Richard sears, who is 6 1 year-old, impressed many people in China because of his website "Chinese etymology". How does a trick in the professional field win the admiration of the public? The reporter conducted an interview on this matter.
Foreigners' entrepreneurship
20 years of Chinese character research and collation, free of charge.
If you want to find out the source of a word, enter Chinese characters in this website, and then click "etymology". Various versions of this word, such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jinwen and Xiaozhuan, will be listed in front of you.
The reporter randomly entered the word "dragon", and the traditional, unfamiliar, intentional and simplified methods of the word, as well as the explanations of Cantonese, Taiwanese, English pronunciation and oral interpretation of the word were presented one by one. In addition, there are ***9 1 glyphs in turn, which are "Liushu seal", "Jinwen seal" and "Oracle bone inscriptions". The past life of "Dragon" is clear at a glance.
On the homepage of the website, richard sears wrote: "What you see here is the result of my efforts in the past 20 years. The goal is to put the etymological data of Chinese characters online for everyone to use. " In the English explanation, he also introduced why we should study the etymology of Chinese characters: 1972 When I was 22 years old, I had to challenge the writing of 5,000 words and 60,000 combinations of Chinese characters when I was studying Chinese reading and writing in Taiwan Province Province. Chinese characters are composed of many strokes, and there seems to be no logical relationship between them. By chance, I found that by understanding the original meaning and form of a word, we can clearly understand the evolution process of a word step by step. Unfortunately, no English book can fully explain the etymology of Chinese characters, and even no Chinese book can clearly explain the etymology of Chinese characters. In my opinion, finding out the etymology is a research topic that can accurately understand each Chinese character, and writing this research topic in English should also be of great benefit.
On June 3rd, 65438, the netizen "grassroots fart people" introduced richard sears in Weibo, calling him "20 1 1 a foreigner who touched China". As of yesterday, this Weibo has been reprinted more than 22,000 times. "Shocked! How much patience this requires! " Represents the voice of most netizens.
Scholar analysis
Domestic related achievements have long affirmed the learning value of the website.
How can a professional Chinese etymology website be quickly welcomed by the public? The reporter consulted Lu Liehong, vice president of the College of Literature of Wuhan University.
Lu Liehong introduced that the Jin Jia Dictionary of Zhuanli and the Chinese Dictionary published in China in the last century have authoritative textual research and introduction on the source of each Chinese character. In addition, Taiwan Province Province has also done a lot of related electronic work, and there are also websites dedicated to the electronization of China classics or ancient Chinese characters, such as Han Dian.
In many comments on this matter, many people associate this matter with domestic academic circles, and there are many criticisms of the latter; Some netizens also said, "I admire this uncle's selfless spirit, and I admire those unknown scholars who rummaged through and sorted out these ancient characters from bronzes, animal bones and ancient books. It's not that no one in China is doing anything. I just hope that there will be more such people in the future. "