Hanzi of the day! 風

Hey Guys! In this hot summer day we are looking towards some refreshing light breeze... Or more in general, towards some wind...

Today's character 風 fēng is a phono-semantic character meaning wind. Its semantic component is 虫, meaning an insect, which is a bit weird, isn't it... What do insects have to do with wind?

I mean, other than those clouds of locusts...

The Chinese believed in fact that the wind brought insects (or in fact any kind of animal since the glyph for insects originally meant a venomous snake...)

In their defense both characters' historical forms are really cute, especially wind' (the ones on the bottom) with the one eyed minions...

But I digress... This character has also made its way into the western hemisphere under the guys of the word "typhoon", Chinese original 颱風, meaning, well, typhoon.

That's it for the day! Remember, the wind brings locusts, locusts eat crops and eaten crops cause famine!

Or maybe it's the damn sparrows eating the crops and causing famine... I guess we'll never know which one is it.

Nick

Image sources: pexels flickr wiktionary wiktionary pexels