Journal #2

[Yian Xu]

Language can represent the culture. So that one interesting part of learning a new language is to understand its culture background. And it is very important to understand its culture background when learning a new language. For example, now I am studying the traditional Chinese which is the writing language of Cantonese, and I found that all the traditional Chinese characters are meaningful and beautiful, such as the character “誌”. It means “magazines or journals” and it is actually composed by three individual characters which are “言”, “士” and “心”; and each of them has meaning by itself. “言” means “speak”, “士” was a specific way to address nobles (usually well educated people) a hundred years ago and “心” means “heart”. When the three characters were put together, it means “well educated people who follow their hearts speak out their opinions”. What a interesting explanation!