Chinese Characters as Emojis

I get asked to explain the Chinese writing system a lot . . .

My friends are often amazed when I explained to them that Chinese users can read Chinese poetries from 2000 years ago. “How would you read that?” Well, you see, you don’t really “read” them, you just “understand” them.

The key difference is that Chinese is a written language, and you should best understand it as emojis. Here is what I mean by that.

Emojis as a Written Language

Take a look at this one: 🎉 (party), and ask the following questions:

1. How might one pronounce 🎉 in English? “party”
2. How might one pronounce 🎉 in Spanish? “fiesta”
3. How might one pronounce 🎉 in German? I don’t even know…

Now imagine a chatroom where people speak different languages, and someone typed “<name>, 🎂🎉!!” It will be understood by everyone, even though they might have read (pronounced) that sentence differently in their heads.

Math as a Written Language

How would you read it in English, in Spanish, in German, in Chinese? They would read all differently, but once written down, everyone can agree what the numbers and equations meant.

Chinese as a Written Language

Just like Emojis and Math, Chinese is a written language. Take a look at the following character for “bird” as it evolves through time.

the character for “bird” 鸟 evolving through time

How about the one for “turtle”

A Test

I will tell you now that 兄弟 means “brother”, can you find it inside the following stone tablet?

Congrats, you just comprehended something from a tablet made in AD779.

Can you make something of this poster?

Congrats, you just comprehended a small piece of the Kanji written in this Japanese poster.

Composable Emojis

The Chinese characters can be composed to make up new characters, much like how you can put emojis together (e.g. 👁👄👁)

• sun (日) + moon (月) = brightness (明)
• up (上) + down (下) = stuck (卡)
• knife’s edge (刃) + heart (心) = endure (忍)
• small (小) + earth (土) = dirt (尘)

Stable Characters

The Chinese characters are relatively fixed since 200 BC

the writings for “the emperor had created the country”

Conclusion

By being a written character, Chinese is generalizable across time (present to ancient) and across places (different regions of China, bit of Japanese Kanji).

I hope you liked this blog that I threw together kinda quick, until next time!