The word "man" in Chinese ideogram is "人," which is also part of my Chinese name 朱澤人. While most people think "人" comes from the image of a man standing with two legs spreading apart (this word is quite neutral, as you can see there is no additional "leg"), I think the image should be a man sitting astride (who would stand like that?).
Chinese writing has gone through thousand years of abstraction, and it is now much closer to the alphabet than it is to oral communication. But in some of its characters, one can still see the words are the pictures, as in 人.
As Leonard Shlain wrote in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, "Content supersedes form in the West; form is an in dispensable adjunct to content in the East. One must be artistic to write Chinese well." For a person who used to think in pictures, Chinese ideogram might be more easy to read than alphabet. For example, some of my friends call me "two-legs man," for that image can be easily formed when looking at my name.
I've got a lot of awful nicknames because of "人". But one can see himself in his name. That's not bad!
Chinese writing has gone through thousand years of abstraction, and it is now much closer to the alphabet than it is to oral communication. But in some of its characters, one can still see the words are the pictures, as in 人.
As Leonard Shlain wrote in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, "Content supersedes form in the West; form is an in dispensable adjunct to content in the East. One must be artistic to write Chinese well." For a person who used to think in pictures, Chinese ideogram might be more easy to read than alphabet. For example, some of my friends call me "two-legs man," for that image can be easily formed when looking at my name.
I've got a lot of awful nicknames because of "人". But one can see himself in his name. That's not bad!
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