What came first: chinese characters or the language? How do you assign a sound to one? Were there words in the past that we don't know of?
Language always comes before text. Monkeys ooh and aah to each other before assigning symbols to ideas.
Not sound, syllable. Say, ye want to write dam. Dam sounds a bit like ram, so write character for ram and clarify ye mean dam with another symbol. Done.
>>18099638But wouldn't it be tough to teach it to new people without an extremely systematized practice?
>>18099528>Were there words in the past that we don't know of?yes there are characters that no one knows the meaning of
>>18099768Are they like hieroglyphs in that context? Undecipherable?
>>18099790heiroglyphs are descipherable though
>>18099762It was, see Caucasus mountains and the different dialects there is
>>18099938Wait are there different scripts for each caucasian language? I'd love to know more>>18099917Can you like me a page on them this sounds pretty cool, are these characters often relegated to older history textbooks? Could be something related to pop culture of the era sometimes
>>18099528???
>>18099528>What came first: chinese characters or the language?The language of course, what kind of question is that?>How do you assign a sound to one?What do you mean?>Were there words in the past that we don't know of?Surely by definition if we don't know of them we don't know of them?
>>18099999There's this iceberg and also this page about some complex characters but modern Chinese is standardized so they're no longer used:https://www.thechairmansbao.com/blog/difficult-chinese-characters-to-write/The oldest Chinese characters the oracle bone script are apparently mostly undeciphered.
>>18099528If you want to understand more or less how Chinese characters work read this:https://zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm(I have a few nitpicks, but they're mostly addressed at the end.)
>>18101071Very cool thought experiment, where'd you find the website?>>18100976>What do you mean?Kinda like how you get a sound from a character, or any logic to figuring it out other than pure memorization>>18101067Nah thats a NIGHTMARE, a character with a hundred and sixty two individual strokes sounds terrifying>The oldest Chinese characters the oracle bone script are apparently mostly undeciphered.Really? Are there any important parts still left out over there from not having been translated yet
