Reader Valerio (an old friend with an exploring mind) posted a comment (in blog https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/01/huh-conversations-02-uk.html) saying he can sometimes guess at the meaning of a Chinese character without knowing its reading. (He's done a bit of basic Chinese.)
In my response to that comment of his, I raised the example of 凹凸 which one doesn't need to know the readings for to get to the meaning.
凹凸不平
āo tū bù píng
"concave convex not level"
It's used for describing a surface that's uneven, especially potholes in the road, which is particularly of concern to cyclists, which Valerio is.
I remember the āo tū example... you had told me the same years ago and I knew it means potholes even though I would not have been able to remember the pronunciation.
ReplyDeleteBut it seems that you misunderstood what I wrote in my comment. I did not say I could guess the meaning of a character, I only said the I could recognize it as a character that I had already seen (just as I can recognize the face of a person but not remember their name). To give you a random example, consider the character 店. I know it very well, to the point that I can tell you it must be quite a common character. But I do not remember what it means, nor how it is pronounced. In fact, I just opened my list of Chinese characters that I compiled 10+ years ago and that contains 573 characters that at some point I had "learned". Almost all of them look familiar to me now, but I only remember what they mean or how they are pronounced for a small percentage of them. In this respect, I can relate to the old lady who would write the pinyin next to the characters that she recognized.