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Chinese (language) Related Questions

What is the best online source for Chinese character What is the etymology of the Chinese character
etymology? 呢?

What's the etymology of the Chinese character xiè

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Does any other Chinese character have the same
Reach customers, grow sales, balance your books and work in collaboration from any etymology as ''相''?
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What is the etymology of 磁 "Magnetic" in
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What is the etymology of the Chinese character 是

5 Answers (to be)?

What are some Chinese characters with a great

John Renfroe, CEO/Co-founder at Outlier Linguistics, Professional proficiency
story or interesting etymology behind them?
in Chinese
Answered Nov 30 2014 · Author has 88 answers and 198.6k answer views What is the etymology of the Chinese character
Originally Answered: What is best website(s) to look at the etymology of Chinese characters? 旧?

Richard Sears's Etymology site is the one of the better-known ones, but if you want What is the best Chinese language online course?
accurate etymology it's quite inadequate. Sears is a hobbyist, not a professional, and
while his efforts are admirable, his site contains a lot of incorrect information and What is the etymology of the Chinese character
錯?
his explanations of characters tend to be inaccurate a bit too often.
What is the Chinese character for fire?
A much better site is 小學堂 . It contains much more exhaustive information than
anything else I've seen online and also gives a list of reference book citations so you
can look up what the leading scholars in the field have to say about each character.
It's really an outstanding resource, and one I use in my own research all the time.

If your Chinese is up to the task and you don't mind a book, Prof. Chi Hsiu-Sheng [季
旭昇] just released a new edition of his outstanding 《說文新證》, which essentially
represents the cutting edge of the current scholarly understanding of Chinese
character etymology.

For tips on how to use etymology to learn Chinese characters efficiently, check out
these two recent articles on my company's website: What is Etymology and Is it
Useful for Learning Chinese Characters? (Part 1) and What is Etymology and Is it
Useful for Learning Chinese Characters? (Part 2) . We've also covered the
etymologies of a few specific characters on our Blog and our Facebook page .
We're currently developing a dictionary of Chinese character etymology based on the
latest advances in palaeography and historical linguistics, which will help people
learn characters in a scientifically sound, etymologically accurate, and more efficient
way. We'll have a demo of the dictionary available in January, and assuming our
upcoming Kickstarter is successful, the dictionary itself should be ready next fall. It
will provide a much-needed antidote to all the misinformation about Chinese
characters that's out there and will contain a level of academic accuracy that frankly
is not currently available on this topic in English, all while remaining easy to use for
even rank beginners in Chinese. Our website can be a bit technical for some people
because we're using it as a platform to introduce people to this kind of reseaerch, but
for the dictionary itself we're focusing on ease of use.

I've also written a bit on etymology in the past on Quora: John Renfroe's answer to
What is the etymology of the Chinese character 是 (to be)?

3.1k Views · View 11 Upvoters

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Related Questions More Answers Below

What is the etymology of the Chinese character 呢?

What's the etymology of the Chinese character xiè (谢)?

Does any other Chinese character have the same etymology as ''相''?

What is the etymology of 磁 "Magnetic" in Chinese?

What is the etymology of the Chinese character 是 (to be)?

Rita Zhang, Chinese teacher, also a researcher in DigMandarin.com

Answered Jun 12, 2014 · Author has 100 answers and 200.8k answer views

Lots of etymological info for any character you could wish for to be found here:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/...
 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist...
A great channel on youtube explaining Chinese character etymology, history,
character constituent parts (phonetic, semantic elements, ect.), how these elements
changed over time, what their earlier pronunciations were, provide Seal script and
Oracle bone script versions of the characters where possible and arrange them in
phonetic series according to their leading phonetic elements (i.e.隹leading phonetic
in the following series: 唯, 雖/虽, 誰/谁, 堆, 推, 維/维, 淮, 匯/汇, 稚) ect.
 
http://chinese-characters.org/ and http://www.yellowbridge.com/chin... may
provide some of what you want.
 
Another very convenient one, täglichchinesisch, but it's in German.

1.7k Views · View 5 Upvoters

Brendan O'Kane, non-native but reasonably good speaker of Mandarin.

Answered Feb 18, 2014 · Author has 76 answers and 278.9k answer views

Chinese Etymology .org is pretty good -- nice graphic examples of earlier character
forms, plus the Shuowen Jiezi's gloss on characters. (The Shuowen isn't
authoritative, but it's traditional.) http://Zhongwen.com is frequently misleading
and wrong, and in any event has got nothing to do with the history of the characters'
development.

2k Views · View 7 Upvoters

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