There are four subjects that I like the most: Linguistics, Psychology, History, and Biology. These also happen to be the subjects people generally tend to be the worst at. On this channel, I make educational videos about topics related to these fields of study. My goal is to make interesting content that also causes people to critically think about the world.
This used to be a channel for some weird random nonsense, but all that nonsense has been compiled into a playlist titled "Just for Fun". I may continue making those types of videos occasionally, but I don't want to end up deviating from the educational stuff.
I don’t work on these videos alone so meet my crew!
Research Assistant: Elle
Script Assistant: canute
Slideshow Assistant: Eric
Subtitles Assistant: Bekzod Mamasoliyev
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Thank you for creating this video about an important piece of history that not enough people know about. (The way you ended it was perfect, by the way.) My family at the time was either fleeing the Japanese (some were part of the early wave leaving Nanjing for Chongqing) or fighting them. It was normal to hear stories about the atrocities when I was growing up.
I respect the disclaimer.
Nah, I'm just going to mix both traditional and simplified
My grandfather was an American missionary, as well as a medical doctor (surgeon and Chief of Staff) at Drum Tower Hospital in Nanking from about 1931-1941). He was awarded the Order of Jade, along with other humanitarian heroes. My mother was born in Nanking nine months before the Nanking Massacre, but the family went away to safety. One thing I didn't notice in your presentation was that China was also affected by its own civil war preceding the Japanese invasion. Your presentation is important and was quite good!! Please keep informing others of the truth. Your information is quite accurate.
Thank you for providing your insight! I’m glad your family got to safety, and kudos to your grandfather. Yes, I should have definitely pointed out China was also struggling with its own civil war between the nationalists and communists. I appreciate your comments on my work!
Interestingly the soldiers who carried out the Nanjing Massacre were sent to invade the Australian colony of Papua New Guinea in 1942, where they were slaughtered and defeated. Fewer than 10% of them survived and they were the best troops Japan had. From that campaign until the end of the war, Japan was in retreat.
/Great video. D.A.,/ NYC/Tokyo Chinese characters are interesting. (I read/write Japanese)
not most simplified characters really, there's a video on it by ABChinese
I was actually googling prescriptivism in relation to morality but I stumbled upon this video and as someone who also has an interest in linguistics it was a welcome find ^^ Keep up the good work!
You're a genuis
Other than the audio quality, this video was great otherwise, and useful in explaining/showing things that aren't usually explained in this kind of video. Thank you!
I don’t like simplified Chinese for abandoning right to left top-down direction of reading. Also the loss of meaning components removed from characters by the CCP in the 50's
simplified didnt abandon top down and left right
@@willl237 Precisely, simplified is reading like we do in the west with left to right and from the top down. But in Taiwan they use the old way of reading from right to left top down just like they do in Japan for example. I would have liked them to maintain the old way of reading it like that, but it’s just my opinion, in the end it doesn’t really matter from where you read I guess
🇨🇳 🇸🇬 🇲🇾 > 🇹🇼 🇭🇰 🇲🇴
based, but, why are you a /q/? why not a cooler phoneme like /ɣ/ or /ɕʷ/ or /ɥ/ or /ʏ/ or maybe /ø̞/
Because my first name begins with “Q” lol
That's very well explained thaank youu
你好
based
Spot on.
Very helpful video, easy to understand. Thank you!
Traditional Chinese characters are indeed rooted in ancient script forms. One of those forms is 隸書 , or the clerical script, which developed during the Han Dynasty. This script served as a bridge from the oracle bone script and seal script to the standardized script we recognize today. The clerical script is indeed much older than the 草書 , or cursive script. However, it's essential to remember that while some simplified characters might have been inspired by the cursive script, not all simplified characters are direct derivatives of 草書. Furthermore, when simplifying characters, the creators did not necessarily adhere to the 六書 principles, which are the six principles of Chinese character creation. This can sometimes lead to confusion among learners as to why a particular simplified character looks the way it does, especially if it seems to stray from traditional principles. In conclusion, both traditional and simplified characters have deep historical and cultural roots. While simplified characters were indeed introduced later, some of their forms might have already existed in various scripts and informal writings. However, it's essential to recognize the foundation of traditional characters in older scripts like 隸書 and understand that not all simplifications align with the 六書 principles. simplification of Chinese characters was intended as a precursor to completely "latinizing" or Romanizing the Chinese language is a point of some debate. Let's delve into the historical context: After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there were indeed discussions about reforming the Chinese writing system to increase literacy rates. The Chinese Communist Party recognized that the complexity of Chinese characters was a barrier to literacy, especially in rural areas. The first step was the simplification of Chinese characters, which was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s. This process was aimed at making it easier for people to learn and write Chinese. Pinyin and Romanization, Around the same time, the Chinese government introduced the Hanyu Pinyin system, a Romanized system for representing the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese. This system was created primarily as a tool for teaching Chinese pronunciation, especially to children and foreigners. The simplification was influenced by the Russian Communist Party is not entirely accurate. While the Soviet Union had a significant influence on early PRC policies, the drive for script reform in China was more influenced by internal debates about the best way to promote literacy and modernize the country. There was a movement during the 1950s called the "Latinization Movement," which proposed replacing Chinese characters entirely with the Roman alphabet. While this movement gained some traction initially, it eventually lost out to proponents of the simplified script. Today, the PRC uses simplified characters, while traditional characters are used in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Pinyin is also widely taught and used for various purposes, such as input methods on computers and smartphones, they made a excuse that simplify chinese were easy to learn that the core of their education which every one looking for easiest way to do anything, easy money, easy industry, easy building, that's the core problem they're going to facing in all kind of field. believe it
Lovely video!
As someone learning Mandarin Chinese I am well into learning simplified 汉字 for practical reasons (1000 characters thus far). As an outsider (who is also non-Western) I think I may be able to provide as unbiased an opinion as one is likely to get on this matter. 1. For the most part Simplified characters are quick to learn and they work. 2. There is some aesthetic value that is sacrificed for the sake of simplification. There are now too many curved strokes which disturbs the overall beauty of the writing system (See such characters as 见，项，and 观). This would not be an issue were Chinese characters an alphabet. However, aesthetics matter for logograms. This fact is made worse by the knowledge that former forms are better in this regard. 3. Pointing to the mainland literacy rate as evidence for the necessity for simplified characters is not a well thought out argument because it conflates correlation with causation. Poor countries have lower literacy and as the state becomes richer, it can deploy greater resources for educating the populace (in the absence of sufficient resources it just takes longer than is tolerable). The reason why the mainland has a high literacy rate is that she has seen her economic prowess grow year on year. To posit simplification as the core reason for greater literacy is to ignore the vast evidence from countries around the globe. I like simplified characters, but I love traditional characters.
很清晰易懂，謝謝你。plz make more
Nounself pronouns don’t have anything to do with neurodivergent people. Nounself pronouns were made up by a neurotypical and many neurodivergent people have a lot of difficulty understanding them and using them.
If you’re a man and u feel like you were meant to be a woman instead, Identify as a woman all u want. But stop expecting REAL women to allow you in their bathrooms cause you *feel* like a woman. You don’t get special privilege just cause you use a woman’s bathroom as a man. Your feelings don’t override women’s feelings. If they feel uncomfortable, respectfully take no for an answer and leave. It’s not necessary for a man to be in a woman’s bathroom if they rly just wanna do their business. You’re not gonna commit suicide because a woman kindly asked if you can not go in *HER* vulnerable space 💀 Also the reason why no one questions a biological woman saying she’s a woman is because she was BORN AS ONE😭no one’s gonna question a BIOLOGICAL FEMALE when they say they’re a woman
about Oracle Bone Script - yes, it does look like an ancient form of Chinese Characters, but now it is debated whether this system *is* actually an ancestor of other proven ancestors (Bronze Script, Cleric Script, etc.)
All that matters??? Well.... First of all, the fact is that the majority of characters are the SAME in traditional and simplified. It would have been helpful for you to give some idea of HOW MANY characters are different between the two systems. An informal count I made on a lexicon of fairly common words suggests that about 37% of the characters are different between the two systems. (A professional Chinese linguist could probably give you more reliable figures.) That's not a small number, although many of the differences are due to just a single factor--for example, a radical that is always written the same way, although differently in the two. But it's still a considerable task to learn the other system, and for someone who deals mainly with written Chinese, or for a foreigner trying to learn Chinese using e.g. You Tube videos from all over the Chinese-speaking world, it's pretty hard to avoid having to learn both systems. That really slows things down for the learner. As for native Chinese speakers, my experience is that mainlanders simply don't want to go to the trouble of learning traditional characters; but diaspora Chinese who use traditional, usually have little trouble picking up the simplified system.
You make some great points, and I should’ve elaborated more on that in the video. But, in my opinion, I could care less which one you use. That was the point I was attempting to get at. I don’t care which one people use, and I don’t condone people forcing others to use a certain writing system or whatever. It’s your choice. Apologies if I didn’t make that clear!
Simplified chinese was initiated by Republic of china (taiwan) but finally implemented by the ccp in the communist china prior to their taiwan brothers. It ended up Republic of china (taiwan) keeping its original writing system.
Simplified Chinese characters works well in Singapore and Malaysia due to the multicultural environment in these two countries. Why ? Because it is quite common for Malays, Indians, Kadazan and other races families to send their children to learn Chinese characters, however they are not from the Chinese background and they 're alien to Chinese culture. In order to reduce the burden and break the cultural barrier, Simplified Chinese character's less strokes is preferrable and easier for the non Chinese etnic groups to understand and learn. As for the Chinese ethnic in Malaysia, learning and utilizing Traditional Chinese characters is more like a symbolic meaning of cultural identity and heritage, so despite simplified Characters is still in use on daily schools lessons, traditional Chinese characters are often used in Calligraphy lessons and other occasions.
Using simplified Chinese is just like typing "I C U" or "Thnx" in English. It is ok in casual texting but how do you think if these English abbreviations appear on New York Times? Yes, Chinese characters evolve over time. But each evolution stayed with the six principals (pictogram, ideogram, compound ideogram, phono-semantic compound, .derivative cognate, phonetic loan). I agree that some complicated characters require simplification. But Chinese simplification has lost them. Such a "casual" simplification also resulted in confusion, like when I see 后, I don't know it means "queen" or "after" without knowing context.
TC and SC have become politicized in mainland
Great video but I feel like you must have been kidding (?) when you said “who even follows stroke order?”. If any beginners are reading this comment, please know that if you don’t follow the correct stroke order, 99 times out of 100, everyone (including non-native speakers) can see that you failed to write the character correctly, and it will look clumsy af. Please don’t spend all that time memorizing characters only to have them look ridiculous. Just get it right. One last tip, if you learn traditional characters, you will be told that learning simplified afterwards will be much easier but it‘s *not* as easy as they make it sound. Sure, it’s probably easier that trying to learn traditional after learning simplified but it’s a mistake to think that learning traditional first makes learning simplified a breeze. It’s not.
I was kidding. What I meant to say was, I personally think everyone has their own personal stroke order. Sure yes, there are specific guidelines you should definitely follow (e.g. top to bottom), but just make sure you’re writing the characters in a consistent manner that becomes engrained in your procedural memory. Apologies if I didn’t make that point clear!
Chinese writing system has some similarities with the abjad system. Most characters have a sound sign which gives you hints of how to pronounce and shows some long lasting evolutions of sound changes.
1919年五四运动后，中文书写模式由文言文转换白话文，从字义转变成词义，学中文是看词义，而非简单字义。 你们说的“发”，“發”，“髮”，在文言文中是不同字义同音字，在中国大陆把它们统一成“发”，变成同音字不同词组，产生不同词义。 中国大陆受到基本教育能看懂繁体书写的文学，而繁体人无法懂得简体书写的文学。
Traditional Characters have an additional advantage not mentioned here: it is easier to remember rare words. For example rang 让 is a very common character, meaning "let" or "make" someone do sth. You use it all the time. The simplified uses shang 上 (above) for the phonetic part, while the traditional uses a more complicated radical 讓. Issue is: simplified uses the same complicated radical as the traditional in rarer words, like rang 壤 ("soil"). This rare character is easy for people who write traditional, since they practiced it writing the common 讓 meaning "let". Learning 壤 "soil" is practically 0 effort. There are many examples of this. In other words: learning 100 characters is faster in simplified, but I'm sure getting to something like 8000 and retaining them is much easier in traditional.
There just seems to be a lot of inconsistencies, both in simplified Chinese and post-war Japanese.
I haven't finished the video yet so maybe Q mentions this at the end but can someone link specific instances of Shakespeare using a singular "they"? I haven't read much Shakespeare yet and that sounds interesting
'promosm'
I don't understand this whole bathroom debate. Just make all the bathrooms unisex then add roof-high stalls to all of the toilets and urinals so that no-one can peak at the person inside. It wouldn't be that hard, just add stalls.
From an economics or time point of view... Why? Women's bathroom tailors to the nature of having to SIT DOWN and guess what? Construct the rooms for women, but men can have some dividers and also the wait for the restroom isn't! Men's lines take shorter as if men and women have to pee. The time isn't going to be the same and that's okay, but women's restroom have to take realize that... If people are having to take a dump. Well... It's crowded. Uni-sex restrooms are simply bad options in this context. Telling MtF to use the male restroom is still better than using women's restrooms because in the context of restrooms, the "simply have to pee " matters, doesn't matter. Also putting men that barely transitioned into women's restrooms is asking for harassment issues. The only way to make it safe for a very small minority is in workplaces to have bathroom cards or make them pay a fee just to make it work isn't okay. Restrooms aren't for one person, but many... If want more uni-sex restrooms, then you fund those please, put your money where your mouth is. Urinals are easier to maintain than toilets, then have to modify rooms and what not. MtF should go to the Men's Restroom and FtM go to the women's restroom to avoid conflict as both of these are asking for harassments that are worse off as restrooms have to be tailored around parents, women, and men to save time. Also janitors have to spend more time in women's restrooms. So unisex restrooms aren't practical when there is a whole lot of people in one area. Women's restrooms also come with extra stuff like a place to help change a baby's diaper that may or may not be clean.
其实也就是大篆与小篆的区别，汉字从甲骨文开始就一直在简化
Japan used to have more Traditional Chinese based Kenji, but after ww2 Americans found it to difficult to understand so they “canceled” some of them Korea was using Traditional Chinese for the longest time, they completely throw it away in the 70s just because they want to distance themself with the Chinese. One of the newest and efficient language there is Understandable policy for both side, But if only they keep them, we can better understand different culture in a more profound way easily
I have a question, do you know how many characters in Japanese that were borrowed from Chinese are simplified? Like, a percentage I guess? I’m trying to learn both languages and I want to do it as efficiently as possible so if it’s a low percentage I’m going to stick with learning traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese is objectively better than traditional in practical use and objectively worse culturally
Stroke order also can have some variance. I've seen different "official" stroke orders from taiwan, mainland, and hong kong guides. And then u add on top of that the Japanese kanji stroke order 😅
When I started learning Chinese, it was on Taiwan, so I learned the Traditional characters. My teachers took the time to explain what each character/character portion was meant to represent. I thought it was fun, but didn't realise until later that it REALLY helps when you run across a character you don't know - you can sort of suss it out. The Simplified characters are great, but when you run across characters you don't know, you can be left in the dark a bit (and sorry, not being a native speaker, I don't always grasp the context so well). So... personally I stick with Traditional - plus it's what all my Taiwanese in-laws use. I also use British spelling for my English, even though I live in the US now, so I guess I'm old fashioned LOL
There is a simple solution: drop ideograms and start using an alphabet or at least a well-designed syllabary. Koreans have a perfect example of a constructed writing system.
发 from 髪 and 發 are disgusting enough i had to use trad over simplified
Get this man some subscribers
Japanese and Korean recently "discarded" traditional-scripts. China is second-generation simplified. Culture of chinese = Progress is to be able to adapt and be flexible. = abilities and capabilities producing over achievers = establish good baselines (good grades and no excuse) leading to spurts and accelerated learning later in life (depart from other cultures) = ... Debate on what to not-learn = bad words, negative words (automatic society teach 社会大学) Debate on right and wrong = 错别字，同音字，万事无绝对，。。。 Debate on how to insult with simplified/traditional scripts = gongfu character strokes after age of 40. Debate on 诗情画意 (origination of characters)，饮诗作对，... Debate on how to lose to others = ... When enemy want to be right... yes, they are right. We are both, all, many, more, ...
Japanese and Korean recently "discarded" traditional-scripts. China is second-generation simplified. Culture of chinese = Progress is to be able to adapt and be flexible. = abilities and capabilities producing over achievers = establish good baselines (good grades and no excuse) leading to spurts and accelerated learning later in life (depart from other cultures) = ... Debate on what to not-learn = bad words, negative words (automatic society teach 社会大学) Debate on right and wrong = 错别字，同音字，万事无绝对，。。。 Debate on how to insult with simplified/traditional scripts = gongfu character strokes after age of 40. Debate on 诗情画意 (origination of characters)，饮诗作对，... Debate on how to lose to others = ... When enemy want to be right... yes, they are right. We are both, all, many, more, ...
traditional chinese is more easier to understand compared to simplified chinese. traditional chinese is more context compared to simplified chinese.
3:55 zhuyin is also used to type out traditional characters