Thursday 4 May 2017

男 | nán

In Mandarin Chinese, (Pinyin: nán 🔊) means “male” or “son”. A combination with “people”, 男人 (nánrén 🔊), means “(an adult) man” or “husband”.

is made of two ideograms: “field” and “strength” (this latter character could have evolved from a pictogram of a plough). In old times, ploughing (and working the field in general) was a man’s job. In most of the historical forms of , the “field” is positioned either on top or to the left of the “plough”. Also, in an alternative character the “field” is on the left side. The “plough” part looks a bit like lower-case letter n which helps me to remember that nán is a “man” which starts with n.

More photos related to men and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

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