What’s in a (Chinese) photograph? AKA, how to talk about taking pictures in Chinese
The English word for “photograph” is made up of phos (meaning “light” in Greek) and graphe (meaning “drawing, writing” in Greek).
So in other words, a photograph is a drawing of light.
Which makes sense, because analog photos are literally made of light hitting a film and something something and yadda yadda and can you tell I’m not a photographer?
Anyways.
In Chinese, a photo is a 照片 (zhào piàn), and is pretty similar to the English:
- 照 (zhào): means to “illuminate, shine, reflect” or, alternately, it can also mean “according to.”
- 片 (piàn): means a “piece” or a “slice” and refers to the piece of film upon which an image is captured.
In other words, when light illuminates the piece of film in a certain way, you get an image…a photograph.
So you can see how words are often formed, in Chinese as well as English (or Greek, as the case may be) based on how the thing is formed in real life.
Cool, eh?
Bonus tip:
The word 照 (zhào) can also be a verb meaning “to take a picture.” As in 照相 (zhàoxiàng) literally: to take a likeness/appearance (of something or someone)
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