Answers for Lesson 3

Here is the answers for some new vocab which you are supposed to translate in Lesson 3. I believe you have found your answers.


1. 头            tóu               head / kepala

2. 目            mù               eyes / mata       (Most characters / phrases that come with this Chinese character has something to do with eyes. See below:
（+）眼睛      yǎn jīng      eyes / mata (when we use it in a sentence, this is my eyes)
Look at the left side of each character, it has the character of 目 mù

3. 口            kǒu              mouth / mulut   (Most characters/phrase that comes with this Chinese character has something to do with mouth)

4. 嘴巴        zuǐ bā        mouth / mulut     (when we use it in a sentence, e.g. this is my mouth)

5. 耳朵        ěr duo         ear / telinga

6. 足 / 脚     zú / jiǎo     feet / kaki   

7. 大            dà                big/ besar

8. 小            xiǎo             small / kecil

9. 多            duō              many / banyak

10. 少          shǎo             little / sedikit

Translating to Mandarin

1. Sun             日  / 太阳           rì / tài yang     

2. Moon          月           yuè

3. Mountain    山                      shān

4. Field           地           dì

5. Rock           石头         shí tou

6. Water          水           shuǐ

7. Fire             火           huǒ

8. Soil            土           tǔ

9. Wood           木          mù

10. I / Me           我         wǒ

11. You             你          nǐ

12. We /Us         我们       wǒ men

13. He/She/It (same pronunciation different characters)            他 /她 /它     tā

14. They / Them            他们      tā men

The above (except subject pronoun) are the basic words that you might need to know to ease your learning of Chinese characters. As I mentioned before, although Chinese characters might look complicated, most of the time it is a combination of a few characters. By introducing the basic/simple character, I hope will allow you to look at Chinese character from different angle.

Although, it will allow you to "guess" the meaning of the word. For example: 火huǒ means fire. So most of the characters that come with that will have something to do with fire/light/hot temperature. E.g. 烧 (shāo) burn, 灯 (dēng) lamp / light, etc.

As of the introduction to subject pronouns will allow us to create sentence (simple ones) in near future :)

Revisit this over and over again, until you have them all on your finger tips :)

Happy Learning,
Linda Tan

Weekend Reminder

Hi learners,

Have you master hanyu pinyin, the Chinese phonics? You will need it to be able to master all the lessons that I am going to share.

If you haven't, please visit the pinyin post. Take it slow but sure!

OR...

Have you got to know what are the tools that might be useful to assist you in your learning journey?

If you haven't, please read about the assistants that you need in learning Chinese.

Grasp the two basic above before rushing to learn more things.

Don't worry, the post is not going anywhere. You just have to be committed enough to spare sometimes on each post and discipline enough to do it regularly.

To not miss any post in the future, subscribe via email to get each post in your inbox.

Happy Weekend,
Linda Tan

Hanyu Pinyin - Part 4 - More Phonics

 Here are the phonics that you have been introduced before:
Single vowels: a, o, e, i, u, ü and
Consonants: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, y, w

Other than the above, there a few more that you have to know and understand. As you can already see in the pinyin chart on Yabla's site, there are many of the remaining that I haven't covered. In fact, I am not going to cover all. I will show you the other basic pinyin that is formed by combining the 2 vowels, that is known as 双韵母 (shuāngyǜnmǔ) and sounds that come out from your nostril, known as 鼻韵母 (bíyǜnmǔ )

Let's first look at 双韵母 (Shuāngyǜnmǔ). It literally means double vowels. Here they are:

ai    ei    ui   

ao   ou

iu    ie    üe    er

Tips on pronouncing the above:

1. Pronounce the first alphabet (remember it is more to Bahasa Indonesia ABC than English ABC) and without stopping (no gap), followed by the pronunciation of the second alphabet.

2. Repeat the sound in a faster pace.

3. Again, it sounds almost the same like Bahasa Indonesia pronunciation. You do not have to memorize them all. Just try to pronounce it with the trick above (no. 1 & 2) and you should be able to get the correct pronunciation. Again, NO memorizing)

Let's see the video below (I am sorry, that you can only view this on your desktop).

Here is the implementation in spelling a word:

Remember! The spelling of the 2 vowels must be pronounce continuously without stopping. Treat "ao", "ei" as One phonic, not 2 separate phonics. Here is the difference if you spell it one by one with a gap in between, and this is not the right way to do it!

Here is how you use it in spelling a word!

More Example:

Try spelling the following on your own:

1. k - āo
2. x - i - ǎo (try spelling word with 3 syllables)
3. t - uō
4. l - uò
5. j - üé
6. m - ài
7. q - iē
8. l - óu

The last one from phonics is to know that there are certain phonics which sounds are produced from our nostril, known as 鼻韵母 (bíyǜnmǔ ). Here they are:

an  en  in  un   ün 

ang, eng, ing, ong

Let's see how to use it to spell a word:

With this, the basic things that you should know about Chinese Phonics are all covered. Here are a few important rules that you should know:

1. I mentioned that vowel is the one that should carry the symbol of intonation on top of them. It will be easy if there is only one vowel in a word. If there are more than one, such as in the word "shuoI", then you have to know where to appropriately place the small symbol for intonation.

In the first part of Hanyu Pinyin post, I asked you to memorize the vowel in the given order: a, o, e i, u, ü. It is for a reason. That order helps to decide who is going to wear the "crown".

Here is the rule:

a. If you see an "a" in the word, then "a" should definitely wear the crown (E.g. hǎo)

b. If you don't see an "a" then either "o" or "e" should wear it. "o" and "e" has never come together in a word (E.g. xiè, shōu)

c. However, if "u" and "i" come together, whichever that place a the back, then it should wear the crown. (E.g. shuǐ, xiū)

2. When 2 words with 3rd tone comes one after another, the first word should be pronounced as 2nd tone (while the writing have to be kept as 3rd tone "v")

Listen to the following:

3. When you see a word that comes without an intonation symbol, it is known as 轻声 (qīngshēng), literally means soft tone. It has to be pronounced softly and keep it short! See the following:

There are more rules that we should (not MUST) know, but I am not going to explain all of them here. It will be ongoing process. I will explain them when we see them during our learning. 

Now, you can practice reading the following sentences yourself:

1. wǒ shì Linda                         I am Linda

2. wǒ xué hàn yǔ                       I am learning Chinese

3. tā shì shuí?                            Who is he/she?

4. nǐ hǎo                                     Hello

5. wǒ de mā ma                          My mother

6. nà shì shén me?                     What is that?

7. Ní hǎo ma?                             How are you? / Are you good?

8. Wǒ xǐhuān chī pángxiè          I like to eat Crab

For the past 2 months you have been introduced to the tools and the very basic of Mandarin that will allow you to explore more yourselves. I want you to revisit every post about Pleco and Bihua.com to refresh your memory and also starting practicing the hanyu pinyin (Chinese phonics) from the single phonics to the one that we learnt above. 

To perfect your Chinese phonics, you can do the following:

Pick the things (noun) / activities (verbs) that you would like to know and translate them in Pleco. DO NOT play the speaker for now, look at the pinyin and start spelling and pronouncing them. Then for comparison, you can check the recorded audio to see if you have pronounced it right. Do not look at the sample phrases or sentences for now. If you get 80% of this right, then you might want to pick up a Mandarin book that comes with hanyu pinyin. And start reading short article. Best is to use the primary school kids' books (P1 or P2 books). Not only reading, you can start translating the short article to English and see if the story makes sense to you. :)

Happy Trying,

Linda Tan 

P.S. Here is the answer to the previous post exercise:

xī         mǎ       tā         chē      hé

Hanyu Pinyin - Part 2 - Spelling

To be useful, This post has to be viewed on your PC. As I think the videos won't play on gadget. But you can always try it out and see if it is working on your gadget. My iPhone definitely cannot play the videos. :(

Have you get yourselves familiar with the introduced phonics last week?

Do you know how to pronounce "b"? Yep, it is "po", how about "j"? Do I hear "ci"? you are right again.

Just like how we learn our own mother language, such as Bahasa Indonesia and English, we were introduced to the individual alphabets first, then the combination of those alphabets to make up sound and finally word! Same thing here in learning the Chinese phonics, hanyu pinyin.

In Bahasa Indonesia, when spell "buku", we separate it into 2 syllables:
1. we say: "be" + "u" = "Bu" NOT "beu"
2. Then, continue with "ka" + "u" = "Ku" NOT "kau".

Again, it is similar in Mandarin.

When we see "ba", we pronounce it as "po" + "a" = "pa", we do NOT end up saying "poa".
Then, "ji" is spelled as "ci" + "i", and pronounced as "ci", and NOT "cii"
"ku" is spelled as "khe" + "u", and pronounced as "khu", and NOT "kheu"
and so on and so forth.

That's the basic. Then, there are a few rules that you have to know:

1. vowel "i", "u" and "ü" do not stand by themselves.
For "i" and "ü", you have to add "y" in front, written as "yi" and "yu" (without the dots on top) and pronounced as "yi" and  "yü"
As for "u", is written and pronounced as "wu".

Other vowels can stand by themselves. Such as: a (啊，阿），o （哦，噢），e（鹅，饿）

2.  j, q, x (pronounced as ci, chi, si) have never been friend with phonic "u". So, whenever you see "ju", "qu", "xu" they should be pronounced as "jü", "qü" "xü". There is a poem for this rule to help kids remember. It goes like this:

ü has a hat.
When j, q, and x meets ü, they all want its hat
so when ü see j q x, ü quickly remove the hat.

Thus you don't see ü with its hat when it meets with j, q, and x. Again, they are written as "ju", "qu", "xu"

3. n and l (pronounced as ne and le) make friend with both "u" and "ü". So they have to be written as the sound they produce. "nu" is different from "nü" and "lu" is different from "lü".

4. Do you still remember how to pronounce the following phonics?
zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s

if you can't recall, please refer back to the previous post

There are many words with that kind of sound above, such as 只， 吃， 是， 日， 字， 词， 四， listen to the video below for the pronunciation of each character and the phonics that represent them.

Don't bother about the intonation for now, just focus on the sound it forms.

You might first think that each of the character is represent by zh or ch or sh alone, because they sound like it. But they don't. Consonant can't stand by themselves. they have to be followed by at least one vowel. In this case, the default vowel that follow them is "i".

You might question, why don't they be followed by "e" because it sounds closer. Listen to the following to compare the sound of zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s when they are followed by "i" and "e"

If you noticed there are ups and downs in the intonation. This what makes it different in Mandarin. Again, you are not supposed to focus on that for now. Just focus on the difference in the ending sounds. Intonation is coming in the next post!

If you can pronounce the phonics zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s correctly, then you will have no problem pronouncing zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si. (They are exactly the same sounds) Now to differentiate them with zhe, che, she, re, ze, ce, se, you just have to open up your mouth a little bit more but not as much as when you pronounce zha, cha, etc.

Listen to the following:

Try to read zhi, zhe, zha, chi, che, cha (as in the video above) and feel the difference in the shape of your mouth.

For now, those are the things that you have to remember. Actually there are lists of phonics combination that you can find, however, that's too much to remember. Knowing what matters are god enough for me. Hopefully it is good enough for you. However if you would like to find out more, then feel free to explore. Here is the link to a very informative and effective site to learn hanyu pinyin. However, it might overload you with information. So, don't finish it in one reading, one step at a time.

Try to read the following, without paying attention to the intonation, for now:

ma, pa, sha, le, ke,

po, fa, ta, zi, ze, lü,

zhu, zu, xu, da, wu,

wa, yu, sa, gu, qi, chi

Cross check your answer here:

Other than this, you can also do your own practice, by looking up words with simple phonics in Pleco to enrich your vocabularies.

Intonation next! :)

Happy Spelling,

Linda Tan

Bihua - Part 3 - Search Words based on Number of Strokes

This is the last feature for bihua website that you should know, search words based on number of strokes, 笔画数查字 bi hua shu cha zi.

Click on the circled part and you will see the following page

It will show you the categorization of words based on the numbers of strokes. As you can see, there are 10 words that has 1 stroke, 52 words that have 2 strokes, 99 words that have 3 strokes and so on. 

Let's look at the words with 6 strokes.

Here is the list of all Chinese characters that consist of 6 strokes.

From here, you should know what to do right? Are you looking for meaning? or are you looking for strokes order? Or are you looking for words formation?

You should know where to click to get the information that you need. if you don't please refresh your memory by referring to the first post on Bihua website.

That's pretty much about Bihua site. If you notice, the page is actually linked one to another.

The main thing to know is that you can search words based on pinyin （拼音查字 pinyin chazi）, radicals 部首查字 (bu shou cha zi) or the numbers of strokes （笔画数查字 bi hua shu cha zi）.

The second thing is you can look at 3 main aspects of each character that you found on bihua.com, they are:

1. Dictionary (CH - EN / CH - CH) 字典 zi dian

2. Chinese Strokes                           笔画 bi hua

3. Word formations                          组词 zu ci

Please do not rush things! Learning is a lifetime journey. Reread all the posts on how to use Pleco and Bihua website effectively and put it into practice.

Search for words that you might use often in your daily conversation, such as:

1. Hello

2. Good morning/afternoon/night

3. Good bye

4. Eat

5. Come

6. Pronouns (I, you, we, etc)

Hope you find the posts useful and practical. Would love to hear any constructive inputs :)

The real thing start next week.

Happy Exploring,

Linda Tan

Bihua - Part 2 - Components of Character (Search Words based on Radical)

Open up bihua website. Click here!

It will take you its homepage that looks roughly like the following. Today, we are going to look at 部首查字 bu shou cha zi, word search based on Radical. I have given a short simple explanation on radical. Please refer to the explained a little about Radical in the May 31st Post. Please revisit it to rephrase your memory.

Click on the circled and it will show you the following. There are about 268 radicals. It is categorized based on the number of stroke.

The question is how to use this?

1. Use this feature to enrich your vocabularies

You can click on the one that you interested the most (maybe something that you encounter often), such as the following:

Under the 2 strokes radical, please find the first one above, and click on it. It will take you the following page:

The circled part above is the name for it. Unfortunately, they don't give you the pin yin. At this point, you can use Pleco just to find out on how to pronounce it.

is known as 单人旁 dan ren pang. 单 dan means 'single' 人 ren 'human' 旁 pang comes from pang bian that means side (this is often found on the left side of the character). The shape of this radical is actually a modified 人 ren. Thus, if you notice, the first character that consists of 2 strokes (right underneath the circled part) is called "ren". We always write it in this form when we use it as a word by itself.

On this page, you can see all the words that carry this radical. It is usually used on the left hand side of the character.

From here, you learn each words by click on the blue hyperlinks that will give you either the meaning (CH - EN or CH - CH), the order of strokes or the words formation. If you need to refresh what I am talking about, please see the previous post.

2. Use this feature to search for words

If you ever need to use PRINTED Chinese Dictionary, the thing am about to mention below will come handy for you too

If you encounter new word, let say "花", and you want to know more about this word, the meaning, the strokes or the possible word formations, here is how to utilize the site to satisfy your need.

a. Find the radical.

I have mentioned that Chinese character has a few components, as what you can see on Pleco when you search for a word. Thus a Chinese character can consist of only the radical (the most basic word, such as; 一，人） or it can be formed by a radical + other parts which are non-radical.

So, if you look at 花 you will probably break it down to:

 + +

In which it is all possible for the 3 components above to act as "radical". So how? Try one by one! :)

If you decide that the radical for 花 is , then click on it and see if you can find it.

So you have to count the number of strokes for 花， which is 7 strokes. Scroll down to strokes 7 see if the character that you are looking for is there. In this case, it is NOT! So you know that you have got it wrong! The radical is not dan ren pang.

You will definitely find out that the correct radical is   草字头cao zi tou。

Don't worry if you are concern about the radical that is split in the middle (looks like 2 crosses instead of 1 joint fence). They are the same. They both come from the original character of cao (meaning: grass) that looks like this: "艸". 

So that is the 2 usage of "word search based on radical" 部首查字。

Please take your time to digest ALL the posts (about both Pleco and Bihua.com) and do the following exercise:

1. Using Pleco, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

鱼，猫，妈，上 (what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters， how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning for each one of them and pronounce them.

For example: "神 "

Answer: I will use the simplified handwriting mode on my phone to find this word on Pleco (because  I do not know the pinyin). Then, once I found it, I know that this (神) is pronounced as shen that means "god/mind/..."

The components that form the characters are as followed.

The radical is shi or widely known as 示字旁 shi zi pang.  The other part of that form the character is shen (meaning: to state to a superior).

The radical has 4 strokes, while the other parts have 5 strokes. Total strokes for the character is 9 strokes.

2. Using Bihua.com, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

让 (rang)，收 (shou)，六 (liu)，胖 (pang)

(what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters and how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning or each one of them and pronounce them.

Do the same like the sample above. In this case, please use Bihua.com

If I am looking for the same word on bihua 神. Here is what you can do.

1. Using the handwriting mode just like the above. I will get the following. Try your own!

The homepage

From the website URL we know that this site is intended for checking of bi shun (Chinese strokes). So by default your input, will return you with the page above. You can click on the blue bold character and it will take you the following page.

From here you can open up the 字典 （zi dian）= dictionary to show you the meaning of the word. See the screen result below.

2. Identify the radical yourself by guessing, just like what we do to the character 花 above. Try it yourself.

As a reminder, do not overwhelm yourself with all the information that you are trying to absorb now. The post may look long, but put into practice it is actually very brief. So, step by step!

What I am showing to you is the usage of the tools that might come useful for you now or in the future. So if you find that certain things are not relevant to the level you are in yet,  do not use it. But when you reach certain point and need it, you know where to look.

One more post on bihua.com's feature, then I might probably introduce you to hanyu pinyin. :)

加油 Jia you!      => Look up the meaning  and make yourself one phrase richer than you were!

Linda Tan

Bihua.com - Part 1 - The Introduction (Search Word based on Pin Yin)

Please bookmark this website

Bihua 笔画 means strokes. Each Chinese character is formed from one or more than one strokes. The stroke here refers to each movement of your pencil to form a Chinese character.

For example:

三 (san) consists of 3 strokes, to be exact 3 same stroke of horizontal line “一” that we know as 横 (heng) which are all different in length. 

十 (shi) consists of 2 strokes, 2 different strokes. The first is “一” that we know as 横 (heng) and the second is the vertical line“丨”, known as 竖 (shu) .

There is an order to follow when we write Chinese character and this is what we called 笔顺 (bishun). Thus, for 十 (shi), we CANNOT start with “丨”. We have to start with the horizontal stroke “一”, then followed by “丨”

This is the correct bishun (order of strokes) for 十 (shi) which means 10 (Ten)

There will be a post dedicated to bihua/bishun later on. As of now, Let's focus on the bihua.com The webpages look messy because there are many external links and ads on it. This is one of the way that they do to make sure that they can maintain good website for people like you and me. So, don't complain! Do not lose yourself in the sea of Chinese Characters that might seem alien to you. I will show you what to focus on and what to ignore.

This site will help you with your writing and structure of characters in Chinese. It also works as dictionary (Chinese to Chinese and Chinese to English).

First when you open the site, their homepage looks roughly like this:

Please focus on the circled part in the middle. That is where we are going to input our Chinese character. Underneath it, there are 3 blue hyperlinks in the square brackets:

1. 拼音查字    pin yin cha zi              Looking for characters based on pinyin

2. 部首查字    bu shou cha zi            Looking for characters based on the radical

3. 笔画数查字    bi hua shu cha zi     Looking for characters based on the numbers of strokes

Let's look at the first one: 拼音查字    pin yin cha zi     

When you click on it, it will take you to the following page

Just for example, you can click on "bai". This will show you ALL Chinese characters that are pronounced as "bai" in any tone.

I am gonna explore more on the circled character of 白 bai

As you can see there are 3 blue links beside each of the Chinese characters that say:

字典     zi dian     dictionary

笔画     bi hua      strokes

组词      zu ci       word formation

Let's click on the first one: 字典     zi dian     dictionary

This is what you are going to see.. It consists of a few parts. I will break it down for you further, so easy to understand.

The first to look at is the header part (the one on top!)

As you might have guessed, the black squared part is the pinyin. You can click on the speaker to listen to the recorded audio on how to pronounce it correctly.

The 3 red squares are (from the left)

1. Left: 简体部首 jian ti bu shou  

This is to show you the radical. Please read about the simple explanation about  radical on the previous post. Please click here

2. Middle: 部外笔画 bu wai bi hua  

This is to show you, after excluding the strokes for the radical, how many strokes are there. However, because 白 is radical itself and it doesn't contain any other parts, so it shows you 0 (zero)

3. Right: 总笔画 zong bu shou

This is to show you total strokes for the character 白

Moving on is the second part in the middle, this is the Chinese to Chinese translation for 白. Do you see the red part underneath, that is called 注音符号 (zhu yin fu hao) ths is the national phonetic alphabet (used before the current Chinese phonetic alphabets that we know as pinyin). From my knowledge, Taiwan is still using this.

For your information, here is how the old version phonetics represent the current hanyu pinyin

Last part of the dictionary page for 白 (bai) that might come useful for you is this:

The red squared parts above show us the translation for 白 in English.

The blue squared part is the words that are related to 白, it includes the antonym and synonyms.

Other than dictionary, this site also will show you the bihua or strokes for the character. If you still have this page open, click on the second one that say: 笔画

This link will take you the following page:

The part on top, the 6 boxes, are showing you the order of the strokes when you write 白. Underneath it, you should know what the first 2 rows refer to, the character and the pinyin. 3rd row is the radical, as shown in the dictionary page too. The 4th row shows you the total number of strokes, which is 5 (five). The 5th row shows you the order of the strokes. The 6th row is to show you the name of each strokes in row 5, respectively. There is even an animation on how to write the characters as you can see on the right side, the black character.

Last part you can either go back to the initial page here, or you can continue from the page above.

组词 (zu ci) means word formation. It will show you all the possible words formation that come from one character of "白"

You can click on either one of them and see the long explanation of the phrase. It is super detailed explanation. This will not come useful for beginner as of now. I try to click one, on the second row, 白水。It shows me this page:

The first paragraph shows you the explanation in simplified Chinese and the second paragraph in Traditional Chinese.

So, basically those are the things that yo have to pay attention to. The Chinese to Chinese translation is very useful for people who are already know Chinese and would like to explore more in depth. It works just like English to English dictionary.

End of this week, I will continue to part 2, where you can use bihua website to look for characters based on their radical

As of now, you explore more on the first item, search based on pinyin.

Happy Exploring,

Linda Tan

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