Ancient secrets revealed!

Though the Northern Mariana Islands Retirement Fund litigation is a topic begging for attention, it’s already getting a lot of it. So I’m going to kick that can down the road for a bit. This clears the path for me to address some email related to my April 20 column, Revenge of the Saipan Sign Squiggle Squad. I have been asked, given that Chinese has no alphabet, how it’s possible for people to look up unknown characters as they seek to puzzle out Chinese signs.

As for Chinese characters, this isn’t the first time such things have seen newsprint. A matter of decades ago the Straits Times ran a series of illustrated features that explained the origins of Chinese characters. It was charming, original, and instructive. For those of us who missed the original run the stuff has been incorporated in three books, the Fun with Chinese Characters volumes, which are widely available.

Chinese characters are a lot like good old country songs: They take the common things in life and make really good stories out of them.

Just as an Alabama jukebox spins yarns about trucks, trains, honky tonk, hot ladies in tight fittin’ jeans, and cold Lone Star beer, the ancient East had its way of compiling observations in the linguistic realm, by drawing little pictures of important stuff. Here’s a random grab-bag of that stuff: wood, grain, rice, mouth, foot, eye, gold, bird, road, water, hand, knife, person, field, fire, heart, door, sun, and moon.

These elements, and others, are known as “radicals,” and are the building blocks of Chinese characters. Many also serve duty as stand-alone items. Like Legos, they can be snapped together to convey various ideas (words). There are, by most counts I’ve seen, only 214 radicals. That’s a small number for such a big language.

The ways the characters are drawn have changed over the past 4,000 years or so, and I suspect they have mutated (or evolved; take your pick) to make them easier to write. That’s a score for efficiency, but it has sometimes eroded the resemblance that the characters had to whatever it is they depicted. So for me, it’s helpful to take a look at the ancient versions of a character, just to get a better idea for where it came from, thus making it easier to learn and remember.

Getting back on the main track here, there are actually a few ways of compiling dictionaries of Chinese characters. One such way is to organize them based on their radicals. It’s a fine idea, but for a slob like me it’s never a clean process, and it involves a lot of guesswork and flailing around.

The book I’ve found most useful for this is called What Character is That?, written by Ping-gam Go. He holds degrees in physics and math. His scientific minds shows, and he has a knack for organizing things in a manner that allows readers to associate common elements, thus making the characters easier to understand and remember.

So, armed with this book and a basic knowledge of Chinese radicals, those of us in the Squiggle Squad can amuse ourselves by meditating in front of random signs, as we drool on our shirts and puzzle out the writing.

There are also some modern, high-tech keys to these exotic riddles, so, nice guy that I am, I’ll poke through my computer bookmarks, select the best ones, and post them on my website for your clicking convenience. But despite the high-tech magic, including recognition of handwritten characters, I get worried that my lazy mind will cut to the chase without learning the route, so I usually force myself to plod through the book.

I opened by mentioning the Straits Times, which is published in Singapore. So I’ll note that Singapore and Taiwan are Chinese-speaking, so it’s not just China itself that inspires people to study the language. More to the point on Saipan, Chinese is a growing language in international tourism. Chinese will continue to grow in importance for the skilled and ambitious.

Our journey has worked out quite well: We have unlocked the ancient secrets and their modern promise. Flush with such success, a true sage might light some incense and prepare some jasmine tea. But me, I’m thinking about a cigar and a cheeseburger.

Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at EdStephensJr.com. His column runs every Friday.