The Beauty that is Chinese Characters

Week Two of Mandarin school and the fun continues.  I'm amazed by how many characters I've learned (and memorized) up to this point - my last count was approximately 200 characters (silent happy dance and Woot Woot).  However, there are things I discover about this language everyday that make me wish that I had not abandoned it so quickly as a child.  One of them, which I continue to unravel as I absorb more and more characters, is the artform in constructing a Chinese character.

A brief lesson on the history of the written Chinese language.  Chinese characters evolved from pictograms, simple words like fire, man, female, wood and field all came from what the word looked like in nature.

Fire - looks like a bonfire.
Man - looks like a person walking.
Female - looks like a person with wide hips.
Wood - looks like the branches of a tree.
Field - looks like how rice paddies are organized.

However, throughout what was China at the time, each kingdom and territory had their own written and spoken form of Chinese.  It wasn't until the Qin Dynasty in 200 BC that the Emperor decided to standardize the written language so that people from one end of China could communicate with people on the other end, regardless of what dialect they subscribed to.

Since standardization, the base words have been used to create new words and characters.  These base words - 214 characters also known as The Chinese Radicals (which a friend of mine remarked would be an awesome name for an indie band) - would be used in different formations to create other characters that would represent other things.  It's in fact how I've been able to memorize so many characters - is by breaking them down to their basic meaning and remembering what order they appear in the word.

Take for example the word for "to speak":

To Speak (shuo in pinyin) is made up of the characters for Words, Points, Mouth and Man.
The words are coming from the points leaving the man's mouth.

Cool, right?  It's similar to word construction in languages that use alphabets, but there's something more poetic to written Traditional Chinese.  Each pen stroke has meaning (which I have yet to master) and each character contributes to a canvas of different elements to create a beautiful picture.

Here's another cool example of "dormitory" (two words):

Dormitory (su she in pin yin) is broken into two characters.  Su is made up of Roof, People and Hundred.
She is made up of People, Shield and Enclosure.  Many people living under a shielded enclosure - not that hard to memorize.

Finally, my favourite (albeit personal) interpretation of a Chinese character is the word for "love":

Love (Ai in pin yin) is a character you likely recognize because millions of non-Chinese people have it tattooed on their bodies somewhere.
Surprisingly, I find that the character is made up of the radicals for Claws, Cover, Heart and Follow.
While the latter two are logical (follow your heart with love), the first two are quite comical - love would certainly claw at your heart, so you need to have some sort of cover to protect it.

Again, the latter interpretation is purely my own personal thoughts on the word Love (not that I am at all bitter at the concept of Love).

If you're interested, here are all 214 radical characters:

The first time I saw this sheet, I nearly crapped myself.

When I stumble across more words that are of comical note, I will make sure to share with you all.