乐 | yuè | lè

In Mandarin Chinese, 乐 is a character for two different words:

1. 乐 (Pinyin: yuè 🔊): n. music, tune, melody, song
2. 乐 (Pinyin: lè 🔊): adj. joyful, happy, glad, enjoyable, fun; n. happiness, joy, pleasure; v. to laugh, to smile, to enjoy, to love

乐 is a simplified form of the traditional character 樂. According to Wiktionary, 樂 is an

Ideogrammic compound: 糸 (“string”) + 木 (“wood”) — strings on a piece of wood, i.e. a wooden musical instrument. The oracle bone form shows two strings connected to the wood. In the bronze inscriptions, a 白 component was added in between the two strings, which may either represent the thumb (fiddling) or a phonetic part.

Lawrence J. Howell in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters gives a different explanation:

A depiction of an oak tree with acorns (ground into powder via a lengthy grinding process). Music and enjoyment are onomatopoeic, borrowed meanings, the pronunciation of the character simulating the din of a crowd → play (an instrument); amuse oneself; pleasant; fun; happy; delightful; comfort; easy.

Compounds of 乐 (1) include

• 乐 + 队 “team” = 乐队 (yuèduì): music band
• 国 + 乐 = 国乐 (guóyuè): national music
• 俗 “common” + 乐 = 俗乐 (súyuè): folk music
• 西 + 乐 = 西乐 (xīyuè): Western music

And those of 乐 (2):

• 乐 + 土 = 乐土 (lètǔ): land of happiness; paradise
• 乐 + 子 = 乐子 (lèzi): a little fun; a good time
• 快 + 乐 = 快乐 (kuàilè 🔊): happy; joyful; cheerful

One of the meaning of 快 is “happy”, so 快乐 is like “happy happy”. In its turn, 快乐 is a part of many “happy” wishes such as

• 生 + 日 + 快乐 = 生日快乐 (shēngrì kuàilè 🔊): Happy Birthday!
• 新 + 年 + 快乐 = 新年快乐 (xīnnián kuàilè): Happy New Year!
• 春 + 节 + 快乐 = 春节快乐 (chūnjié kuàilè): Happy Spring Festival, Happy Chinese New Year

In Japanese, a simplified (shinjitai) form of 樂 is used, viz. 楽. Similar to Chinese, 楽 corresponds to two different words:

1. がく (gaku): n. music
2. らく (raku): adj. comfortable, easy, simple; n. comfort, ease, enjoyment, simplicity

楽書の 壁をあはれむ 今朝の雪 蕪村 Rakugaki no kabe wo awaremu kesa no yuki The scribbling on the wall, — It looks pitiful, This morn of snow. Buson (Translated by R.H. Blyth)

Here, 楽書, literally “writing for fun”, is an alternative way to spell 落書き / らくがき (rakugaki 🔊), “doodle”, “graffiti”, “scrawl”, “scribble”, etc.

More photos related to music, happiness, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.

想 | xiǎng

In Mandarin Chinese, 想 (Pinyin: xiǎng 🔊) stands for “to think”, “to guess”, “to miss”, “to want”, “to wish for”, “would like”, etc. Thus 我想你 or 我想妳 (wǒ xiǎng nǐ) may mean “I miss you” or “I think about you”, just as is the case with 思. However, there are some subtle differences between the two. For instance, one would use 我想你 (rather than 我思你) to say “I miss you” to a person one is romantically attracted to, perhaps in a hope to hear 我也想你, “I miss you too”.

According to Wiktionary, 想 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 心, “heart/mind”, and phonetic 相 (xiāng 🔊) which, in its turn, is an ideogrammic compound of our old friend 木 “tree” and 目 “eye”. So 相 — literally “watching the tree”— is translated as “to see for oneself” or “evaluate”; it also could be used as an adverb meaning “mutually”, “reciprocally”, “towards each other”, “one another”, “together” and suchlike. I, or the folk etymologist in me, would like to think (can I say 我想思?) that 相 brings not just phonetics but also this implicit reciprocity into 想. On the other hand, 思 is more “cerebral” kind of thinking — remember the “fontanel” hypothesis?

The historical forms of 想 show some variation in relative placement of its three components. In contrast to 思, which reminds me of a Viking longship, 想 looks like an oared two-masted sailing vessel, maybe a lancaran.

Sure enough, 思 and 想 can be combined in one word, 思想 (sīxiǎng 🔊), “thought” or “idea”. Other compounds of 想 include

不 + 想 = 不想 (bùxiǎng): to not want 回 + 想 = 回想 (huíxiǎng): to recall, to remember 冥 “deep” + 想 = 冥想 (míngxiǎng): meditation, to meditate 想 + 像 = 想像 (xiǎngxiàng): to imagine, to picture 中 + 心 + 思想 = 中心思想 (zhōngxīn sīxiǎng): central idea

More photos related to thought, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.

狐 | hú

In Mandarin Chinese, 狐 (Pinyin: hú 🔊) means “fox”. According to Wiktionary, 狐 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 犭, which is a radical form of 犬 (“dog”), and phonetic 瓜 (guā).

Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:

As per 瓜 (solitary) + 犬 dog/beast → fox (that, atypically for Canidae, goes about in small family units rather than in packs).

However, 瓜 means “melon” or “gourd” rather than “solitary”. I prefer to think of the whole right part of this character as of the fox’s long bushy tail — which is the first thing distinguishing a fox from other Canids that comes to my mind. Well, not just to my mind — cf. Valencian word rabosa or Portuguese raposa, both from rabo “tail”.

Since there are way too many Mandarin homonyms of hú, Chinese use 狐 in combination with other words, for example:

• 狐 + 狸 = 狐狸 (húli 🔊): a fox; (figuratively) sly person
• 赤 + 狐 = 赤狐 (chìhú): red fox (Vulpes vulpes)
• 白 + 狐 = 白狐 (báihú): arctic fox
• 沙 + 狐 = 沙狐 (shāhú): corsac fox (Vulpes corsac)
• 火 + 狐 = 火狐 (huǒhú): red fox; red panda; Mozilla Firefox

狐狸精 (húlijīng), “fox spirit” or 九尾狐 (jiǔwěihú), “nine-tailed fox” refer to mythological creatures “who can be either good or bad spirits”:

Typically fox spirits were seen as dangerous, but some of the stories in the Qing dynasty book Liaozhai Zhiyi by Pu Songling are love stories between a fox appearing as a beautiful girl and a young human male. In the fantasy novel The Three Sui Quash the Demons’ Revolt, a huli jing teaches a young girl magic, enabling her to conjure armies with her spells.

(Let’s not use 狐狸精 in its modern derogatory and misogynist sense, OK?)

狐 (kitsune 🔊) also play a prominent role in Japanese folklore...

Stories depict legendary foxes as intelligent beings and as possessing paranormal abilities that increase with their age and wisdom. According to Yōkai folklore, all foxes have the ability to shapeshift into human form. While some folktales speak of kitsune employing this ability to trick others — as foxes in folklore often do — other stories portray them as faithful guardians, friends, lovers, and wives.

...as well as in poetry:

水仙に 狐遊ぶや 宵月夜 蕪村 Suisen ni kitsune asobu ya yoizukiyo Foxes playing Among the narcissus flowers In the early evening moonlight. Buson

飯ぬすむ 狐追ひ打つ 麦の秋 蕪村 Meshi nusumu kitsune oi utsu mugi no aki Driving away with blows, A fox stealing the rice; The autumn of barley. Buson (Translated by R.H. Blyth)

More photos related to foxes, beads and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

爱 | ài

In Mandarin Chinese, 爱 (Pinyin: ài 🔊) has many meanings but all of them are related to love. It could be a verb “to love” (a person), “to like”, “to be fond of”, “to enjoy” (food, activity), “to treasure”, “to value”, “to care about”, “to respect”, “to be prone”, “to tend”, etc. It could be a noun for “love”, “affection” or “benevolence”. It could be an adjective “beloved” or “affectionate” and could also be used as a honorific for someone else’s daughter.

爱 is a simplified form of the traditional character 愛. If you look carefully at this latter, you’ll notice 心, “heart-mind”, in its middle.

On the origin of the character, Wiktionary says:

Originally 㤅, a phono-semantic compound: phonetic 旡 + semantic 心 (“heart”).

As early as the Qin dynasty, a meaningless component 夊 (“foot”) was added to the bottom of the character, as with some other characters depicting people.

Lawrence J. Howell in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters provides a different explanation:

The relevant seal inscription form combines a variant form of 既 (engorgement) + 心 heart/emotions → be emotionally hindered, in the sense of feeling overladen/dragged down → love.

Weird etymology aside, this is one of the few cases where I definitely prefer the traditional character to the simplified one. I mean, how it is even possible to replace the most important element, 心, with a single horizontal line? OK, with its 13 strokes, 愛 is not the easiest hanzi to write; then again, you probably shouldn’t use this word too often anyway.

According to Wiktionary, 爱 “is not known to exist until the simplification of Chinese characters by the People’s Republic of China in 1956”. The only, I mean only, advantage of 爱 is that it’s marginally more legible on the computer screen, but they didn’t know that in 1950s, did they?

So now, I guess, is the moment you were waiting for all this time. How to say it in Chinese?

我 + 爱 + 你 = 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ): I love you

or

我 + 爱 + 妳 = 我爱妳 (wǒ ài nǐ): I love you

Remember the difference?

More photos related to love, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.

好 | hǎo | hào

In Mandarin Chinese, 好 (Pinyin: hǎo 🔊) means “good”, “well”, “nice”, “easy” and so on. This character also has another, slightly different pronunciation (hào 🔊) meaning “to like” or “to be easy to”.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that 好 is made up of two familiar characters, 女 and 子. But why? According to Wiktionary,

The widely accepted meaning of this character is that the characters for “female” (女) and “child” (子) were put together to form a compound because it was good for a woman to have a child. Similarly, it has been proposed that the compound originally refers to the mutual affection between the mother and child, which then extended to mean “good”. These theories are supported by the smaller 子 found in some oracle bones and bronze inscriptions.

However, broader interpretations of the second character 子 could lead to other theories. 子 could also mean “son”, so it may have meant two children, a boy and a girl next to each other, which is a good fortune to have a boy and a girl. 子 could also mean “man”, so it may have referred to the love between a man and a woman, which is good. Duan Yucai, in his annotated version of Shuowen, interpreted it as originally referring to the beauty of 女子 (nǚzǐ, “woman”). Lastly, it could mean that the “attitude” of a girl was considered good.

More photos related to children, women and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

♀ | Venus

“The mirror of Venus” ♀ is an astrological and astronomical symbol representing the planet Venus.

The planet was named after Venus, the Roman goddess of sex, love, beauty, fertility and prosperity. Her Greek counterpart was Aphrodite. In alchemical tradition, Venus was associated with copper.

In many Romance languages, the word for Friday originates from Latin Veneris dies, i.e. “day of Venus” (divendres, vendredi, venerdì, viernes, vineri); Venus even found her way to Breton and Welsh (Gwener). In Germanic laguages, this day (fredag, Freitag, Friday, vrijdag) became connected with Freyja and/or Frigg, even it is not clear whether they were the same or two different goddesses.

According to Wikipedia, the mediaeval symbol for Venus did not have a horizontal stroke, which was added later to form a Christian cross, while “the idea that the symbol represents the goddess’ hand mirror dates to the 19^th century”. In biology, medicine and genealogy, ♀ symbolises the female sex; in sociology and gender politics, the female gender.

More photos related to mirrors, copper and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

♥ | heart

Many, many years ago, when I first saw a real (chicken) heart, I was surprised that it did not look at all like I thought the “real” heart should. No encyclopaedias and medical textbooks available to me then and since mentioned the “heart-shaped” hearts either. And what ♥ has to do with love? True, the heart keeps us alive, but shouldn’t there be organs a bit more directly responsible for love? It was not until I read Betty Dodson’s Sex for One that I got an explanation — mind you, not the explanation, just a hypothesis... still, way better than anything I came across before.

The geometric shape ♥ was known since antiquity but was rather associated with foliage than heart. According to Wikipedia, the first known depictions of a heart as a symbol of romantic love date to the 13^th—14^th centuries, but the hearts in question were shown either pine cone- or pear-shaped. Maybe those latter objects were just pears.

Various hypotheses attempted to connect the “heart shape” as it evolved in the late medieval period with instances of the geometric shape in antiquity. Such theories are modern, proposed from the 1960s onward, and they remain speculative, as no continuity between the supposed ancient predecessors and the late medieval tradition can be shown. Specific suggestions include: the shape of the seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive, and stylized depictions of features of the human female body, such as the female’s buttocks, pubic mound, or spread vulva. <...> Inverted heart symbols have been used in heraldry as stylized testicles (coglioni in Italian) as in the canting arms of the Colleoni family of Milan.

Whatever theory is right, I hope from now on you’d think a few moments more before investing in a T-shirt or tea mug with “I ♥ something” on it.

The red heart ♥ has been used on playing cards as a suit since the 15^th century. Hearts, Herz, cœurs, corazones... In Russian, however, this suit is called черви or червы, from the adjective червонный, “red”.

More photos related to cards, heart, leaves and sea glass @ Shutterstock.