On April 2nd, 2019，Confucius Institute at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University invited Dr.Feng Haicheng(Igor Radev), a young sinologist from North Macedonia, to conduct a special lecture entitled The Six methods of Creating Chinese Characters. Both Chinese and North Macedonian dean of CI, Prof. Liao Wei and Prof. Vlatko Stoilkov attended and hosted this lecture. Around 30 people were present, including teachers and students from CI and other people from North Macedonia. There were frequent interactions and heated discussions during the lecture.
Prof. Liao first introduced Dr. Feng Haicheng’s research direction and his academic achievements, extended sincere gratitude and warm welcome to Dr. Feng and wish this lecture a complete success. At the same time, Prof. Liao also expressed his welcome and gratitude to the teachers and students present. He hoped that through this lecture, Chinese learners can share their learning experience, clear the learning obstacles and be answered some doubts to learn Chinese better and feel the charm of Chinese.
The lecture was divided into three parts. First, Dr. Feng introduced in detail the nature of Chinese characters, mainly discussing whether Chinese characters are ideograms, vocabulary/morpheme characters, syllables, etc.; then he introduced the function and formal structure of Chinese characters, mainly by inviting audience to write simple Chinese characters to illustrate the concept of parts and strokes; finally, the audience discussed in detail the Xu Shen’s six-method Chinese theory, by citing 木, 山, 嶺, 信, 考, 来. These examples vividly explained the self-explanatory characters(指事字), pictographic characters（象形字）, pictophonetic characters（形声字）, associative compounds（会意字）, mutually explanatory characters（转注） and borrowed characters（假借）, which led the audience to nod and enlightened. At the questioning stage after the lecture, Dr. Feng also shared his experience of learning Chinese and discussed the differences and characteristics of Chinese dialects.
At last, Prof. Vlatko Stoilkov expressed his sincere gratitude to Dr. Feng, and made a summary that this lecture was a complete success on behalf of CI.
As a form of ideogram, Chinese characters are endowed with particular charm, but it also increases difficulties for foreign learners to understand.Inviting local sinologist from North Macedonia to give a lecture can conduct deeper, more comprehensive communication and exploration with students. By answering students’ doubts, difficulties in learning are cleared and students understand Chinese better. Also, it helps to promote linguistic and cultural exchanges between China and North Macedonia.
(By Wenjiahui, Wu Yingjuan)