03 November 2011

Electric Things

A long long time ago when I learned Japanese, I started to become very interested in kanji. The first one that fascinated me was . I liked the story of the rain and rice field with the bolt of lightning (natural electricity). Now that I am learning hanzi and simplified Chinese the character looks like this and loses much of the original story. However I have realised that this character is turning up again and again in my vocabulary lists. Here are some examples with literal translations;

电视 Electric Look - TV
电影 Electric Shadows - Films
电梯 Electric Stairs - Escalator
电脑 Electric Brains - Computer
电车 Electric Car - Tram
电邮 Electric Post - Email
电话 Electric Voice - Telephone

When I think about these words it makes me think how logical and straight forward Chinese language sometimes is. The literal translations act as automatic mnemonics so that I can easily remember them.

1 comment:

  1. Yes I agree. Its words like these that makes Chinese slightly easier than it seems.

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