Pleco Chinese Dictionary Cracked Wheat
Darci Carlton
so essentially, if you're after the base meaning along the lines of 'wheat', a better choice would be 麥. If you're after the base meaning of 面, its nothing to with the former, but rather 'face' (it is supposedly a character that developed from an actual depiction of the human face. Outlier dictionary presents the middle as a 目, an eye, to support this.)
My impression is that the OP is asking about the former, not the latter. I agree with OP that used by itself (in the context of 麵) then it would usually refer to noodles rather than flour or generic wheat product.
I also took issue with the way the question is asked. I read "base" as the semantic root all other derived meanings are based upon, while what she's really after is the most common meaning (or the first thing that comes to mind) when 麵 is used alone. Common does not equal to base.
Yep, I was talking about when used as a character by itself. For example, 中午去吃面吧 would clearly not be anything other than noodles. Re-reading the OP, I see now that that was only the first part of the question. In multi-character words, its meaning is closer to 'wheat'
Yes, sorry for causing confusion by the way I asked the question. I used the simplified character rather than 麺, as I often feel that simplified is preferred on the forum, even though I personally prefer using traditional.
I wasn't, as you all seem to have worked out, asking about the character's origin per se (particularly not the simplified version's) but rather the essential essence in meaning of that term. You've actually all done a fantastic job of answering that question.
From what you've all said, it seems to me reasonable to say that 麺, when used by itself as a word, is "noodles" but when used as a component in other terms its essential meaning is "wheat". This is what I wanted to know. I'm sorry for being annoying...
From what you've all said, it seems to me reasonable to say that 麺, when used by itself as a word, is "noodles" but when used as a component in other terms its essential meaning is "wheat". This is what I wanted to know.
This is so comprehensive, Publius, that I may burst. Thank you! Still, I kind of think that "noodles" as the general stand alone meaning and maybe "wheat-product"/"wheat flour"/"wheaty" when it's a compound should work as a general base meaning of the word in most situations. I realise there'll always be exceptions. As my questions often tend to be, this is just an attempt to get a feeling for what the essential meaning is / was originally - as I say, I realise there'll always be exceptions.
Why do you care about this stuff though? There is no such thing as the essential/base/stand-alone/general meaning. Words just mean different things in different contexts. You will of course find one most common meaning, but maybe it's only most common by a hundredth of a percent, and there are a second and third most common meaning close behind. Maybe the rankings change day to day.
Take 文, for example. I've forgotten what the most common meaning was already. Say it's "script." Once you know that and call it the essential meaning, you'd still have to consider the other meanings that are almost as common (or you won't be able to call yourself literate). In such a case, the difference between the most common and not the most common will be so insignificant that your label for the most common one is almost meaningless.
I can only speak for myself personally but I find it immensely useful. It gives aspects of the language a greater logic for me and changes learning much of the vocabulary from a potentially boring and arbitrary experience into something I find intellectually stimulating. For me, it transforms the language from being a list of words in a dictionary into something closer to a story.
During the last year or so, I feel as though we've been bombarded with publicity for "Chineasy". The creator of this alleged method for learning Chinese, ShaoLan Hsueh, seems to have unlimited access to the media. Her efforts to promote the scheme got a huge boost from a successful appearance on TED in February, 2013.
I have published several books and chapters from T & H, which is one of the finest art, archeology, and design publishing houses in the world, so I was deeply puzzled to find ShaoLan's misguided notions for learning Chinese featured so prominently in the T & H catalog. It took a bit of digging, but I finally realized that there is a simple reason why T & H accepted this volume and is promoting it so energetically, and it has nothing to do with Chinese language learning. Namely, the clever, cutesy drawings of Chinese characters featured in ShaoLan's book are by the talented Israeli graphic designer, Noma Bar.
For those who might be interested in ShaoLan before she became the savior of all those suffering souls who seek an easy path to learning Chinese, here are a few interesting things about her background.
First of all, she used to be called Heidi Hsueh and was "co-founder and executive vice president of pAsia, operator of the largest auction Web sites in Taiwan and China." See "Cross-strait chameleon" in the Taipei Times (Monday, April 3, 2000), p. 18.
ShaoLan's career as an internationally renowned Chinese language maven had its humble beginnings with a B.A. in Agricultural Chemistry from National Taiwan University. Now she's everywhere! Just do a Google search on her name, ShaoLan, and you'll see what I mean. One thing that stands out in the countless articles about ShaoLan and her method for learning Chinese is that they usually feature her in unusual postures and poses. I think this tells us something about the substance of her work.
In light of our discussions about nerds and geeks (e.g., here, here, here, and here), what are we to make of a wannabe Chinese language pedagog who is fond of calling herself an "entrepreneur" and a "geek"?
First of all, if you employ Ms. Hsueh's methods, you won't learn any real Chinese language. You won't know the sound of a single Chinese word. You won't even know the sound of a single Chinese character. You won't learn anything about Chinese grammar or syntax. You won't be able to speak or write a single Chinese sentence. If you doggedly persist, you might learn to recognize a hundred or so individual characters, but you wouldn't know how to pronounce them or use them in any meaningful context.
This is a hopelessly garbled misrepresentation of the idea that, more than three thousand years ago, the archaic character for "wheat" (mi 麥) was used to write the word for "come" (li 來) because they sounded alike. While we now know that the agricultural crop did come to East Asia from the west, it's an entirely different matter whether the Sinitic word itself was borrowed from a western source. Nearly two decades ago, I wrote a very long and detailed proposal for considering the Sinitic word mi 麥 ("wheat") as having been derived from an Indo-European source. This is on pp. 36b-38a of "Language and Script: Biology, Archaeology, and (Pre)History," International Review of Chinese Linguistics, 1.1 (1996), 31a-41b.
There is something else to be said about the limits of even well-executed (visual or other) mnemonics, but that's a-whole-nother topic. And it is not clear how well one can execute mnemonics within such a rigid (or even within a more liberal) system in the first place.
While I have previously defended the utility of mnemonics in remembering chinese characters (especially those whith unhelpful "etymologies"), I have to agree this isn't the way to go. To all the valid criticisms you have made I'll add two more:
1- (Unlike say the Heisig method) the book seems to be very keen on making it easy to remember those characters that are easy to remember anyways. In one of the videos she says something like "人 means person. That's hard to remember" No it's not! 鬱 is.
"One thing that stands out in the countless articles about ShaoLan and her method for learning Chinese is that they usually feature her in unusual postures and poses. I think this tells us something about the substance of her work."
"Swallowing Clouds: Two Millennia of Chinese Tradition, Folklore, and History Hidden in the Language" by A. Zee concentrates on just food-related characters, and promises much less than the example here. I would be interested to hear what you think of it, Victor Mair! And please forgive me if you have already posted and I missed that post.
Pardon my being a little snarky, but perhaps the best approach is to learn to speak Chinese well from pinyin materials, and just claim you're (legally) blind. If your uncanny ability to move around without a cane or guide dog arouses suspicion, just say that you're doing it by sonar, like some Daoist gongfu master. :-)
The pictures are cute. They can be helpful if you are a visual learner. I was shocked to see ShaoLan Hsueh is now being treated as a Chinese language expert, glorified, for examples, by Financial Times magazine and The Sunday Times. I've seen lazy and ignorant journalism since last year about the promotion of this Chineasy 'phenomenon'.
One might descant on precisely why those who are the best at self-promotion, are invariably the worst at what they purport to be able to do. Does the part of the brain responsible for the instincts for shameless self-promotion hypertrophy, leaving no room for anything else?
This Chineasy approach, whereby you have these silly pictures that try to make sense of the characters, is not at all novel to Chineasy. I have a book, at least 15 years old, that does the exact same thing. But, unlike Chineasy, it's not a slick, Web 2.0 thing.
@Nuno
I agree that there is a place for mnemonics, but I see their function mainly in providing a bridge until the material in question has solidified in memory; also most people won't be able to apply them large-scale (and keep everything straight). (I won't write more about this since this is a complex topic.) Character confusions, complex components, and semantic components are among the things are hard for Chinese characters.