More completely new sinographs from Hong Kong

September 8, 2020 @ 2:27 pm · Filed by under Language and politics, Writing systems

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From @togetherfightingdisease on Instagram:


Since these are all totally new, invented characters, I can't be 100% certain that I know any of them, but upon first glance, I think that I grasp the intended meaning of all of them.

Here are a couple of examples of how one might explain these novel characters.

Formed by taking the right side of both constituent characters of zhènjìng 鎮靜 ("calm; cool; poised; imperturbable; dispassionate; equanimous; passionless; self-collected; cool-headed; level-headed self-possessed")

A mashup of the two constituent characters of huǎng máng 谎忙 ("lie").

Enthusiastic readers may wish to try their hand at the rest of the neographisms* pictured above.

—

*Cf. Spanish neografismo, Russian неографизм.

Selected readings

September 8, 2020 @ 2:27 pm · Filed by under Language and politics, Writing systems


3 Comments

  1. Terpomo said,

    September 8, 2020 @ 3:44 pm

    The top right looks like 逆疫 (though that isn't a word in the dictionary I'm using.)
    Middle one looks like some combination of 壓 and 押?
    Bottom center looks like a combination of 損 and 選.
    That's as far as I got before realizing that they're explained in the text off to the side.

  2. Gabriel Faure said,

    September 8, 2020 @ 5:34 pm

    I particularly like this rendering of 齊上齊落: https://www.instagram.com/p/CApjoVeB4rp/

    Re: 疫逆, note that 逆 and 疫 are homophones in Cantonese (while they are not in Mandarin).

  3. John Rohsenow said,

    September 8, 2020 @ 7:47 pm

    I can see that it would be easy to use these "new" characters on hand-written posters, but how does one do it on line,or in printed form?
    One would have to "zao zi", (Lit. 'construct [a] character') out of various component parts, which is doable, but not convenient.

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