> Another interesting aspect of traditional Chinese characters is that complex words are expressed by combining simpler symbols. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 電腦. The first character represents "electricity", and the second character represents "brain". Which is really what a computer is, an electric brain.
That's nice, but I think most languages do this. It's not particular to Chinese. The word "computer" comes from "com-" (with/together) and "putare" (to reckon). Or "composition"; to position together. "compile"; to pile together, etc.
Right, but when learning English as a second language, they don't teach you "com" and "putare", because the roots are too far away and too diverse (Latin, Germanic) whereas in Chinese, it's often immediately obvious. Well, more often than in other languages. Most of it is still random-looking.
Well, that's the cool thing about Chinese - it's the Latin/Greek of East Asia :) It's to Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese what Latin/Germanic are to English, so there are less indirections.
That's nice, but I think most languages do this. It's not particular to Chinese. The word "computer" comes from "com-" (with/together) and "putare" (to reckon). Or "composition"; to position together. "compile"; to pile together, etc.