"Chinese letter" - with these words, a Russian person, without hesitation, will indicate something difficult to understand. Chinese characters really sometimes scare with their intricate appearance. What are the most complex symbols in Chinese writing?
Which character is the most difficult?
This question worries many - both foreigners who study Chinese and the Chinese themselves.
In 2006, the National Academy of Chinese Language published information about the character with the most strokes. The symbol, which has been awarded the official title of the most complex character in the Chinese language, consists of two repeated elements "dragon" and means "flight of the dragon." There are 32 traits in total.
For the first in the list of the most difficult Chinese characters, the symbol may seem rather simple. Indeed, not everyone agrees with the academy's point of view above.
Isn't it even harder?
A real living language is always more diverse than the conventional norm defined by scientists. In meansIn the media, you can find references to the fact that the most complex Chinese character has 57 strokes. Such a hieroglyph really exists, although it is not recorded in dictionaries and does not have its own character in Unicode. It denotes a variety of noodles, presented in the cuisine of one of the northern provinces - Shanxi. The character "bian" is read, with rising intonation - such a syllable does not exist in standard Chinese. Folk fantasy offers curious interpretations of the origin of the name of the dish. According to one version, "byan" depicts the sound with which the dough for future noodles flops on the table when it is stretched. A beautiful hieroglyph was allegedly invented for the owner of a noodle shop by a student skilled in calligraphy who had nothing to pay for lunch. Be that as it may, the fact remains that ordinary peasant noodles have gained popularity among both the Chinese and foreigners thanks to the intricate name.
One of the most complex Chinese characters, includes elements such as "go", "hole/cave", "words, speech", "grow", "horse", "eight", "heart", "moon" and "knife". There are even songs in Chinese that combine all these words into a kind of story just to remember how the name of the dish is spelled.
Besides bian noodles, there are a few other interesting contenders for the list of the most difficult Chinese characters.
The hieroglyph "nan" (pronounced with a downward intonation) means nasal congestion. The left side means "nose" (鼻), the right side means "close" (囊). A total of 36 devils.
And a few more dragons
To denote the flight of a dragon, a hieroglyph is sometimes used in which this element is repeated three times. It has 48 features in total. True, the aforementioned Academy of the Chinese Language considered that the third dragon does not carry a special semantic load, and therefore cannot be taken into account.
But in one of the latest editions of the explanatory dictionary of the Chinese language, a hieroglyph appeared, consisting of four elements "dragon" - a total of 68 lines. Only now its meaning no longer has the slightest relation to mythical creatures. It can be translated into Russian as "to be verbose" or "to chat incessantly".
A bit of Japanese
After getting acquainted with the noodles of "horses, words, hearts, moon" and others like them, stuffy noses and numerous dragons, one can come to the conclusion that Chinese characters are the most complex in the world.
But still, the character with the most features was invented not by the Chinese, but by the Japanese. In it, above the four "dragons" there are three more elements with the meaning "cloud" - a total of 84 features. True, this is a proper name: during the last century, a hieroglyph with variantsreadings "taito", "daito" and "otodo" appeared several times in Japanese dictionaries of rare names.
And at the beginning of our century, it was used several times in the names of restaurants selling … noodles. True, no longer Chinese, but Japanese.
