Chinese Characters
This is an astonishingly beautiful piece about the evolution of the Chinese written language. What caught my eye as I trawled the memetic ocean for fish was the interesting last paragraph of part 3 of the article, which begins with, "Nowadays, it is Chinese chemists who are the best at creating characters."
The funny thing is that I too am a Chinese character. I can't speak or read it well, but I can think in it with some effort, and I can do a fairly superficial gloss of a Chinese poem with a little more effort. I eat noodles everyday, and if I cook pasta, it is with the sparing hand of my late great-great-grandmother.
It is likewise (despite occasional frenzied bouts of extensive book-burning) quite Chinese to respect the written word and to treat with reverence paper that has writing on it. But in this era, the lack of respect that people show with their shoddy handwriting somewhat lessens the respect that one is inclined to show the written word.
Bluntly: if you write elegantly, I would be more inclined to examine what is written with a conscientious eye, more inclined to annotate or correct the writing with a meticulous hand. This is not to say that I show bias in marking (for example, examination scripts), but that the attitude with which I approach the script is somewhat informed by the visual impact of that script.
It is like watching a dancer. Some dancers have arched legs, which give power and thrust; some have straight legs, which is unusual (think about it). But watch, with an unbiased eye, the elegance of a grand battement en cloche in which the dancer, perfectly upright and still and controlled, lifts her leg high and swings it back and forth (somewhat as in the proper and memorable can-can); it is that elegant control which commands respect, which can intimidate the censor of the eye.
So too the writing on a page. The formation of each letter, conveying prose of excellent sense, in well-chosen words; this commands me. And oddly, despite the Latin, the Greek, the French and Italian that I sometimes use, it is the Chinese character in me which allows this.
The funny thing is that I too am a Chinese character. I can't speak or read it well, but I can think in it with some effort, and I can do a fairly superficial gloss of a Chinese poem with a little more effort. I eat noodles everyday, and if I cook pasta, it is with the sparing hand of my late great-great-grandmother.
It is likewise (despite occasional frenzied bouts of extensive book-burning) quite Chinese to respect the written word and to treat with reverence paper that has writing on it. But in this era, the lack of respect that people show with their shoddy handwriting somewhat lessens the respect that one is inclined to show the written word.
Bluntly: if you write elegantly, I would be more inclined to examine what is written with a conscientious eye, more inclined to annotate or correct the writing with a meticulous hand. This is not to say that I show bias in marking (for example, examination scripts), but that the attitude with which I approach the script is somewhat informed by the visual impact of that script.
It is like watching a dancer. Some dancers have arched legs, which give power and thrust; some have straight legs, which is unusual (think about it). But watch, with an unbiased eye, the elegance of a grand battement en cloche in which the dancer, perfectly upright and still and controlled, lifts her leg high and swings it back and forth (somewhat as in the proper and memorable can-can); it is that elegant control which commands respect, which can intimidate the censor of the eye.
So too the writing on a page. The formation of each letter, conveying prose of excellent sense, in well-chosen words; this commands me. And oddly, despite the Latin, the Greek, the French and Italian that I sometimes use, it is the Chinese character in me which allows this.
etched with acid at 5:01:00 pm
7 Comments:
I used to write in Chinese characters once. Now, they lie buried somewhere in the back of my mind, unused, waiting to be rediscovered.
Lu Xun advocated Esperanto for use in China. For this, I give him +karma.
So if I may clarify: you were born in Cambridge but you sustained Chinese knowledge? Alas, I had no such thing.
I had a feeling the article was referring to the Chinese periodic table. Feeling confirmed.
is neatness in handwriting purely an effort, or is it tied in with the individual's natural ability (or lack thereof) to manipulate the pen/brush/writing tool?
you should write an entry on how a person's neatness changes over the years. like how when we start out in pre-school we all have terrible handwriting cuz we're learning how to write the unfamiliar characters; probably reach a peak in p6/lower sec before the extensive amount of writing we have to do forces us to write more quickly at the expense of neatness..
that's why doctors and professors have the worst handwriting. all the writing they had to do in school... (:
i think i've kinda gone off point.
In first grade, my handwriting was neat as could be. In third grade, they taught us cursive. In fourth grade, they made us write 300 word essays in cursive. My handwriting went downhill from there.
It seems that if I had learnt Chinese perhaps my handwriting would have stayed on track, with all that calligraphic training.
It may have something to do with the mental gears... when writing in the Latin alphabet, my handwriting is usually either practically illegible scrawlings, or highly calligraphic.
Oddly, while I have a quill, wedge-nibbed or dip pen, my handwriting improves - I'm consciously using a calligraphic hand. This also applies when I'm writing in Latin. When I'm not in that frame of mind or writing in English, the quality goes down very very quickly. Perhaps I'm unconsciously imitating manuscript writing when I write in Latin.
I know for a fact that when I'm writing in languages I began learning in early adulthood, I'm consciously imitating manuscript hands. Particularly with ancient and classical languages, where there is very little opportunity to imitate everyday ordinary handwriting.
My Greek handwriting is based on Uncials for upper-case and Byzantine court hands for lowe-case; likewise, my Cyrillic handwriting is based on Slavonic manuscripts. In both cases there was almost zero exposure to the languages in modern handwritten form while I was learning them, so nearly 1000 years of handwriting development completely bypassed me. It didn't help that my interests in Palæography are strictly first-millennlum, so my ideas of what alphabets should look like are drawn largely from that period (nobody tries to imitate printed letters surely).
Result: my Greek, Armenian and Cyrillic handwriting styles are neat, highly calligraphic, and completely weird/archaic-looking to natives.
My Chinese handwriting is a abject failure though. Perhaps it might've helped if I learned Chinese from calligraphed texts. Pehaps I'm just bad at it :p
whoa, Sprezzatura, I'm finding you everywhere!
How fortunate for you! :p
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