Passion for Chinese

I love talking to my dad about Chinese...that's his passion, and why I still have such a sense of belonging and culture. When he is helping me through a passage, he'll go off on tangents and explain how this phrase came from this old poem, and recite bits for me, or how this phrase developed through history, or we usually use this phrase this way, but they changed it here to reflect this meaning. I love it. Somehow, while talking about my text today, we ended up on history and emperors, and how the Man tribe was in charge of China during the Qing dynasty, and their accent of the Han language is what we speak today, which is why we have "Man-darin" (Man de ren? xD)

Also, I get my sense of reading traditional characters through my dad's analysis. He never formally learned traditional, but his logic and the history of the characters make both of us laugh and wonder at the beauty of it all. Take this character, for example.

灭 mie4

In Simplified, it's simple enough. A cover over fire, to put out a fire. But look at the Traditional version.

滅


Simplified just takes the very inside of the character. See it? But now, we have a fire 火 inside a city 成， with water 水 on the outside. :D Genius.