hint a sense of congestion. In this case, three is literally a crowd. 3 人 gives the word 众 zhòng.
An effective way to remember this is to think of our POPULAR bookstore (or 大众书局 dà zhòng shū jú ) in Singapore. The company name reinforces the idea with customers that it meets popular needs and has a comprehensive range of products for the masses.
You think you can come up with more words which are Twins or Triplets? Compare your list with mine in the next post. Look out for the tag Twins & Triplets.