Favorite Chinese Character??

[kaikai34]

山

looks like you're giving someone the finger.

[Rypervenche]

I would have to say that for right now, my favorite is 靈.


I love a lot of the complex ones. Here are some of them that I thought of off the top of my head.


I also agree with JFP, I will add 卍 to my list. Beautiful character. I don't care if people associate it with Nazism, even though it was 卐 and turned 45°.

[Nuit]

just realised I have a soft spot for this one. Like the lines and the symmetry.

華

huá

[fh2000]

女

the traditional form. I can't draw it here, but it is a female body (the first 2 strokes) sitting with 2 hands crossed and on her knees.

Elegant, feminine.

[ehophi]

I like characters that make me chuckle when the meanings cleverly associate with the picture.

One top one is 姦 (jian1), which is three women (nv3: 女) and is most associated with the word for adultery (tong1jian1: 通姦).
...
盲 (mang2), "dead" (wang2: 亡) "eyes" (mu4: 目), so "blind."

I also like inversions, like 甲 and 由.

I'd really love to know what the "atomics" of the Chinese orthography are, but I suppose that everyone who dabbles in CJK decomposition would.

I also have characters that I hate, particularly ones where one has to be careful about how quickly one writes them: 午/牛, 王/壬, etc.

[dahsiung]

It's not my favorite but I always liked the story my very first (terrible) Chinese teacher told me about "美"
She said, "The top part is goat and the bottom part is big. Because in ancient China ... if you had a goat and it was big ... then that was beautiful"
Yeah, class was fun. She was serious, by the way - not just giving me a mnemonic device.

But my favorite characters are all in the names of my family members: 大熊, 昭瑞, 旭源, and 恆晴.

[Northcoast Surfer]

Favorite Character




2nd Favorite Character

[cranky laowai]

It's not my favorite but I always liked the story my very first (terrible) Chinese teacher told me about "美"
She said, "The top part is goat and the bottom part is big. Because in ancient China ... if you had a goat and it was big ... then that was beautiful"
Yeah, class was fun. She was serious, by the way - not just giving me a mnemonic device.

Those really are the parts of the zi. Whether that has anything to do with the etymology of the word might well, of course, be a different story.

But it's not like the like the goat = beautiful trope is alien to Western culture.

Song of Solomon 4:1

How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Mount Gilead.

[Insert Kiwi jokes, Gene Wilder clips, etc.]