• infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    First of all it’s just Chinese. Mandarin is one (Most common one) of several spoken dialects but they’re all written with the same hanzi (symbols). At least, that’s my understanding.

    Second, as far as I can tell this really is a Chinese linear algebra joke. The left side is just the five elements of Chinese philosophy (Metal, wood, water, fire, soil), and the right side seems like it might be people’s names? They’re unintelligible enough to me that I assume they’re names. But the names are constructed of hanzi that use the same radicals (Brush strokes) as the five elements, combined with each other according the the 2D matrix. I wish I knew what the names were but, I’m a beginner student.

    • laserm@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      I think that the elements in the final matrix are just the characters in the operands put next to each other (like in math we put a to signify a*b, they put 金 金 together to make up… whatever is that character in row 1, column 1 of the final matrix.