04 It’s a Bright Day for Hanmoji ☀️🌙
The sun is rising☀️ the moon is bright 🌙 the Hanmoji Handbook launch is in sight!
Can you believe it?! At long last, The Hanmoji Handbook launches this week!
Check it out starting Tuesday, August 30, in Canada the US and Thursday, September 1 in the United Kingdom! If you’ve pre-ordered it online, you should be getting your copy soon, or swing by your local bookstore or library to pick one up. We hope you love it as much as we enjoyed making it.
This is Hanmoji Puzzles, your weekly dose of emoji word puzzles inspired by The Hanmoji Handbook. And don’t worry — you don’t need to speak Chinese at all in order to play along. You just need a love for emoji and be curious about how language works!
🧩 This week’s puzzle
What do you think these emoji (and emoji combinations) represent in Chinese?
☀️
🌙
☀️🌙
The answer to number three is actually one Chinese character that uses both number one and two as its building blocks (side by side in this case). These building blocks are usually called radicals. In other words, ☀️ and 🌙 represent either complete Chinese characters unto themselves, or they represent building block radicals that can be used to construct a more complex character.
One simple example of radicals in action uses 木, the Chinese character for wood or tree. If you put two of them side-by-side, it makes 林, a forest of (wood) trees.
🤔 Did you know? There are two types of radicals — semantic radicals and phonetic radicals — that make the written language tick. Get The Hanmoji Handbook for a deeper dive into this important concept in the Chinese language (page 29).
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🫢 Answers (spoilers ahead!)
☀️ stands for 日, which means sun.
日 (rì in Mandarin, jat6 in Cantonese), which we represent with the ☀️ emoji, is an example of a pictogram, or a written word that literally depicts what it’s describing. That’s not the case with all Chinese characters, but the sun is one of them. There are a few other emoji that contain the sun, like 🌞 and ⛅, suggesting its continued importance in society.
🤔 Did you know? Most Chinese words aren’t pictograms but instead are logograms, or symbols or signs that represent words. Get The Hanmoji Handbook for a deeper dive into this important concept in the Chinese language (page 11).
🌙 stands for 月, which means moon.
月 (yuè/jyut6) is also a pictogram. We chose the emoji 🌙 because it most represents the crescent-like shape of 月, but there are many other moon emoji, like 🌛 and 🌗. Like the sun, the moon continues to have an important place in society and culture, shining above us throughout the night.
☀️🌙 stands for 明, which means bright.
明 (míng/ming4) puts together moon and sun to create the word for “bright.” When the moon and sun come together, we have two important sources of light in the ancient world, helping make everything bright and clear.
If the word Ming sounds familiar, you might be thinking of NBA star and Chinese basketball executive Yao Ming, whose Chinese name is written 姚明 (Yáo Míng/Jiu4 Ming4). Recognize the 明 in his name?
🥳 Updates from our parent project, The Hanmoji Handbook
Join us online next Wednesday (August 31) at 7:30pm New York time for our launch day event on gather.town! Please get your free ticket here.
Our Toronto in-person book launch has just been announced! Come meet us at Another Story Bookshop on the evening of September 16. More details here.
Our book comes out very, very soon. This is your last chance to pre-order on IndieBound 🇺🇸, Shop Local 🇨🇦, Blackwell’s 🌏, Barnes & Noble 🇺🇸, or Indigo 🇨🇦.
Hanmoji Puzzles is a spin off of The Hanmoji Handbook: A Guide to Learning Chinese Through Emoji, which you should absolutely pre-order today 😗. This newsletter is a project by Jason Li, An Xiao Mina and Jennifer 8. Lee.