Turtle Characters

Pippa said: "I wish to suggest that, fundamentally speaking, Chinese characters function much like the Greek or Latin word roots in English. But the crucial difference is that Chinese characters can theoretically bond with each other in an infinite number of ways, and thus it is simply impossible to come up with an exhaustive (or near-exhaustive) dictionary, especially for words in Classical Chinese, which is a for-writing-only language with lots of ellipses. There can only be reference books on the characters, which can only serve as compendia of etymologies, and vastly incomplete ones at that.

"A hyperbolic demonstration: 'It would look like this' would look like 'Quasi visus wolde' (that's three characters) or something like that in Classical Chinese. But the problem is that the same sentence could also be interpreted, depending on the immediate context and on the various historical and literary allusions surrounding each of the three characters as well as the particular text in question, as: 'I would appear almost visible to you' or '[Her face] used to look as if [the summer sun had burned it thoroughly - an obvious literary allusion, completely elided because every reader is assumed to be familiar with it].'

"Well, of course, I'm exaggerating, but do you see what I'm saying?"

Poppo yawned and said: "Maybe, maybe not. I'm going for a swim." Poppo jumped into the pond, startling a turtle and her school of fish.