Visualising Ai

About

‘Visualising Ai’ is the outcome of a year long research on the romanisation of Chinese for the NTU Undergraduate REsearch on CAmpus (URECA) program.

It is an exploration of the limits of the romanisation of Chinese to reflect nuanced meanings. As the composition and strokes of a Chinese character play an important part in reflecting its meaning, this publication deconstructs 47 words with the same romanisation ‘Ai’ by visualising its graphic components.  

Motivation 

This project was motivated by my interest in linguistics. I was first inspired when I realised that ‘Ai’ meaning love and ‘Ai’ meaning sorrow has the same romanisation ‘Ai’ and was intrigued by how words with the same romanisation can mean vastly different things. 

Interesting Find 

Although the most familiar word with the romanisation ‘Ai’ is Love which has a positive conotation, there are actually more words that reflect a negative meaning.