The Secret Dots Hidden in Chinese Characters

hi hello everyone welcome to daily three characters in season one of the daily three character series you've already met these three characters shui, shui, water, bing, bing, ice and huo, huo, fire their ancient oracle bone script forms looked like this but do you know what radicals they become in modern Chinese characters have you ever noticed these patterns in Chinese characters bing, ice has two dots, he, he has three dots, re, re, hot has four dots underneath is that just a coincidence actually these dots reveal a hidden system that has existed for thousands of years once you understand it you will be able to guess the meanings of many Chinese characters let's find out why three dots mean water let's start with the character water in ancient Chinese writing it looked like a flowing river with streams branching off from the main current as writing evolved people simplified shui when it appeared inside other characters it became this like three dots the famous three dot water radical whenever you see this three dot water radical the character is often related to water for example he, he, river hai, hai, sea, hu, hu, lake, xi, xi, wash, you, you, swim the three dots act like a clue saying this character has something to do with water two dots mean ice now look at bing, ice notice the two dots on the left this is called the ice radical ancient Chinese people understood that ice is simply frozen water so the ice radical actually developed from the water symbol over time two dots came to represent ice cold freezing examples include bing, ice, leng, cold, dong, frozen whenever you see these two dots think something related to cold four dots mean fire now let's move from cold to hot the character huo, huo, fire originally looked like rising flames when the fire became part of other characters it often changed into this four dots at the bottom these four dots represent burning flames characters containing four dots are often connected to heat fire cooking for example hot cooked cooked hot cooked boil burn whenever you see these four dots think something related to heat or fire you can remember it like this two dots ice three dots water four dots fire two dots equal ice three dots equal water four dots equal fire ancient Chinese didn't create characters randomly they built meaning directly into the writing system that's why many Chinese characters are surprisingly illogical the next time you see a Chinese character look for the dots two dots often means cold three dots often means water four dots often means fire these small marks are actually ancient clues that help reveal a character's meaning and once you learn to recognize them Chinese characters become much easier and much more fascinating to understand