Lesson 14 - Stroke Order

If you plan on learning Chinese, you'd better be familiar with stroke order.  Most people get intimidated by the fact that they not only have to learn new squigglies, but also the order in which to draw them.  What sort of torture is that?

Thank goodness it's not a curse, but a blessing.  If it weren't for stroke order, Chinese characters really would just be a bunch of chaotic scratches on the page.  Stroke order helps you remember the characters and make them look a lot nicer and more uniform.

Think of it this way: If you drew your boxes starting on the top right corner and going around counter clockwise while your friend started at the lower left and went clockwise, how similar would your boxes be?  (The Chinese way of drawing a box is as shown below.)

Stroke order generally follows the rule of top to bottom and then left to right.

An example of stroke order for
言 (yan2) speech.

The important part here is practicing.  With enough practice (and trust me, you'll be surprised at how fast you can pick it up), you don't even need someone to show you the stroke order.  You'll be able to accurately guess.  And if you switch the order of 2 strokes, big deal.  No one's watching you write, they just care about the end result.

Why else is it important to learn stroke order?  Ever wondered how the Chinese organize their characters into a dictionary?  That's right!  They organize it by the number of strokes.

Additionally, it can be really important to know stroke order if you want to find the meaning of a character.  Since Chinese does not have a phonetic alphabet, if you see a new character you would want to learn, but don't know the pinyin to type it and find out the meaning on Google translate, your only option at that point is to physically write out the character on a trackpad or similar device.  If you don't know your stroke order, it can be impossible to find the character you're after.

Here's a really good website to look up stroke order on any characters you're interested in learning.
http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html

Here is a list of characters that I think are worth learning right off the bat.  Their relative stroke orders are often confused.  Hopefully these can help you get started.

我 (wo3) I

这 (zhe4) this

女 (nü3/nv3) woman

加油！ Good luck!  If you have any questions (this stuff can be a little tricky at first), feel free to leave a comment below.

Lesson 13 - Numbers

The Chinese number system is actually a lot easier than the English one.  In fact, it almost reminds me of the Roman numeral system.  Let me list some numbers and you'll see what I mean:

一 (yi1) one

二 (er4) two

三 (san1) three

四 (si4) four

五 (wu3) five

六 (liu4) six

七 (qi1) seven

八 (ba1) eight

九 (jiu3) nine

十 (shi2) ten

As long as you know your numbers from 1 to 10, you can write out nearly every other number!  Here's how it works.

To write numbers 11-19, you just write the 十 followed by whatever digit you want for the ones place.  So 十七 would be 17 and 十二 would be 12.  Does that make sense?

For numbers that are multiples of 10 up to 90 (20, 30, 40...), you would put whatever tens digit you want followed by 十.  So 三十 would be 30 and 六十 would be 60.  Got that?

For all the other numbers from 21-99, you would combine the tens digit component (as seen right above) with the ones digit you want.  So 五十八 would be 58 and 四十一 would be 41.  It's very systematic.

The Chinese are very superstitious, and a lot has to do with the fact that if you change the tone of one word, it can mean a completely different one, whether good or bad.  For instance, if you change the tone for 四 from 4th to 3rd, it means death (死 si3).  So make sure to practice those tones!  For this reason, skyscrapers in China will very rarely have a 4th or 14th floor.  (How do you say 14 in Chinese again?)

I find that the best way to learn numbers in a new language is to just count as often as possible with the new numbers.  So for some practice, you can try counting the eggs (蛋 dan4) in the above pictures one at a time.  Happy learning!

Lesson 12 - How Are You?

好久不见！(Hao2 jiu3 bu2 jian4) Long time no see!

Today we are going to learn about how to carry out the most common starting point when learning any new language.  Here are a few phrases:

你好吗？ (ni2 hao3 ma5)  How are you?

Literally you + good + ? is the most common way to ask about someone's well-being.  You may have noticed that unlike what we would expect, 你 is not 3rd tone, but 2nd.  The reason is since it's just too hard to pronounce two third tones in a row.  So the first word will instead use second tone, while the latter word will keep its third tone.

好久不见 (hao2 jiu3 bu2 jian4) Long time no see.

The same rule applies here with the consecutive third tones, as you can see.  What is interesting here is that the English translation is the same as the Chinese literal translation, word for word.  It is important to note, however, that 久 is often used to refer to a longer span of time.

我很好，你呢？ (wo3 hen2 hao3, ni3 ne5?)  I am very good, and you?

呢 is an interesting particle in that it roughly translates to  "and what/how about this/you (or whatever the subject being referred to is)."  There is no direct equivalent in English, and yet this particle is essential to know in asking questions, as we will see later on.

我很累  (wo3 hen2 lei4)  I am very tired.

我很饿 (wo3 hen2 e4) I am very hungry.

我很高兴 (wo3 hen2 gao1 xing4)  I am very happy.

In case you noticed, there is a reason why I put 很 on nearly every single expression.  In fact, it sounds weird to natives if you don't put it there.  Other than that, I don't think there's any big reason for it's usage.

Hopefully these basic expressions will help you find your way around some basic Chinese conversations and allow you to showcase your skill in Chinese.  

So get out there and practice!  加油！(jia4 you3)  Good luck!

Lesson 11 - How to Type in Chinese

Ever wondered how Chinese people type?  Do they have strange keyboards with keys for each stroke?  Not at all!  It's actually easier than you might think.

Chinese people use the exact same keyboard as in America, as opposed to other countries (like France where the keyboard is called "AZERTY" instead of "QWERTY").

To type Chinese characters, all you really need to do is to type the pinyin.  The options for which character you want to include come up below and you select your option.

If you don't already have Chinese available to you easily on your computer, you can follow the easy steps on this site (it shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes to set it up).

For Windows:
http://www.wikihow.com/Add-Another-Language-to-Your-Computer-Keyboard

For Mac:
http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Keyboard-Language-of-a-Mac

Here is an example of what you would do to type 你好.

Something to keep in mind is that typing a spacebar selects the highlighted option.  If you want, say, option number 4, you can do several things.  You can use the arrow keys to move to the side or you can type "4" on your keyboard and it will be selected.

What if your option is not in the first 9 characters?  All you need to do is press on the "down" arrow key to go to the next "page" of characters below.

Another great thing about typing in Chinese is that you don't need to worry about those tricky tones!  You just need to know how to spell the word.  You still need to know tones for conversation purposes, so don't completely ignore them, but this cuts you some slack.  

Say you want to write a long sentence.  Do I have to select each word individually?  Nope!  If your are lucky, you can type an entire sentence with only one selection.  Here's an example:

Can you remember what this means?

Like always, the best way to learn is to practice, so make sure you practice using this once in a while to get the hang of it.  At first you may be really slow, but worry not!  You are sure to get much faster.

Exercise:

Try typing this in Chinese with your new keyboard settings.

- My name is 小王 (xiao3 wang3).

- My dog's name is 小黑 (xiao3 hei1).

- How are you?

Best of luck!

Answers to exercise (no peeking!):

- 我叫小王。

- 我的狗的名字是小黑。

- 你好吗？

Family

Family members are sort of important, wouldn't you agree?  So let's learn how to talk about them!  Let's start off with some basic vocab:

家庭 jia1 ting2

family

爸爸 ba4 ba5

dad

妈妈 ma1 ma5

mom

哥哥 ge4 ge5

older brother

弟弟 di4 di5

younger brother

姐姐 jie3 jie5

older sister

妹妹 mei4 mei5

younger sister

爷爷 ye2 ye5

father's dad

奶奶 nai3 nai5

father's mom

外公 wai4 gong1

mother's dad

外婆 wai4 po2

mother's mom

You probably noticed that there are different words for grandparents depending on whose parents they are.  China is one of those countries with tons of names just for family members, although you don't need to know all of them in order to get by.  Just knowing the ones above is enough.

Another important thing to notice is that often, the names are repeats of the same word, only the second time, the tone becomes neutral.  Chinese people realize it is hard to say the same tone twice in a row (especially third tone!).  So they have agreed that the repeated word would use the neutral tone to make it easier to pronounce instead of whatever other tone it may be using.  

In fact, since this is the correct way to pronounce these words, don't try to overachieve, since native Chinese speakers will look at you funny.  (Exactly what happened to me!)  If you want to sound more like a native, make sure to use the neutral tone.

Want a cool exercise?  Try to name all the members in the families in the pictures above!  See if you can do it again, but this time while covering the list.  Can you do it?  

If you want how to address someone I didn't mention here, check out this fun website!

http://www.mandarintools.com/family.html

再见！