*How to read Chinese character: More characters related to characters 日 and 月
We have come across the compound character 明 by combining 日 and 月 in the previous chapters. We can produce
more compound characters in this way. For example, two 日 becomes 昌(chɑ̄ng), three 日 becomes 晶(jīng), two 月 becomes 朋. Is it funny?
日 means the sun and the extended meaning of the sun can be about light, time, heat, etc. Therefore, we can use 日 as
a root to produce many other compound characters, for example, 早, 晚, 時,昨. All these characters are related to
the meaning of time.
We produce many new compound characters by putting the character 日 and 月 as the root or radical. For example, 星
is the compound character of 日 and 生 while 期 is the compound character of 其 and 月. The radical 日
of 星 shows that the nature of the character is related to “star” just like the sun; and the 生 of 星 shows the similar
sound of the character since 生 is similar to 星. The 月 of 期 shows the nature of “time” while the 其 shows the similar
sound.
The character 星 originally means “star”, but when we put the 星 with 期 together, they become a new compound word
with two characters. 星期(week).In this situation, the meaning of 星 has changed from “star” to “time”.
But there are exceptions sometimes. Though the compound character 朋 is made of two 月, we cannot find any relation with the character of 月. Do you know the meaning of 朋?It means friend!