Why Chinese Needs To Be Written In Characters
We saw two lines in yesterday’s post that are extremely confusing to anybody who doesn’t already read Chinese.
The first was this:
凡鳥偏從末世來
Disguised as a common bird, a phoenix emerges in this decadent age
And the second was this:
一從二令三人木
First she complies, then she commands, and then she’s cast aside
In both cases, we’re dealing with a type of poetic character description. It’s formally called 拆字 (chāizì) in Chinese, and is translated as “to disassemble Chinese characters.” Since English and other Latin-based languages don’t have this concept, there is no good word other than “chaizi.”
Let’s take a look at how this works.
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