Chapter 23: Start by breaking down the riddle and learn how to predict words
Today I will continue to teach Chunlai Chinese characters.
With a pot of tea and a teacher and student sitting opposite each other, they began by discussing the origins of writing.
In the beginning, the ancients had no written language, only numbers. When they went hunting, they would count by knotting ropes. For every one they caught, they would tie a knot. For every two, they would tie two knots. And so on.
Later, they invented rock carving based on this, which involved carving many animals and trying to distinguish between them: this is a mouse, that is a tiger, and another is a wild boar, and so on.
So they drew pictures on the rocks, which were called pictographic characters. For example, the character for "rat" has been simplified and standardized, and now it looks like a rat.
For example, a tiger looks like a tiger, and a sheep has two prominent horns on its head. At that time, it was basically a painting, and the characters at that time were more like animals.
Therefore, for all animals, the original characters are in the shape of the animals.
Later, people carved characters on the backs of tortoises, which became known as oracle bone script. Later, people carved characters on bronze vessels, which became known as bronze inscriptions.
They found it more convenient to carve words on bamboo slips, so they carved them on bamboo slips, which was called Jianshu.
In the process of dissemination, characters were standardized, and some fixed radicals were gradually extracted from pictographic characters to express meaning, thus giving rise to new methods of creating characters such as [indication], [ideographic], [phono-semantic], [transliteration], and [loan].
Regardless of the method, Chinese characters generally follow a certain pattern. By looking at the characters, you can pretty much guess their meaning. For example:
Words with the grass radical: either flowers or grass.
The characters with the character "水" (water) on the side mostly refer to streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds.
Characters with the wood radical mostly refer to firewood, woods, and forests.
The characters with the character "金" (gold) on the side mostly refer to gold, silver, copper and iron.
The word "fire" means baking and frying.
The characters with the character "玉" next to them are either pearls, jade or glass.
Of course, there were mistakes when creating characters, and some characters had opposite meanings. For example, the character for “heavy” (重) should have been “出” (出), meaning “weight” (重). However, it ended up being “千里” (千里), meaning “length” (千里).
In a similar situation, there is [射], 寸身 should be a short character, and [短] should be a [射] character, which means bending the body to shoot the arrow.
These typos were later accepted by people and continued to be used. However, overall, Chinese characters are still easy to recognize. For example:
【Sweet】: The tongue has a sweet taste.
【Hungry】: I am hungry.
【Afraid】: There is a blank in the heart.
[He]: Also a person, but another person besides me.
【明】：The moon can only be seen because of the sun.
[Mold]: It rains every day, everything gets moldy, and I’m in a bad mood.
【Trust】: Words spoken by the person himself. Not relayed through a third party, so of course they are trustworthy.
【呆】: A person who is not very talkative.
【Good】: Having both a son and a daughter.
[Wonderful]: Like a young girl, of course she is beautiful, and people can't help but praise her.
In short, understanding the pictographic, indicative, associative, phono-semantic, transliteration, and loan functions of Chinese characters is a basic skill for the art of fortune-telling.
Chunlai asked: "Phonetic and phonetic, can you give me an example?"
I said, "特" is a pictophonetic character. On the left is the character for "cow," and on the right is the character for "temple." A cow broke free from its rope and ran away. People heard the sound of "temple" and invented this character.
Chun said, "I understand. Give me an example."
I said, "[且] originally refers to male fertility." Doesn't that make sense? Ancient people worshipped genitals. Without them, the human race wouldn't have survived.
Chun said: They look so similar.
I said: "Ancestor" means "Shi + Qie". The rituals bring continuity to the ancestors of mankind.
Chunlai asked, "[And] how do you explain it?"
I said: Don't move for now. It's like someone comes to test the word "且". Ask if you will pass the postgraduate entrance examination? You say:
The current state indicates a pause or an upward trend. First, it should be entering the review phase. [And] it has entered. Constant review will further understand the knowledge learned. There is still hope.
Chun said, "It turns out that we must understand the original meaning of this word."
I said: The reason why Chinese people have word puzzles is that they understand the meaning of the solution from the structure of the characters.
For example, someone asks you to guess the Chinese character "Zhong", but you don't use the oracle bone script I told you to guess.
Chunlai interrupted me and asked, "You've always said that we must use oracle bone script to determine the results."
I said: "There are approximately 4,500 characters in oracle bone script, but only about 1,000 of them are currently recognizable. The rest are still unrecognizable, and there are over 3,000 commonly used Chinese characters. Therefore, many characters were created later."
We can also use word puzzle analysis to further understand word divination.
I started giving examples.
Someone takes a test on the character "中" (Zhong). Asking if they can get into high school, you break it down into "中" (zhong) and "人" (ren). This means average talent. You offer encouragement, saying, "My grades are average, but I need to work hard to have a chance."
Someone's asking about the character "Soul." Regarding the body, I'm using the character "ghost" + "cloud." Cloud represents speech, for example, "someone said," meaning someone said something a bit vague. This suggests melancholy and a bad mood.
Someone is asking about their career using the character "柴" (wood) in their fortune. Wood + char represents fire burning trees and mountains. You advise them to be down-to-earth, patient, and not lose their temper.
Someone asked for a fortune telling using the character "直" (straight) to ask about career. It's "十" plus the character "且" (qie), with an extra horizontal line. It's the character "值" (value) without the "人" radical. You could say, "average," but you should focus on self-cultivation. "直" = "值" (value) is embarrassing.
Someone comes to ask about business using the word "Nai". You say: You can do it. There are three things waiting for him to do, one big and two small.
Someone asked someone to do business with them. "Zhi" (value) is the true upper part, and "ren" (people) is the false half. You said, "Let's get to know this for now. I think it's half true and half false."
Someone comes to ask about the Chinese character "chubby" (Fat) and when the shop will open. Chubby = the middle of the month. You can choose an auspicious day around the 15th.
Someone comes to ask about the character "pu" (servant) and what career is best for them. "pu" (servant) = divination. You can suggest that they study Bazi, feng shui, psychological counseling, etc.
Someone asked if they could open a shop in Guangzhou by taking a heart test. You said, "Stop thinking about it."
…
In the morning, I taught him the origin of characters, analyzed the structure of simplified characters, and how to test characters.
I concluded, “Given your level, first analyze the characters, break them down, and make a preliminary judgment based on what the person wants to test.
Then, I will teach you how to add the meaning of oracle bone script or bronze inscriptions for a comprehensive analysis."
Haru said, "The breakdown of the riddle is very interesting. Give me some more examples tomorrow. Let me analyze them as I learn, okay?"
I nodded.
At this time, a man came in and asked for a fortune telling about his marriage.
I'll let Chunlai do the internship.
Let's have you guys take the test, and here's a hint: The top half is the character for "出," and the bottom half is the traditional Chinese character for "进" (zhi + 隹). Let's begin! Let's see who has the potential to learn character prediction.
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