Okay, I might be completely wrong about this (because my knowledge regarding this is next to zilch), but some people have told me that every symbol in Chinese languages like Mandarin and Cantonese represents an idea, like an object or a verb or things of that nature.
For instance, in English the letters A,B,C,D....etc. mean nothing in and of themselves. When you put them together, for instance C-H-A-I-R, then they mean something.
But in Chinese languages you have a single symbol to represent an idea like "love" for instance: 爱
In other words, words (concepts, objects etc.) are represented by symbols.
Do you not have letters which form words in these languages?
If what I've heard is true, then isn't it cumbersome to learn and write the symbols for most of the human concepts and things which we think of on a day to day basis? I mean, you'd have a symbol for father, one for mother, one for mountain, one for joy, one for sorrow, one for eating, one for walking, one for sky, one for earth etc. This would run into a huge number of symbols.
So how exactly does this work? And also, with such a large number of symbols, how do you represent all of them on a Chinese keyboard?
For instance, in English the letters A,B,C,D....etc. mean nothing in and of themselves. When you put them together, for instance C-H-A-I-R, then they mean something.
But in Chinese languages you have a single symbol to represent an idea like "love" for instance: 爱
In other words, words (concepts, objects etc.) are represented by symbols.
Do you not have letters which form words in these languages?
If what I've heard is true, then isn't it cumbersome to learn and write the symbols for most of the human concepts and things which we think of on a day to day basis? I mean, you'd have a symbol for father, one for mother, one for mountain, one for joy, one for sorrow, one for eating, one for walking, one for sky, one for earth etc. This would run into a huge number of symbols.
So how exactly does this work? And also, with such a large number of symbols, how do you represent all of them on a Chinese keyboard?