When I was in Kunming I got this fun lil book 给孩子的有趣汉字书 (A Book of Interesting Hanzi for Kids) so thought maybe I’d start sharing some pages. I don’t really have a go-to etymology dictionary; The Outlier Dictionary add-on for pleco is ok so far but $$. This calligraphy dictionary will give you the various forms but not any info, this will give you a little bit more but honestly yikes the nerve of a white dude that took 20 years to figure out how characters work calling himself “Uncle Hanzi” 🤮 Anyway, just tread carefully, take it as a fun side quest that sometimes helps explain things and sometimes not at all.
China has a long philological tradition, the《说文解字》”Explaining Graphs (marks) and Analyzing Characters” is probably the most well-known character dictionary and the first to organize entries by what we now call radicals. Written in the Han dynasty, it helps give us an idea of character origins and what they maybe used to be pronounced like. It’s cool! Here’s a partial facsimile!
So that bring us to the first line: 万，虫也。象形。 “万, a bug. Pictogram”
也 here is a Classical particle used at the end of statements. Since Classical Chinese did not use punctuation there are many sentence final particles that help you interpret correctly.
象形 describes characters that are meant to look like what they represent, aka pictograms. There are 6 types of characters in traditional sorting, and while “little pictures” are strong in the popular imagination they are actually the minority of modern characters. This is a good example, in that 万 is no longer used to mean “scorpion” but because it was a homophone with 10,000 gradually came to be used for that meaning entirely. (how did scorpion drift to 蝎子 xiezi is another story)
The rest is really only elaboration on that so I will leave it to you if you’re curious. Less intro next time more character thoughts !(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑
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