You Have to Be Crazy to Get Married
Posted by Jordyne Wu on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 @ 09:07 PM
The following is a guest post by Jordyne Wu (@jordyne), famous author of the Blog on Shanghai and China on jordyne.com, and HubSpot business development executive.
My favorite Chinese character is 婚 (=hun1 = to marry/marriage). Like many Chinese characters, it is actually composed of two different words: one that indicates sound and one that indicates meaning.
The right character, 昏 (=hun1) is a word in itself. It is the same sound and tone as 婚 (=hun1) so is meant to give people a phonetic hint. Except this 昏 (=hun1) means "confused; muddle-headed; to lose consciousness."
The left character, 女 (=nu3) is the Chinese character for female or woman. This radical is meant to give the character meaning-- that the word 婚 has something to do with women.
So, put the two together and "to marry/marriage" literally means, "you have to be crazy to get married to a woman" or "women must be crazy to get married"-- both probably true.
Those ancient Chinese... clever, wise and a sense of humor!
