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In reading most languages we seem to forget to look at the form of what we're reading. Sure, we might notice a fun or annoying font that they used, but rarely does this take away from the meaning or add to it (although some font choices make you seem like a tool). There are, though, a few languages who's pictographic roots left the written language with a system in which you have to pay attention to the form and structure of each word for it to make sense.
If we take a look at written Chinese we get a great example of how the pictographic roots of the written language keep us from "being seduced from attending to graphical features and codes". A good example of this is how the Chinese language uses a something called radicals. A radical is part of the character that helps you derive the meaning of words you don't yet know. The popular examples are 马，吗，and 妈. These mean horse, a question particle, and mother respectively. They are all pronounced in very similar ways /mɔ/. Their difference in meaning comes from the radical. Horse doesn't have one, the second one has the mouth radical and mother has the female radical. In traditional Chinese there are 214 different radicals that can point to the meaning of something.
While quite a few of the radicals have changed over the years to not really resemble the original pictograph. There are still many that remain very similar to their roots. 日is the symbol for sun. 日startedout looking more like Ɵ and through the years became the character it is today. Whenever a native speaker/reader of Chinese sees the sun radical they automatically know that the character they are reading has to do with time. We can look at the characters 昨，明, and 时. Which mean yesterday, tomorrow, and time respectively. The 女 radical means it has something to do with women, 心means that it has something to do with the heart or emotions.
The translated title of this blog means "why are mother and horse different characters?" Even through they are pronounced almost the exact same (someone who doesn't speak Chinese couldn't tell the difference) they differ because of a radical system that uses symbols to help impart meaning on characters. In written Chinese people pay close attention to how each character is written. Some spend their entire life learning how to write the characters beautifully.
Also in Chinese, this can't happen. "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
Gestalt! It's fascinating that our brain can make connections that aren't even there because automatically we believe there needs to be cohesiveness. With English, like your example above, we can figure out what the word should be by the surrounding letters if the first and last letters are the same as the actual word. Like you said, in Chinese it cannot happen because each aspect of the character has meaning.
ReplyDelete"A radical is part of the character that helps you derive the meaning of words you don't yet know"
This concept amazes me in that in the Chinese language, the definition is built into the actual character. That would be so helpful for English so I don't always have to search dictionary.com - which come to think of it, English has words created from Greek and Latin roots, suffixes and prefixes. Even so, as first graders we are not taught these tools as a format for reading making the Chinese characters richer in culture.
You can't figure out the exact definition, but you can get a feel for what the character might be about. There are also pronunciation clues embedded in the character as well, but that's even more confusing.
ReplyDeleteYou had a great example. It was interesting how you used a language that actually uses pictographic roots in its writing. I have actually seen things similar to the last paragraph before but I have always found it interesting that we can read and understand words that are not in their correct order. It was also interesting that you knew the roots of the words whereas in English that is not usually very common knowledge; as is why and how words are pieced together.
ReplyDeleteYep, this is a great example. Handy, that education in other languages! :)
ReplyDelete