I gotta read stuff to get my adderall to kick in before I can do real work, so here’s my attempt at a primer on the Chinese writing system:
“How do they have a separate character for every single word??” They don’t: each character represents one idea, one morpheme, one unit of meaning in a word.
Unbreakable in English has 3 morphemes: un, break, and able, each adding meaning. In Chinese characters that word is 不可破, which each mean no, able, & break, individually.
Like break and -able, some characters can be their own words and some can’t.
Just as westerners often think that each character = 1 full word, Chinese people often don’t realize that each English word can be many elements smushed together. Someone learning English might see antidisestablishmentarianism as one insanely complex character, rather than 6 morphemes in a trenchcoat.
We need to make an Antidisestablishmentarianism character for the most insane stroke order ever conceived by man
Ok I went and googled, and “most complex character” has multiple claimants, just like “longest word” in English. I present to you:
Nàng - stuffed nose, 36 strokes. Claimed to be the biggest word in common usage.
Zhé - an archaic word meaning noisy, which is never used today. It’s also dragon 4 times, which I think is a great etymology. 64 strokes, but isn’t it really 16x4?
Biáng - a specific type of noodle from Shaanxi. Some say it’s “not real Chinese” or was just made up by a clever noodle seller. One wonders how anyone read it, if so. 58 strokes.
Finally, the word/character that has the antidisestablishmentarianism reputation in China:
Huáng - 172 unholy strokes. No one even knows what it means! Historians and linguists have tried to trace it back, but no luck yet. It might just be a nonsense “word” used as a charm, like the SATOR square. How does it even have a known pronunciation, if no one knows its meaning?
