'avatarian'

i'm sorry but it was so jarring to see them all using this stupid fantasy language in the ATLA movie.

like dont get me wrong i love a conlang im literally a conlanger but this isnt a conlang this is a cipher of english

^ the phonetic inventory of english when it was announced, i thought this 'Avatarian' was just gonna be for Seven Havens, and i was already sad about that. The dilution of culture, the loss of real Chinese calligraphy in favor of essentially English. I was worried that Seven Havens was gonna feel too much like generic western fantasy instead of the Avatarverse... But now that it's in the Avatar Aang movie, it really makes no sense, because in Korra they literally use Chinese characters!

so in the Aang movie literally everything is in Avatarian, there's not a Chinese character in sight. It's a retcon. I understand there's an argument that Avatar pulls from a wide variety of cultures and so it deserves its own 'neutral' writing system rather than being 'biased' towards Chinese. But replacing the Chinese characters with the made-up English cipher serves to erase culture from the universe, not add to it. (Not to get too in the weeds here but imo this is a case of Sinocentrism being used as a pretext for Sinophobia...)

If they want more cultures to be represented, they could just include other scripts! They could have included writing in the air temples in Tibetan or Sanskrit or Pali, for instance! That would be incredible! But don't completely erase hanzi from the world! Chinese influence is still a part of Avatar, and Chinese characters and calligraphy are a huge part of the history of writing in East Asia! It just gives me a feeling that they want to lean away from Chinese culture, which is really disappointing. As a Chinese-American kid, I grew up on ATLA. To me ATLA is very quintessentially Asian-American. It was a gateway to my dad introducing me to wuxias and Chinese dramas, and the influences that these had on Avatar are very clear! I love seeing the work of translator and calligrapher Dr. Siu-Leung Lee in the original series and Korra, and I wish that this was carried forward in the new stuff they did! It just feels like doing it is too hard for them. Asian culture is too hard. Let's just create our own knock-off fantasy version that we own, so we can do whatever we want with it.

In summary I MISS THIS:

There's something very sinister, yet on brand for whiteness, about promoting an entire series on the notion that you're being "authentic" to East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, etc) cultures in a fantasy series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, and then, over twenty years later, ditch one aspect of authenticity (the language) for a made-up conlang you decided to call ..."Avatarian".

Simplified Chinese characters vs. Japanese shinjitai

I had always heard that Japanese has simplified kanji, kind of like how Chinese has simplified characters. They are called shinjitai (新字体). When I traveled to Japan (knowing Chinese but not knowing any Japanese), I instantly began noticing shinjitai and comparing them to simplified characters.

It was fascinating how I was able to understand some shinjitai instantly, whereas others took more time to decode. Some are actually identical to simplified Chinese characters. Below are all the shinjitai I noticed on my trip. This has been in my drafts for ages...!

Simplified in Japanese only

(Order: traditional / shinjitai)

Same simplification in both languages

(Order: traditional - simplified/shinjitai)

Different simplifications in each language

(Order: traditional - simplified - shinjitai)

In case you're curious what is written here it's 推 Tuī.

Searching my trusty dictionary says there's at least 10 different meanings.

It seems most likely that 5-6 is the intended reading here, knowing S Corp's literary use of words.

I’m in Xi'an right now. This is my first time visiting China, and one of the many things that surprised me here is that the traditional characters are everywhere, even though the simplified characters are of course more common. I’ve seen characters like 國, 長, 華, 興, 馬, 門, and so on in logos and on gates, signs, etc. 中國 (中国 Zhōngguó, the Chinese name for China) and 長安 (长安 Cháng'ān, the old name for Xi'an 西安) are pretty common.

The gate at the entrance of Yongxingfang (永興房/永兴房), a popular food street in Xi'an

長安 written in the grass script; notice how the 安 resembles the Japanese hiragana あ

Hepingmen (和平門/和平门), one of the gates of the Xi'an City Wall

I like the rules of reading hiragana, katakana, and romaji. Makes sense. Kanji not so much but they took that from the chinese.

Ive already learned 花 (hana/hua). One more kanjihanzi and I'll be able to write that queers name better than he can.

Beginner Resources: Studying Hanzi

Are you starting to learn Chinese? Are you trying to figure out how to approach studying hanzi?

First, I would suggest you read some short article that explains radicals in hanzi. Those are the components that 'spell' the hanzi character, there's not very many, and they can often help you guess the meaning or pronunciation of a hanzi you run into. Here is a list of Chinese radicals on Berlitz.com so you can get some familiarity with what they look like, their pronunciation, meaning, and some example hanzi that have those radicals. This Chinese Character Radicals wikipedia article explains how radicals can sometimes contribute a meaning or sound to the hanzi. I suggest reading through both of these articles fully, and saving them to reference later. You do not need to memorize, or spend more than a couple hours reading these. Just having a basic familiarity with what radicals are, and what they contribute to a hanzi, will be helpful as you learn hanzi.

For Chinese beginners, this is still absolutely my favorite study resource for learning hanzi. The book teaches 800 common hanzi, from HSK 1-3, and it uses mnemonic stories it provides you (so you don't have to come up with stories on your own - unlike Heisig) to teach meanings and pronunciation and tone. After studying this book, it's achievable to keep using the same kind of mnemonic story strategy used in this book to keep learning hanzi on your own. That's what I did. This book got me from 0 hanzi knowledge, to enough to read graded readers (I read Mandarin Companion and graded readers sold on Pleco app), and then from there I'd picked up enough additional hanzi to start reading the Newcomer/Beginner stories suggested on Heavenly Path Notion Site's recommendations. (I jumped into reading harder stuff way faster than I perhaps should have, and eventually went back and read some of the Newcomer/Beginner stuff Heavenly Path recommends such as TuTu DaWang 禿禿大王).

Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters; Includes All Characters for the AP & HSK 1-3 Exams

There is also an anki deck, with mnemonic stories provided, to keep studying hanzi if that method works well for you and you need a little more aid for a while before moving onto learning hanzi entirely on your own. This is the anki deck I used for around ~500 hanzi when I was trying to speed up my hanzi recognition, since I jumped into reading BL webnovels pretty fast (faster than I probably should have lol): Mnemonics - 3018 Simplified Chinese Hanzi

There is also a traditional version of that anki deck: Mnemonics - 3035 Traditional Chinese Hanzi