Introduction of Chinese characters and Chinese language

Fun and quick way of learning Chinese language, characters and culture in 8 days

No matter whether you already speak fluent Chinese, or you know nothing about Chinese, this book will be helpful to you. It helps you quickly start speaking, reading, typing Chinese (using a computer) and understanding connecting with Chinese culture.

One Day master Chinese characters Inside out

Ni Hao, welcome to join us. I assume you already know Ni Hao is Chinese greeting by now. You may be scared when you find out there are over 80000 Chinese characters. And you say, no, I don’t want to learn characters. Don’t worry, sit back and relax, I will help you open up the mystery of the language and enjoy the spirit of it today. By opening these mysteries, you will find out, it is so interesting and so easy to learn Chinese characters. While you have fun discovering the mysteries, you also learn how to use computer to write them in this book.

Do you know there are mathematics, science, painting, musical, Confucianism and religion in Chinese characters?

Let’s talk about mathematics first

If I tell you these three are Chinese characters and each one of them represents a number, can you guess what these characters are?

一二三

Most of you will guess it right. They are the numbers 1, 2, and  3.

See how easy it is to learn Chinese!!

Their pronunciation is Yi Er San (This is PinYin, pronunciation of Chinese characters)

How to use these 3 characters?e.g. 一个人(one person)， 一家人(one family), 一点(a little, one o’clock)，

Same as in English, in Chinese, people use counting 1 2 3 to start. You can say: Yi Er San kai shi (so you know kai shi means start )

Dao in Chinese characters

人

Look at this character. It means person. It pronounced as 人 (Ren)。 What is the Dao in here? It is the Dao of how to be a person: No one can stand without the other’s support.

我 this is a character build with 2 parts: half of the person (/) and the other part is 找.

This character means “I” or “me.”  Good news here； Chinese grammar is very simple. It does not have different subject and object styles. That means you just learned a single word that is equivalent 2 words in English, 3 words in French

找 means looking for, seek, search. So this character is the Dao of Self being. When you are yourself, you are not complete as a person (人); you are searching the other half to complete as a person: 人

If you look into Chinese culture, it is very rare to see people stay single throughout their life, because the Dao tell them to complete as a person, they need to find the other half.

Science in Chinese characters

We know water has 3 different status depends on the temperature. So do Chinese. When Chinese discovered this scientific affect, they put them in the Chinese characters.

Here is a quiz for you. If we know … is the room temperature, then ”, …. are the other 2 forms of water, can you tell what they are?

Good job!! You got it, ” is the form of ice, and …. is form of steam. Here is a new concept for you: Radicals. Radicals are the root of Chinese characters. Most of the Chinese characters build with two parts, one is radical, and the other is used for pronunciation. The radical here is used to explain the meaning of the characters. Good news for you though there are thousands of Chinese characters to learn, there are only about 180 radicals. Among them about 100 or less most common used ones:) Once you learn these radicals, you can easily read a book or news paper and guess 50% of the meanings

Other science in Chinese characters

Let’s learn radicals here. Most of the radicals reveal the ancient Chinese’s understanding of science.

e.g. radical: 虫means bug. As we mentioned earlier, radical explains the meaning of the character. That means characters with this radical are mostly noun and related to bugs.

e.g. 蚂蚁，蜘蛛， these are ants, and spiders. Any other bugs you can think of, 蟑螂， 蜜蜂. Radicals can be on the left, right, up, down, outside or inside of the characters. How about this character: 虾， 螃蟹 they are shrimp and crab. Yes, they are bugs in the ancient Chinese’s eyes. It is pretty close to today’s modern science.

Painting in Chinese characters

We know lots of Chinese characters are …, they are developed from the ancient painting on the wall and in the cave. Look at the shape of them, they self explain their meanings.

e.g. 日，月，目，山， 水，女 these are paintings, they self explain what they are. Usually these characters are developed earliest and most of them are radicals. The number one we learned before is also a radical.

Music in Chinese characters

You may heard about tones. Most of us are scared when we try to learn Chinese. If you understand where these tones are from, you may say Ah ha, it is easy especially you have some basic understand of music nodes. Chinese use different tones to increase of the pronunciations. If every basic pronunciation has five different tones, they become 5 different pronunciations.  In this way, the language is five times more complicated than before. It is a fun trick. Let’s see how the different tone placed on the music node.

______

if you put the tone on the characters, try it: yī yí yǐ yì you got 5 different pronunciations, that means you got maybe 25 different characters. As there are multiple characters with the same pronunciations and same tone.

Here I share a poem to practice the tone. If you pay attention to the pronunciation of the last character, you will notice that they rhyme.

chu he

chu he ri dang wu

han di he xia tu

shui zhi pan zhong can

lili jie xin ku

Lastly, religion in Chinese characters

It is a good way to remember how to write some Chinese characters 船魔鬼

I hope all these information give you some basic understanding Chinese characters. It is fun to learn Chinese characters. And it is easy to learn Chinese characters if you apply all the knowledge while you are learning.

Next chapter we will teach you sentence structure and some special grammar

Day 3 Making a Question

Remember we said, Chinese grammar is very easy. Making questions is a great example.

The rule of thumb is: simply replace the answer in a statement with a question word, and you will make a question.

These are the most power tools question words

Shui (who), Shen Me(What), Wei Shen Me(because of what), Shen me Shi hou (what time), Na (Where), Zen me (how)

e.g. i work at Microsoft (wo zai wei ruan gong zuo)

If you want to ask who is working at Microsoft, how to ask?

wo cong zhong guo lai (I come from China)

 

wo xi huan chi zhong guo cai (i like to eat Chinese food)

        Who like to eat Chinese food?

       What i like to eat?

Ni     Cong Zhong Guo Lai (You are from China)

Shui Cong Zhong Guo Lai? (Who is from China?)

Ni     Cong Na Li Lai? (Where are you from?)

- Question Words

Na

- Measure words

- Differences of

- Easy conversations

History of Chinese literature

1. cheng yu

2. Tang shi

3. Song Ci

4. Yuan Qu

5. Jin Wen

Day3 – Use IME to type Chinese characters

Yes, you can write Chinese after today. use computer software, with our knowledge of Chinese by far, we can write Chinese use computer now J

Install IME Pin Yin

Day4 – Daily Chinese Conversations

Scenario: Introducing yourself in Chinese

Ni Hao,

Wo jiao xxx

Wo cong xx lai

Wo zai xx gong zuo

Wo jia you x kou ren

Scenario: Taking a Taxi

Ni Hao

Wo yao qu xxx

Qing shang che

ni qu na ma?

duo shao qian

qing da yi zhang fa piao

Measure words:

Zhang

Kou

Day5 – Chinese Food and Geography

Eating in China

Day6 – More daily conversations

Glossary

Pin Yin

Radical: 口，女