General Literary Chinese from Scratch/Cangjie Created Characters

thumb|200px|倉頡 A traditional tale tells of a historian for the legendary Yellow Emperor producing the first Han characters by looking at the feet of birds and the tracks of beasts. His name was Cangjie. Upon writing the first characters, millet rained from the sky as ghosts cried. Why did they cry? Were they upset at the fact that they missed out on the chance at their actions being remembered over 2,000 years later, as Cangjie is now? Or perhaps was it because information, fact or fiction, can last forever? Out of Huainanzi (淮南子), Shuowen Jiezi (説文解字), and Lunheng (論衡), the sources I use for this tradition, none really give a clear explanation, but commentaries often say it was the latter that caused the tears. Xu Bing, a famous artist who made a book comprised completely of fake characters, believes the ghosts cried because of the complicated nature of the writing system. This legendary creator of characters is the namesake for an input method for the Han script: The Cangjie Input Method. Installing Cangjie The reason I recommend the Cangjie Input Method is because it is a phonetically neutral method of inputting the Han script. Should you already speak and type a language that uses the Han script, there is no reason you cannot use what you have; this input method, however, is great for someone who wants to specifically learn Literary Chinese. Most operating systems offer Cangjie as an option, usually for Traditional Chinese only without going through hoops. Go into your Keyboard settings and it should be available to install. For Windows, use Microsoft Cangjie; for macOS, use Cangjie - Traditional. The examples used here are shared by Cangjie 3 and Cangjie 5, which are two different iterations. There aren't too many differences to worry about; Cangjie 5 is usually a bit simpler. You already know the keys! In my previous lessons, I taught you these characters: 日月金木水火土 竹戈十大中一弓 人心手口 尸廿山女田卜 These characters are all used on the Cangjie keyboard, and are used to form larger characters; if you have a QWERTY keyboard, they each correspond to a letter on them too: Latin key A B C D E F G Cangjie 日 月 金 木 水 火 土 Latin key H I J K L M N Cangjie 竹 戈 十 大 中 一 弓 Latin key O P Q R Cangjie 人 心 手 口 Latin key S T U V W Y Cangjie 尸 廿 山 女 田 卜 The remaining keys, X (難) and Z (重), have special uses. You do not need them yet. How Cangjie Works center|300px We previously encountered 明 in the poem by Kiyohara no Sanemoto. Which two Cangjie letters can you see? 明 = 日 + 月 On a keyboard, 日 is A and 月 is B. Type A, then B, and select 明. Try these as well: 林 = 木木 炎 = 火火 晶 = 日日日 森 = 木木木 You have now typed five characters without needing to know how any of them are pronounced, and now know that Cangjie reads components in sequence. When you started learning Literary Chinese, we began with statements such as: 人大。 The person is big. As we learned, Literary Chinese does not require an equivalent of "to be" in such a sentence. Therefore... 日月明。 The sun and moon are bright. How would you type it? You have now used Cangjie to type a complete piece of Literary Chinese. One character, many shapes center|300px Each Cangjie letter also represents a family of related shapes, traditionally called auxiliary shapes (輔助字形). The character printed upon a key is not always a literal component that must appear inside another character. It names a family of related shapes. A traditional mnemonic describes them like so: 日月金木水火土 斜點交叉縱橫鈎 人心手口 側並仰紐方卜 The line corresponds to: 竹戈十大中一弓 尸廿山女田卜 For example, the 竹 key can describe slanting forms (e.g. the top-left of 我), 弓 can describe hooked forms (e.g. The downward stroke in the bottom-right of 輸). You do not need to memorise this now! Just know that it exists and compare it with the handwriting knowledge you already have. How to read a shape When inputting a character using Cangjie, it proceeds in the following order, similar to how they are written, as taught in previous lessons: Left-to-right Top-to-bottom Outside-to-inside It is not exactly a stroke-order method, as it will sometimes omit strokes that would cause a code to be long. This makes Cangjie a seriously fast typing system when learned to its full potential. You have already seen left-to-right with our 明 example; but of course, there are other types. Top to bottom Consider 杲, meaning "bright" or "the sun shining clearly." The 日 is above the 木, so: 杲 = 日木 AD Outside to inside Consider 困, meaning "confined," "trapped," or "in difficulty": The outer enclosure is represented by 田, while 木 is inside it: 困 = 田木 WD The outside is read before the inside. This also gives us a memorable picture: a tree enclosed on every side is 困, trapped. Complex characters Unfortunately, not every character is this simple. More complicated characters may use auxiliary shapes as discussed before, be divided into a first component and remaining body, have more visible forms than Cangjie's 5-character limit, omit some strokes for said limit, or follow a special rule. Therefore, Cangjie is not necessarily about stroke order, and may not always represent how characters are written, though omissions do sometimes take hints from cursive writing. Take 吾 for example, the first person pronoun. The lower component is simple: 口. However, while the upper component, 五, is written with the code 一木一, 吾 is written with 一一口, omitting 木. This makes it much faster to type, but typing may not be immediately obvious at first. Wiktionary contains Cangjie codes for you to use, so it is worth using that as a reference guide. Common character typing minigames are also available on various websites, such as https://cjtt.bzzt.io/, and HK Cards (https://www.hkcards.com/cj/exercise-cangjie-all) provides excellent deconstruction graphics. Practice Part 1: Read the codes Which character is produced by each code? 日月 木木 火火 日日日 木木木 日木 田木 Part 2: Write the codes Give the Cangjie code in both Han characters and Latin letters: 明 朋 林 炎 晶 森 杲 困 Conclusion Pick out some characters you have learned before, and guess how Cangjie may divide it. Type what you expect, and look up the code if you fail. Do not worry yourself about failure: Failure may give you a new character that may be useful, and each failure teaches you something new. You do not need to "solve" every character. What you need is to see the characters for the strokes they are composed of; Han characters are not necessarily "pictures," so to speak. If Cangjie does not work for you, then there are other methods! Use what you find works best. In the next lesson, we will look at another way of viewing characters for the structures they are composed of. Cangjie codes 淮: 水人土 (EOG) 南: 十月廿十 (JBTJ) 子: 弓木 (ND) 説: 卜口金口山 (YRCRU) 文: 卜大 (YK) 解: 弓月尸竹手 (NBSHQ) 字: 十弓木 (JND) 論: 卜口人一月 (YROMB) 衡: 竹人弓大弓 (HONKN) 難: 廿人人土 (TOOG) 重: 竹十田土 (HJWG) 明: 日月 (AB) 林: 木木 (DD) 炎: 火火 (FF) 晶: 日日日 (AAA) 森: 木木木 (DDD) 輔: 十十戈十月 (JJIJB) 助: 月一大尸 (BMKS) 形: 一廿竹竹竹 (MTHHH) 斜: 人木卜十 (ODYJ) 點: 田火卜口 (WFYR) 交: 卜金大 (YCK) 叉: 水戈 (EI) 縱: 女火竹人人 (VFHOO) 橫: 木廿一金 (DTMC) 鈎: 金心戈 (CPI) 側: 人月金弓 (OBCN) 並: 廿廿金 (TTC) 仰: 人竹女中 (OHVL) 紐: 女火弓土 (VFNG) 方: 卜竹尸 (YHS) 我: 竹手戈 (HQI) 輸: 十十人一弓 (JJOMN) 杲: 日木 (AD) 困: 田木 (WD) 吾: 一一口 (MMR) 五: 一木一 (MDM) 朋: 月月 (BB) 天: 一大 (MK) 书: 戈木尸 (IDS) 的: 竹日心戈 (HAPI) 过: 卜木戈 (YDI) 程: 竹木口竹土 (HDRHG) 朱: 竹十木 (HJD) 邦: 手十弓中 (QJNL) 復: 竹人人日水 (HOOAE) 第: 竹弓中竹 (HNLH) 代: 人戈心 (OIP) 倉: 人戈日口 (OIAR) 頡: 土口一月金 (GRMBC) 入: 人竹 (OH) 法: 水土戈 (EGI) 冊: 月廿 (BT) References Rime Cangjie 5 open code table: https://github.com/rime/rime-cangjie Microsoft, “Microsoft Traditional Chinese IME”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/input-devices/microsoft-traditional-chinese-ime Apple, “Type Chinese using Cangjie – Traditional on Mac”: https://support.apple.com/guide/chinese-input-method/cimcjt11820/mac Xu, B. (2009). 天书的过程 [The Making of Book from the Sky] (D. Hammond, Trans.). In J. Cayley, L. H. Liu, H. Saussy, H. Wu, & L. Yang, Tianshu: Passages in the making of a book...in conjunction with an exhibition on the making of Book from the Sky at Bernard Quaritch March 18th 2009. Quaritch. 朱邦復，《第五代倉頡輸入法手冊》: https://www.pascal-man.com/5cjbook/index.shtml 《淮南子》in Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/huainanzi 《説文解字》in Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/shuowen-jiezi 《論衡》in Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/lunheng