Remembering Characters 2

(note: if you are reading this in an RSS reader, you probably won't be able to see the pinyin tooltips, in which case you should click on the link to the original post.)

集 (gather; collection; volume)

The top part is 隹 （a kind of short-tailed bird), you probably know it already as the main part of 谁 (who).

The bottom part is 木 which here depicts a tree.

The original form of this character showed 3 of these birds (a gathering or collection) sitting on top of the tree: 雧 (if you can't make it out, try increasing your browser's text size in the View menu)

Related words:
集合 (gather together)
集会 (gathering; assembly)
集中 (concentrate; focus)

and another place you'll see this character is on your Chinese DVD collections, where it means episode (not to be confused with 季 (season), which has the same pronunciation.)

i.e. if you want to buy Lost Season 1, you need to look for 迷失 第一季, and when you look on the disc it might say 1 - 4 集 (episodes 1-4).

So when you're struggling to remember how to write the character for gather, just think of a gathering of birds in a tree and it will all come flooding back. (Remember there's only one bird now, not three - they had to kill off the other two . . . population control . . . or something.)

Tags: mandarin, chinese, chinese characters, etymology, language, china