How to say "I" in Chinese

My brother sent me this.
{translation in brackets like this}

有一個老外為了學好漢語，不遠萬里，來到中國，拜師于一位國學教授門下。第一天老外想挑一個簡單詞彙學習，便向老師請教英語「I」在漢語中應該如何說。
(A foreigner, wanting to learn Chinese, travels a long distance to China to find a Chinese Literature professor. On first day, the foreigner wants to start with a simple term. He asks the professor the Chinese equivalant of "I".)


老師解釋道：中國是一個官本位國家，當你處在不同的級別、地位，「I」也有不同的變化，就像：
(Teacher explains: Chinese respects status. As your rank or status changes, “I” also has the different form. For example:)


你們英語中的形容詞有原級、比較級、最高級一樣。比如，你剛來中國，沒有地位，對普通人可以說：「我、咱、俺、余、吾、予、儂、某、咱家、洒家、俺咱、本人、個人、人家、吾儂、我儂。」
(Like adjectives in English has different comparative degree, so is I. For instance, you being just came to China, do not have any status, you may use to an average person: “我、咱、俺、余、吾、予、儂、某、咱家、洒家、俺咱、本人、個人、人家、吾儂、我儂。”)


如果見到老師、長輩和上級，則應該說：「區區、僕、鄙、愚、走、鄙人、卑人、敝人、鄙夫、鄙軀、鄙愚、貧身、小子、小可、在下、末學、小生、不佞、不才、不材、小材、不肖、不孝、不類、走狗、牛馬走、愚小子、鄙生、貧生、學生、後學、晚生、?學、後生晚學、予末小子、予小子、餘小子。」
(If you see a teacher, an elder or a person at a higher authority, then should use:"區區、僕、鄙、愚、走、鄙人、卑人、敝人、鄙夫、鄙軀、鄙愚、貧身、小子、小可、在下、末學、小生、不佞、不才、不材、小材、不肖、不孝、不類、走狗、牛馬走、愚小子、鄙生、貧生、學生、後學、晚生、?學、後生晚學、予末小子、予小子、餘小子。")


等到你當了官以後，見到上級和皇帝，則應該說：「職、卑職、下官、臣、臣子、小臣、鄙臣、愚臣、奴婢、奴才、小人、老奴、小的、小底。」
After you become an official, when you see the higher authority and emperor, then should use: "職、卑職、下官、臣、臣子、小臣、鄙臣、愚臣、奴婢、奴才、小人、老奴、小的、小底"


見到平級，則可以說：「愚兄、為兄、小弟、兄弟、愚弟、哥們。」
(When you meet other colleague, you can use: "愚兄、為兄、小弟、兄弟、愚弟、哥們")


見到下級，則可以說：「爺們、老子、大老子、你老子、乃公。」
(In front of the subordinate, then may say: "爺們、老子、大老子、你老子、乃公")

如果你混得好，當上了皇帝或王爺，則可以說：「朕、孤、孤王、孤家、寡人、不轂。」
(If you become the amperor, you say:"朕、孤、孤王、孤家、寡人、不轂")

如果你不願意當官，只好去當和尚、道士，則應該說：「貧道、小道、貧僧、貧衲、不慧、小僧、野僧、老衲、老僧。」
(If you are not willing to be an official, and become a buddhist priest or taoist priest, then should say:"貧道、小道、貧僧、貧衲、不慧、小僧、野僧、老衲、老僧")


最後一點必須注意，一旦你退休了，便一下子失去了權利和地位，見人也矮了三分，只好說：「老朽、老拙、老夫、愚老、老叟、小老、小老兒、老漢、老可、老軀、老僕、老物、朽人、老我、老骨頭。」
(Last, once you have retired, then all of a sudden you have lost the right and the status, you had to call yourself: "老朽、老拙、老夫、愚老、老叟、小老、小老兒、老漢、老可、老軀、老僕、老物、朽人、老我、老骨頭")


上面一百零八種'I'，僅僅是男性的常用說法。更多的'I'明天講解。
(The above 108 kinds of 'I', is for the male only. More ' I' explanation tomorrow.)

老外聽了老師一席話，頓覺冷水澆頭,一個晚上沒有睡好覺。第二天一大早便向老師辭行：'學生、愚、不材、末學、走。'退了房間，訂了機票，回國去了。
(After hearing all these, the foreigner feels like a bucket of cold water has poured all over him. That night, he cannot sleep. Next day, he says to the professor: "學生、愚、不材、末學、走。" Checks out from the hotel, buys an airplane ticket, returns home.)

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 14

I came across this today.
一命二運三風水.
四積陰德五讀書.

This is one of the more difficult sentence to translate. First a little background of the source: According to Joseph Yu

Su Dong Po 蘇東坡 (a famous scholar in the Song 宋 Dynasty) came from a scholarly family. His father and his brother were also great scholars. One day, someone asked him the secret to pass examination to have academic achievement (考取功名). He (probably jokingly) said:

一命二運三風水
四積陰德五讀書.

In this sentence, you can see the first 5 numbers: 一二三四五. So you know this is a list. Using Joseph Yu's translation, it is

(1) Destiny
(2) Cycle
(3) Feng Shui
(4) Accumulation of hidden virtuous deeds
(5) Study books

The first three are difficult to change, the last two are something we can work hard on. That basically sums up my philosophy of life.

In the 5 elements, 命 belongs to 土 (earth)，運 belongs to 金 (metal)，風水 belongs to 水(water)，陰德 belongs to 木(wood). What is missing here is 火 (fire).

We belief that the 5 elements are inter-related. In order to change, we can accummulate more "virtuous deeds". We can also study. Wood and Fire reinforces each other and can change the rest.

I think the best translation may be "Opportunities present themselves only to those who are prepared".

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 13

In the last lesson, we learned how to associate the first set of the Chinese components and the keys which covered the Chinese philosophy of Yin/Yang and the Five elements. In this lesson, we skip the keys H to N because they associate with the shape of the Chinese characters which has to be covered in more details later. We will study the keys which associate with the human body part.

The first one is the key O which associates with the Chinese character 人 which means human or people. 人 is a pictograph with the central line denoting the trunk of the body and the two slant sides denoting the legs. The head is absorbed in the trunk in simplification of the writing. Peter uses the Italian word Omo which means man. I tend to use Ourself which is also people 人. Anyway. Now O is associated with Ourself who are people 人. By pressing the O key in Changjie, you get 人 displayed on the screen.

The next one is P which associates with the Chinese character 心, which means the heart. 心 is also a pictograph with the lower curve denoting the ventricles and auricles and the three strokes denoting the valves of the heart. Peter uses Pump to associate the function of the heart 心 with the key P. By pressing the P key in Changjie, you get 心 displayed on the screen.


The following one is Q which associates with the Chinese character 手, which means hand. 手 is also a pictograph with the fingers and the hand. Peter uses the word Quintet(te) which is an ensemble with five elements. In fact Quint is the Latin root for Five. So associating the hand with Five fingers with the Latine root Quint is very natural, isn't it? By pressing Q in Changjie, you get 手 displayed on the screen.

The final key is R which associate with the Chinese character 口, which means mouth. 口 is also a pictograph. This is quite obvious. Peter uses the word Round to associate R with 口. In fact, in Changjie, whenever a Chinese character with a rectangular shape enclosing other components inside the rectangle, the component 口 can be used. Thus by pressing R in Changjie you get 口 displayed on the screen.

As a summary, here are the associations again:
O for Omo or Ourself which means 人, people.
P for Pump which is 心, heart.
Q for Qunitette which is 手, hand.
R for round which is 口, mouth.

Now is the time to learn more combinations using what we have learned.
One O is people 人.
OAA, 人日日 is 倡, to propose or to lead.
OB, 人月 is 內, which is the word for inside. Please note here 月 has been extended to include the forms which are bounded by three sides in a rectangular shape without the two strokes inside.
OBO, 人月人 is 肉, which means meat. It can be regarded as a pictograph with a piece of meat hanging. the line at the top is the string to hang the meat.
OD, 人木 is 休, which means rest.
OF, 人火 is 伙, which means a gang of people
OG, 人土 is 仕, which is a respectful name for a learned person.
OGG, 人土土 is 佳, which means good.
OGD, 人土木 is 集 , which means gather.
OGR, 人土口 is 售, which means sell. Please note the upper part of the two characters. That is how Chinese hcaracters are formed. They use the same part 佳 as the top part and use other components below to form different characters with different meanings.
OOG, 人人土 is 坐, which means sit, with two people sitting on the ground.
OP, 人心 is 化, which means change. Please note that the character 心 has a variant shape simplified with only the ventricles and auricles. This shape will be used often.
OPD, 人心木 is 他, which means he. In older Chinese writing, people did not differentiate the male and female, but now this character is used mainly for male he. the female she is 她, put here as a reference.
OPP, 人心心 is 仳, which means separate or divorce.
OPPA, 人心心日 is 偕, which means a person together.
OPR, 人心口 is 佝, which means rickets.
OQ, 人手 is 年, which means year, a word you learned before.
OQO, 人手人 is 伕, which means porter or chauffeur
ORD, 人口木 is 保, which means guarantee. Please note that many of these word has the same left component which denotes human being or related to human being.

P, 心, which means heart.
PA, 心日 is 旨, Depending on the other characters forming different phases to mean different things, it can mean aim, purpose, Emperor’s desire.
PA, 心日 is 旬, means ten days. 上旬, 中旬 and下旬 are used to refer to the first, second and last ten days of the month. When it comes to mention about age, 旬 also means ten years. Please also note that 旬 and 旨 share the same code. There are many Chinese characters with the same Chnagjie code. That makes blind-touch typing a bit difficult.
POG, 心人土 is 惟, means only. It combines with other characters to mean different things, but always has the meaning of only. Say 惟一means the only one. Please note the variation of heart which is 心 originally is now the left side with a vertical stroke and two dots on both sides. This is called the vertical heart in Chinese characters.
POGF, 心人土火 is 憔, has the meaning of weary or worried. Note also the variant of the heart on the left side.
PP, 心心 is 比, means compete with two people competing. Note here the second variant of the heart 心.
PR, 心口 is 句, means sentence.

QC, 手金 is 扒, means climb. Note that the hand 手 has changed to a variant similar to this one才 but with the tick going from bottom left to top right. This is called the hand component which is always on the left hand side. In Chinese characters, you can see a lot of the characters are grouped according to the left side component. One example is the vertical heart in the previous paragraph. Other examples are the mouth component in the next paragraph.
QFQ, 手火手 is 拌, means mix
QGR, 手土口 is 拮, means puncture
QO, 手人 is 夫, means husband. This is the second variant with two vertical lines and a slant side. The lower slant side is a variant of the component 人. Only the right stroke is used. These two components form the character 夫.
QOA, 手人日 is 替, means replace. Two husbands are replaced in a daily basis.
QPA, 手心日 is 指, means finger.
QR, 手口 is 扣, means knot or button.
QRB, 手口月 is 捐, means donate.

R, 口
RAA, 口日日 is 唱, means sing. It has a mouth and uses the sound of the character 昌 which you learned in the previous lesson (12).
RC, 口金 is 只, means a piece when used as a particle, or only when used as an adverb. Note that only the upper two strokes of the character 金 is used. This is a simple variant using the upper part.
RC, 口金 is 叭, imitates the sound Ba. When used with 喇叭, it means loudspeaker or trumpet. Note that this is a character sharing the same Changjie code with 只. The 八is now put on the right side instead of below the mouth.
RD, 口木 is 呆, means stupid
RG, 口土 is 吐, means to spit. Note that we have learned some words with 土 on the right side. Can you still remember some of them?
RGG, 口土土 is 哇, also imitates the crying sound of a baby Wa.
ROB, 口人月 is 吶, means slow in speech when used in repetition 吶吶, or loud shouts in support吶喊.
ROD, 口人木 is 咻, to hush a baby.
ROG, 口人土 is 唯, A yes man saying yes, yes. 唯唯諾諾.
RP, 口心 is 叱, shout or yell.
RRR, 口口口 is 品, with many combinations to mean different things. It can mean product 產品, 作品. It can also mean taste 品嚐. It can refer to quality品質.
RRRD, 口口口木 is 噪, means noise or noisy.

As you can see, when you learn more Changjie components, you will be able to display more Chinese characters on the screen. This is a long lesson. Hope you will spend a bit more time on learning and memorizing the components and their variations.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 12

This lesson was written before, by during the uploading, it was gone somewhere in the wilderness. I have to rewrite it again.

I am very impressed by Albert's way of learning Chinese using computers as we are in the computer era. Chinese characters are ideograms which are depicted the things by using linear lines. Most Chinese characters are built using limited component parts and can be grouped into related words using the same component. Chinese children learn Chinese characters through a tedious process of recognising and writing by imitation. They often make mistakes by putting in the wrong components or some even reverse the components by putting in a mirror image. To learn Chinese efficiently, we should start with the components. Albert has mentioned about the sun, moon and the five elements, and Changjie input method. However, it is hard to remember the keys and their corresponding representations. Thanks to Mr. Peter Kwun Wing WONG of Marymount Secondary School in Hong Kong who invented a system to help his students to master the Changjie input method by associating the keys and the meanings. After learning this leasson, you should be able to remember the keys from A to G which were referred as the natural phenomena by Chu Bongfoo.
Key A represents the Chinese character and also a component 日. To remember this association, Peter used the method which are employed in typing lessons. He put the association as:
A for Apollo which is the god of the sun. So A for Apollo 日.
B for Banana which has the shape of the new moon 月.
C for Coin which is made of gold of metal 金.
D for Door which is made of wood 木.
E for Ebb which is the low tide, so it is related to water 水.
F for Fire which is easy 火.
G for Ground which is the Earth 土.
With the witty way by Peter, you now know the associations of the first seven keys. You can now do some blind-touch typing and learn some new words.

One 日 is the sun. Two 日 together is prosperity 昌. Three 日 together is crystal bright 晶. A 日 and a 月 together means both the sun and the moon, so it is very bright 明.
So by typing one A and a space, you get the sun. By typing two As and a space, you get prosperity. By typing three As and a space, you get crystal. By typing A and then B and a space, you get bright.


One 月 is the moon. Two 月 is friend who spent nights with you 朋. So typing two Bs and a space gives you friend.

There is not much on 金 which has simple combinations with the first seven components.

One 木 is a piece of wood. Two 木 means many trees. So it is a grove or small wood 林. Three 木 means a lot of trees. so it is a big forest 森. If the tree is very tall and large on top of the sun, it blocks the light and therefore cannot see anything 杳. If you put the woods on fire, you burn them 焚. A wood on the ground is the surname of a clan of Chinese people 杜. Here the Chinese uses the sound of one component to mean other things. The sound of ground 土 is used for the sound of the surname.

One 水 is water. Water and gold is 淦 which is the name of a river in China. Water and wood is 沐 which means bathing. Again, the sound of wood is borrowed for bathing. Wood and bath have the same sound. Water and two wood is 淋 which means pouring water over something.

One 火 is fire. Two 火 describes the burning hotness 炎. It is often used to describe hot weather. Fire and earth form the Chinese stove 灶 where the wok is to be put above it and fire inside below the wok.

One 土 is earth or ground. Two 土 is 圭 which is a piece of jade in the form of a sword used by the emperor to signify his standing. When used with 日 as in 日圭 means sun dial.

Now you have learn the associations:
A for Apollo the god of sun
B for Banana the shape of a new moon
C for Coin which is made of gold or metal
D for Door which is made of wood
E for Ebb which is water
F for Fire
G for Ground.

You have also learned that Many Chinese characters are formed by combining the components. Sun, moon, gold, wood, water, fire and earth are some of these components. Some Chinese words borrow the sound of some of these components. by making combinations, you have learned the following words:
日, 昌, 晶, 明, 朋, 金, 木, 林, 森, 杳, 焚, 杜, 水, 淦, 沐, 淋, 火, 炎, 灶, 土 and 圭.

I hope you enjoy this lesson and have learned as intended.

Cheers!

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 11

Today's lesson is bit different.
The is wooden block toy, whereas English words can be reformed to Chinese characters of the same meaning.

Here is one of them. Go to their website to see the rest.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 10

The first group of chinese radicals, according to the ChangJie Input method is "Philosophical group" consisting the words 日, 月, 金, 木, 水, 火, 土.

The first two: 日 and 月, being sun and moon respectively, represents the Yang 陽 and Yin 陰in the Chinese YinYang 陰陽 Etymology. Sun is also commonly known as 太陽 and moon is also occasionally refers to 太陰.

金木水火土 are the Five elements 五行 in Chinese philosophy.
金 literally means Gold and is generalized as metal [金屬]
木 is wood. 森林 means forest, lot of 木!
水 is water. But as a radical, it is usually appears as 3 dots on the left such as 海洋 [ocean].
火 means fire. 炒 is stir-fry and 炸 is deep fry when you talk about cooking.
Finally 土 is earth. 土地 means land.

Because YinYang and the 5 elements form the basis of a lot of Chinese concepts, they are radicals of many words. We shall look at some words with these radicals in the next lesson.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 9

I set out to do a "read/write" focus to learning Chinese. So far, I have explained some Chinese way of expressing ideas and have not given much information about how to input Chinese. Here it is.

The particular input method I am recommending is "ChangJie" method. Please review lesson 1 if you have not installed the input option.

ChangJie method (倉頡輸入法) was invented in the seventies by Mr Chu Bong-Foo (朱邦復) and has been in the public domain ever since. I met Mr Chu in the Nineties when he was working on hanzi 聚珍 Chinese operating system (My company in Hongkong helped in promoting this product) before it became public domain.

From Wikipedia about 朱邦復:

During the development of Cangjie method, Chu found that his invention is not only an input method, but also a character encoding method for computing systems. Unlike An Wang's encoding method of the time, or later methods such as Big5 and Unicode, Cangjie method dose not sort characters by their usage frequency, stroke count, or radical, but is based on their composition aspect and inspired by the "pictophonetic compounds" principle of Chinese.

Chu therefore began to develop a theory (which he would later call "Chinese DNA", "Alphabets of Chinese Language", or "Chinese character gene" theory). The theory states that the forms selected by Chu are the "genes" of Chinese. Proper arrangement of these "genes" can provide all functions of the characters. Therefore Cangjie method as a character encoding is very useful, since it contains not only an ordered set of characters, but also precise references of shapes, pronunciations and semantics of the characters. Therefore the system is an efficient base for a variety of Chinese information technology: smart dictionary; operating system and application software; programming language; hardware architecture of PC and embedded systems; and even strong artificial intelligence.[3][4]

Here is the basic mapping with an English (US) keyboard with the "Chinese Genes". Please study the input table from Wikipedia Cangjie method [Wikipedia chooses to spell 倉頡輸入法 as Cangjie method and I am using the original spelling used by Mr Chu and the general public.]

Now, try using your keyboard and ChangJie method to type in some Chinese.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 8

In English, you need to pay attention to the first sentence when you ask a question.
For example:

You like American food, don't you?
You don't like French food, do you?

In Chinese, we don't need to pay attention to the first part of the sentence. They are

你喜歡美國食物, 是嗎?
你不喜歡法國食物, 是嗎?

Or you can say
你喜不喜歡美國食物? (Do you, or do you not like American food?)

Please also notice that Chinese answer depends on the question, not the answer.
For example,
You like American food, don't you?
No. [I don't].
is translated to
你喜歡美國食物, 是嗎?
不.

But
You don't like French food, do you??
No, I don't.
is translated to
你不喜歡法國食物, 是嗎?
是. {Indicating that I agree with the question, i.e. I don't like French food).

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 7

In this lesson, we shall learn some more words from machine translation and look at some bad Chinese.

Machine translation of English into Chinese (such as Babel Fish Translation) produces highly "Englishised" Chinese. For example, the following paragraph

I live in Melbourne Australia. It is in the Southern hemisphere. Here, the weather changes rapidly. We have four seasons in one day: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

is translated to

我住在墨爾本澳洲。它是在南半球。這裡, 天氣迅速地改變。有四個季節在一天: 春天、夏天、秋天和冬天。

The proper way should be

"我住在南半球澳洲墨爾本. 這裡天氣改變迅速,一日四季: 春夏秋冬."

First, when referring to places, we start from the largest to the more precise: 南(south) 半球(hemisphere) 澳洲(Australia) 墨爾本(Melbourne).

迅速地改變 is Englishized Chinese. In Chinese, we should change the word-order between verb and adverb 改變迅速. 迅速地 is the "adverbizing" version of 迅速. In Chinese, we don't distinguish between such grammatical variations.

春天 is a day in Spring. For season, we can just say: 春 or 春季.

Again, there is no need to add "adjustion" between nouns in the same category. So, we don't say 春夏秋和冬.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 6

Those with keen eyes may have noticed something interesting.

In Lesson Two when we were discussing how to express date, 日 (which means the Sun) is used to express the day. In the last lesson, we have

A sunny day, we say "晴天".
雨 is rain as in 雨天 (rainy day)...

Of course, we should not say "sunny SUN (晴日)" for a sunny day. Rain also does not come from the Sun. So what is the meaning of 天 when it is used alone, you may ask?

天 means sky when it is used by itself. Now that make sense. 天 is also another way of expressing "day".

Chinese is easier than Western language because we do not need to change the verb to different form (e.g. we don't have constructs like go, goes, went, gone) according time, gender nor number. A verb (a single character or a phrase) is the same in all these situation.

Chinese expresses the time (tense) explicitly or implied from context.

Now is 現在, Past is 過去 and future is 未來.

Today is 今天 or 今日.
Yesterday is 昨 or 昨日. Yesteryear is 昨年 or 去年.
Tomorrow is 明天 or 明日. Next year is 明年.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 5

In this lesson, let's learn some descriptions about weather and see how the "radicals" are used in constructing a Chinese character.

We have learnt that to express the day of a month, we can use 日. In fact, 日 means "Sun" and 月 means "Moon". So when you see "Sun", it is a day. When you see one cycle of the change of moon, it is 28 days - close enough to equal that to "month".

Let see some Chinese words with 日 in them:
明 (Sun and Moon together) means "Bright".
A sunny day, we say "晴天"
Morning is 早晨 (which is also the greeting in the morning, equivalent to "Good Morning"). These two words both have 日 at the top.

Now let's move on to another radical.
雨 is rain as in 雨天 (rainy day). When used as a radical, it is always on top.
雪 is snow. 雹 is hail. 霧 is fog.
雷 is thunder, 雷電 is lightning and thunder. (電 is electricity by itself.)


In this lesson, we have learnt these words:
明晴 早晨 雨雪雹霧 雷電
and see how 日and 雨 are used as radicals.

There is another new word which I have not explain what it means 天. Can you guess what it means? Answer in next lesson.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 4

I have said the Chinese is very "lego-like". Let me demonstrate further.

Today new words are: 我你您他她它 們 的

我 is the first person pronoun. To express plural: we say 我們.

Chinese has no distinction between subjective and objective form. So 我 is both "I" and "me".

To express possession, put 的 after the pronoun. So "my" and "mine" are both translated to 我的. "Our" and "ours" are 我們的.

There are two forms of you: a common "you" and a "respectful you". The former is 你 and the latter is 您. For general use, you don't need to distinguish between them. However when you are addressing your "superior" such as father, mother, uncle, it is good to use the second version.

Again the plural form of "you" is 你們. The possessive form are 你的 or 你們的 depending on number.

Third person is denoted by 他她它. 她 is a recent word arising from the political correctness. Previously, we don't distinguish between male and female. [What a bad influence from the W...!] 它 is for animals etc.

Being combinational, once you know today's eight Chinese characters, you can combine to form the following English equivalent:
I me my mine, you you your yours, he him his his, she her her hers, it it its its, we us our ours, they them their theirs.

As soon as you see 們 after a pronoun, you know it is referring to the plural form. As soon as you see 的, you know it is possessive. There is no guessing what has "he" have to do with "him"!

Exercise:
Translate the following into English:
她們的 Theirs - more accurately, this refers to something belong to a group of female human beings.

In this lesson, you have learnt these words:
我 你您 他她它 們 的
and how to combine them in Chinese.

By now, I hope I have convince you that Chinese is easier than English (at least in terms of remembering because of the combination ability of Chinese characters and the simplicity due to the lack of grammatical variations). Next lesson, we shall talk about weather!

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 3

The ability to read Chinese depends on an ability to distinguish between different words. Here are a few words that we have learnt and may confuse you:
十千午年
To confuse you even further, 干 is yet a different word.

To be able to really see the difference, you should understand how Chinese characters are written. Wikipedia has a good article on the eight basic writing principles. Read it now. I will be waiting for you here. Come back after reading it.

千 starts with a "short tapering line thinning toward lower left" (Stroke 7) whereas 干 starts with a "straight horizontal line" (Stroke 2).

Note all the words above do NOT end with "A hook to the left". The last strokes of all of them are just "straight vertical line".

Chinese characters can be written in different "style" or "scripts". Most computer font style is based on either "Clerical" or "Regular" scripts. Now take a look at the example, again from Wikipedia before continuing.

If you have looked carefully, you should have noticed that nearly all strokes start with a slightly larger "head" (in regular script) because when we write them, we pause slightly (or press down the brush slightly) before continuing the stroke. When it is time to turn, we also pause slight (or press down the brush slightly), again creating a slight thicker node. There are two ways to end a stroke: finish the stroke by lifting the brush or by pausing. Please note that some words only differ by how a single stroke was ended.

Please sensitise yourself to these differences. This will be very useful to recognise different Chinese Characters.

In this lesson, we have not learnt any new words. But I hope you have a better understand and ability to find the differences between words that may look similar.

Chinese does not have tense. In the next lesson, we shall learn how Chinese express the time concept we shall talk about pronouns.

PS After I wrote this, I found another useful site which shows how to count pen strokes as well as the order of how to write the character.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 2

Learning Chinese is easy because it is a very "lego-like" language. Once you know a few characters, you can build on that.

In English, January, February, March, April, ... are all different and hence you need to learn all twelve by heart. In Chinese, 月 means moon - the brightest object we can see at night at the sky. Since Chinese calendar is a "lunar" calender, one month is one cycle of the moon from new moon to full moon and back. By the way, at the beginning of a Chinese month, it is always new moon. Full moon at the middle of the month.

Now back to the month, the same word 月 is used to express western month as well.
January is 一月,
February is 二月,
March is 三月, etc.

Hence by knowing the numbers, you already know how to express the month by knowing one more word, 月.

Two more words to complete your ability to express a full date: 年 (year) and 日(day).

Today, 10th May, 2007 is expressed as 二千零七年五月十日. (Since May is the fifth month in the year) The order is year, month and then day.

What about time? OK, three more characters to learn: 時, 分, 秒. If it is 9:35:42 am, we say 上午九時三十五分四十二秒.

上午 means morning,
中午 means noon, and
下午 means afternoon.

So you may have guess that 午 means middle of the day (noon)! 午時 was the olden way of saying midday.

Look carefully how 上 and 下 are written. The horizontal stroke represent the baseline. So 上 means "above" or "upper". 下 means "below" or "lower". 中 means middle.

Now, I shall also tell you how to express weekdays. No, we don't have to remember another 7 words. We just need to understand that week is western concept. So when it is introduced into China, we need a phrase to mean week: 星期.

Monday is 星期一, Tuesday is 星期二 and so on. Sunday is a bit different. It is not 星期七. It is 星期日.

Exercise:
What does the following mean?
二千零七年五月三十一日星期四 31st May, 2007 Thursday

In this lesson, you have learnt these words:
年月日時分秒上中下午
these phrases: 上午 中午 下午 星期
and how to express date time in Chinese

Next time, we shall look at the characteristics of Chinese character and how to write them. Should be interesting.

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 1

I made the point that Chinese is easy to learn (link) and I am going to back it up by teaching YOU Chinese. So let's experiment to see if this claim can be proven.

My native language is Cantonese and I used traditional Chinese since I started school. However, I have been living in Australia for the last 13 years and hence my Chinese is now rusty. I was not very good at natural Language anyway. But I will give it a try. More experienced Chinese Language teachers are welcome to comment, suggest or criticize.

I will try to post at least once a week (more if I have time) and I hope within one year, you will be able to read National Chinese Newspapers such as those listed in here. I also hope that by then, you will be able to communicate in Chinese too. Note: this is a big claim and this is the first time I teach Chinese. (I was a Physics teacher, not language teacher!) If this experiment fails, so be it. In any case, do not sue me if I cannot deliver!

Before we begin, here is another disclaimer. I believe Chinese is a graphical language (contrast to most Western language which is phonetically based). This distinction makes learning to read and write Chinese MUCH easier than learning to speak and listen to Chinese especially when there are so many different dialects within China. So R/W in my title of this post (course) refers to "READ" and "WRITE".

One more thing before we actually start, you need to be able to write (OK, type). For those using Windows, make sure you go to [Control Panel], open [Regional and Language Options], in the [Languages] tab, add Chinese(Taiwan) and input method ChangJie. Do NOT add the Pingyin input method.

OK, Lesson one, let's start with numbers.

一 (one horizontal stroke) is the number one.
二 (two horizontal strokes) is the number two.
三 (three horizontal strokes) is the number three.

If you have installed ChangJie input method, you can try to input these three Chinese characters. Activate your Chinese Input method (the default is [ctrl] [Shift]). To input 一, type the character M on your keyboard and follow by the [space]. 二 is two M's followed by the [space] and ....

Yes, 三 is 3 M's followed by [space].

Well, number four is NOT 4 M's. It is actually quite different.

Here is the Chinese characters from one to ten.
一二三四五六七八九十
I'll discussion the input method for these characters in a later post. Let's learn how numbers are expressed in Chinese first.

Note the character ten (十) is also a place indicator. In English, numbers are advanced every three places. Hence we have ten, hundred and thousand. After thousand, it is ten thousand.

In Chinese, there are four place holders: 十, 百, 千, 萬. This will require a little switching in thinking. So instead of ten thousand, we have 萬.

Now, exercise for you. Translate the following Chinese numbers back to English. (To cheat, highlight the rest of the post.)

一十二 twelve
四十五 forty five
六千七百八十九 six thousand seven hundred eighty nine
三萬七千八百五十六 thirty seven thousand eight hundred fifty six

So far, I have missed out another important number - zero. It is written like this:零. So 2007 is 二千零七. Note, we don't need to use two 零 because a place holder 千 has been used making it perfectly clear that we mean two thousand and seven.

零 is a bit difficult to write, so some Chinese use the Arabic zero instead. However, if you are using Arabic it should be written like this: 二００七.

Now, you can read numbers in Chinese, keep tuned. Next time, we shall talk about how Chinese express date and time.

In this lesson, you have learnt these words:
零一二三四五六七八九十百千萬
and how numbers are written in Chinese