INDEX

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• INDEX
• Bai Jia Xing
• Lion SHI SHI SHI
• how many Chinese words are there and how much you
  need to know to read.
• Chinese year and Chronology
• 4 Tones In Chinese
• First 100 words

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• HOW MANY CHINESE WORDS ARE THERE AND HOW MUCH YOU
  NEED TO KNOW TO READ
• You need about 1000 words
• You can learn it in no time
• Understand Chinese script
• give up Chinese characters
• use pinying instead?

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• How Many Chinese words are there?
• No one knows for sure.
• High school students learns less than 1,000
  words.
• A college student probably has a vocabulary of
  some 4,000 words.
• Good newspapers equivalent to the New York Times
  use perhaps 2,000 words.
• GB code, has about 2,000 words.
• Internet Chinese word lists contain anywhere from
  3,000 to 138,614 words. These are of interests to
  scholars mostly.

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• you can learn 25 words inless than 5 minutes
• xiangxing ??, zhishi ??, huiyi ??
• ? ? ? yi1 er4 san1 one, two, three strokes
  1,2,3
• ? ?? xiao3 da4 jian1 small, big, small
  top big bottomsharp
• ? ?? ri4 yue4 ming2 sun, moon, sun moon
  bright
• ? ?? kou3 ren2 qiu2 mouth (square),
  man. Man in square prisoner
• ? ? kou3 zhong1 square, line through square
  middle
• ? ?? mu4 lin2 sen1 stick, 2 stickwoods, 3
  sticks forest
• ? ?? ? ?? yu3 tian2 lei2 dian4 xue3 yun2
• Rain, paddy field, rain on paddies field make
  noise thunder, thunder with a tail lightening,
  snow, cloud

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• The Number of Chinese Characters
• The most comprehensive dictionary ever made, the
  Hanyu da zidian ?????from 1990, contains more
  than 50.000 characters.
• Normal" character dictionaries contain about
  only 10.000 characters.
• Many of this huge number of characters are used
  solely for special terms in poems, novels, or
  sciences or in old literature, a great amount of
  characters are used for dialect words and are
  probably never written in books, and many old
  characters have died out.
• The average modern Chinese people should know
  about 3000 characters, peasants even less.

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• The Six Types of Characters
• The Han time scholar Xu Shen ?? (d. 147 AD) who
  wrote the great dictionary Shuowen jiezi ????
  "Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound
  Characters", divided the Chinese characters into
  six different types (liushu ??)
• xiangxing ?? "depicting the shape", about 600
  characters, pictures of concrete things or
  abstract things
• "sun" ?, "moon" ?, "evening" ?
• "child" ?, "wife" ? "mother" ? (wife with
  breasts)
• "tree" ?, "rain" ?, "dog" ?, "bird" ?, "hand" ?
  or ?, "foot" ?, "heart" ?
• "eyebrow" ? (eye ? and brow )
• "exchange" ? (old two crossed legs)
• "board" ? (old half of a tree ?, old ).

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• zhishi ?? (also called chushi ?? or xiangshi ??)
  
• "pointing at situations" ("placing situations" or
  "depicting situations"), marking a character with
  a dot or a stroke to indicate a part of it
• "above" ? the "blade" of a knife ? the "root"
  of a tree ? the four cardinal "directions" ?
  the "center" of a butt ? the "border" between
  fields ?
• "blood" ? (blood in a vessel ? during an oath
  ceremony)

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• huiyi ?? (also called xiangyi ??)
• "combining meanings" ("depicting meanings"),
  combined image of an abstract sense
• "dawn" ? (the sun ? over the horizon)
• "public" ? (opening ? a market place ?)
• "trusting" ? (a man ? speaking ?)
• "bright" ? (sun ? and moon ?)
• "burning" ? "flames" ? (two and three fires ?)
  "standing side by side" ? (double "standing"?,
  modern shape ?)
• Sometimes one of the parts is abridged (sheng ?),
  like "lame, slow" jian ? from ? "foot" and ?
  "cold", leaving out the two dots.

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• zhuanzhu ?? "mutually interpretation
  (tautology)", creating a new character from an
  old one to differ between words with the same
  meaning but with slightly different pronunciation
  
• "old" ? lao and "aged" ? kao
• "give back" ? fan and "turn back" ? huan
• or "tip of a branch" ? biao and "end of a stalk"
  ? miao. A rare type.
• jiajie ?? "false borrowing", borrowing a
  character for a word that is pronounced equally
  but has a totally different meaning
• ? (a kind of axe ?) for "me"
• ? (a kind of grain modern form ?) for "coming"
• ? "foot", also meaning "enough"
• ? (a kind of slave clothing) for "slave",
  "soldier", "ending", "dead", "at last", "suddenly

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• xingsheng ?? (also called xiesheng ?? or
  xiangsheng ??) "shape and sound" ("harmonizing
  with sound" or "depicting sounds"), a combination
  of a "classifier", "determinant" or "radical"
  (sphere of word sense) and a sound
• ? li "pear" from ? "tree" and the sound ? li
• ? zhang "controlling" from ? "hand" and the sound
  ? shang
• Some of the phonetic parts are also used with
  their true meaning
• "the middle of three" zhong ? from ? "man" and ?
  zhong "middle"
• "to lie" ? wu from ? "speaking" and ? wu
  "sorcerer"
• or the character set of ? bao "package" ? bao
  "bud" (with ? "grass"), ? bao "placenta" (with ?
  "flesh"), ? bao "hail" (with ? "rain"), ? bao
  "full stomach" (with ? "eating"), ? bao
  "embracing" (with ? "hand"), ? pao "foam" (with ?
  "water"), all of them describing ball- or
  package-like things.

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• Giving up the Chinese Writing System
• During the sixties, there were books published
  that used the Pinyin Romanization instead of
  characters.
• Many people propose to give up the character
  system totally. Their main argument is that
  people can communicate orally without using
  characters.
• Most people are not able to use the Pinyin system
  correctly.
• Although daily communication is possible without
  characters, it is not possible to write
  scientific books or even novels or poems without
  using characters.
• Modern Chinese language has only less than 1600
  different syllables (including the four tone
  pitches).
• Very many words, even two-syllable words, sound
  totally equal. The picture-like characters help
  us to understand

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• What is GB, Big5, Unicode ?
• Traditional, simplify ?
• Radical, brush stroke?
• Pinyin, Zhuyin?
• Eight brush strokes of yeong3?
• Most complex character written in 48 strokes da2
  ?

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• Chinese Script and Computer
• Letters that are contained in a "normal" ASCII or
  ANSI codes, have 8 bit coding. Such a coding
  would not be enough to cover all Chinese
  characters. Therefore, characters are coded in a
  16 bit system, combining two 8 bit coded ASCII
  letters or signs.
• To interpret the two-letter-combination as a
  Chinese character, it is necessary to impose an
  interpreting code. For Chinese, there exist two
  main interpreting codes the mainland China
  Guobiao code ?? and the Taiwanese Big-5 code. The
  latter contains more characters. A third
  interpreting code is the international Unicode
  system that tries to cover all writing systems of
  the world.

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• What is that 1,2,3, 4 behind the pinyin?
• Which nine sounds you need to know for typing
  Chinese?
• Why use two syllable-word, sometimes with the
  same meaning.

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• Chinese is a tonale language
• In modern Chinese, every syllable has four
  different tone pitches (sisheng ??)
• high pitch (yinsheng ??),
• rising pitch (yangsheng ??),
• lower rising pitch (shangsheng ??), and
• falling pitch (qusheng ??).
• In the pinyin text I quote, I use 1,2,3,4 instead
  of symbols to demonstrate the four above tones.

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• J ? zh ? z ?
• q ? ch ? c ?
• x ? sh? s ?
• b bd dg gdj jd zhdz zp pt tk
  ktç qt chts cm mn nx, h hç x
  chs sf fl l r

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• Take Yi for example. Farng Yi is 2rd sound.
• yi1 yi1 yi1
• ? ? ? ? medicine ? one ? cloth
• yi2 yi2 yi2
• ? ? ? ? Happy ? move ? suspect
• yi3 yi3 yi3 yi3
• ? ? ? ? ? ant ? using? second ? chair
• yi4 yi4 yi4 yi4
• ? ? ? ? ? justice, meaning ? will power
  ? leisure ?recall

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• Reading aloud a text in classical written
  language, the listeners are hardly able to
  understand a great part of the text.
• Measurements of the spoken language to encounter
  this homophony was the development of
  two-syllable words.
• Today, most words in Chinese consist of two
  syllables, composed of two single words, like
  aiqing "love" from ai ? "love, affection" and
  qing ? "feeling, sentiment, temperament".
• The classical word fang ? can have the meanings
  of "direction" (modern fangxiang ??), "location"
  (difang ??), "square" (fangxing ?? fangmi ??
  fangzhang ??tion), "aspect, side, party"
  (fangmian ??), "mode, manner" (fangshi ??),
  "method" (fangfa ??), "plan, concept" (fanglüe
  ??), "stategy" (fangce ??), "recipe" (fangji ??,
  fangzi ??, fangr ??, "occultism" (fangshu ??,
  fangji ??), "honest, upright" (fangzheng ??),
  "just now" (fangcai ??), and so on.

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• Try this She sells sea shell in the sea shore.
• Then try the following Chinese
• shi2 si4
• ? ? FORTEEN
• si4 shi2
• ? ? FORTY
• shi2 shi1 zi5
• ? ? ? STONE LION
• si4 shi2 si4 zhi1 shi2 shi1 zi5
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
• FORTY FOUR STONE LIONS

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• shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4
• ? ? ? ? ? ?
• STONE DEN POET MR?SHI
• shi4 shi1 shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1
• ? ? ? ? ? ?
• LOVES LION SWEAR TO EAT TEN LION

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• Chinese calendar and Chronology
• Chinese believes 60 years is a life cycle and
  therefore the year is repeated every 60 years
• Alternate one character each from the 10 Tiangan
  and 12 Terrestrial branches, the cycles repeat
  every 60 years

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• Ten Celestial Stems (Shi Tiangan ???)
• 1 ?2 ?3 ?4 ?5 ?6 ?7 ?8 ?9 ?10 ?
• jia yi bing ding wu ji geng xin ren gui
• Twelve Terrestrial Branches (Shier Dizhi ????).
• 1 ?2 ?3 ?4 ?5 ?6 ?7 ?8 ?9 ?10 ?
• 11 ?12 ?
• zi chou yin mao chen si wu wei shen you xu
  hai

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• Every year correlates with one of twelve animals
  (corresponding to the Twelve Branches)
• 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20012002 2003 2004 2005
  2006 2007
• Rat shu ?
• Ox niu ?
• Tiger hu ?
• Hare tu ?
• dragonlong ?snakeshe ?horsema ?sheepyang
  ?monkeyhou ?cockji ?doggou ?pigzhu ?

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• ming2 ren2 you3 yong3 tian2 zi4 shi1 yun2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
• xi2 ri4 tian2 wei2 fu4 zi4 zu2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• jin1 ri4 tian2 wei2 lei4 zi4 tou2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• tuo1 xia4 jiao3 shi2 cheng2 jia3 shou3
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• shen1 chu1 tou2 lai2 bu4 zi4 you2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• tian2 an1 xin1 shang4 zhang3 xiang1 si1
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• tian2 zai4 xin1 zhong1 luu4 bu4 xiu1
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• dang1 chu1 zhi1 wang4 tian2 wei2 fu2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ?,
• shei2 liao4 tian2 duo1 lei3 lei3 chou2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ???

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• ? is paddy field it symbolize a rice field with
  narrow paths surrounding four sections for
  planting rice.
• The translated poem as shown below will be
  meaningless unless one look at the character it
  self.
• In the olden day, tian2 (? ) is the leg of
  fortune(?fu2 )
• To day ,tian2 is the head (main reason) of
  fatigue/burden(? lei4)
• Stick tian2 s leg out and becomes 1 (?jia3 )
• extend (? shen1) its head and it is not free (??
  zi4 you2 )
• put tian2 on top of the heart and it is a
  yearning of lovers(?? xiang1 si1)
• keep tian2 in the heart , then one worries (?
  luu4) forever
• In the beginning, one only wish to own tian2 (
  land) for fortune (? fu2)
• Who know more tian2 only bring blocks and blocks
  ( ?? lei3 lei3)of worries.

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• 1-100 Traditional Big5
• ???????????????????????????????????????????????
  ??????????????????????????????????????????????????
  ???
• 1-100 simplified GB
• ??????????????????????????????????????????????
  ??????????????????????????????????????????????????
  ????

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• ? ?
• yu3 he2
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
• yu2 du2 ai4 lian2 zhi1 chu1 yu1 ni2 er2 bu4 ran3
• ? ? ? ? ? ?
• zhuo2 qing1 lian2 er2 bu4 yao1
• ? ? ? ?
• zhong1tong1 wai4 zhi2
• ? ? ? ?
• bu4 man4 bu4 yan2
• ? ? ? ?
• xiang1 yuan3 yi4 qing1
• ? ? ? ?
• ting2 ting2 jing4 zhi2
• ? ? ? ?
• ? ? ? ? ?
• ke3 yuan3 guan1 er2
• bu4 ke3 yi3 xie4 wan2
• ? ? ? ? ? (Paint a hundred times and not
  tired of it)

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